New VDI Project

[Dave_O]

@Dave_O quotes dont seem to work...

 

Anyway That is all well and good but for these reasons VDI would be better.

• When hotdesking staff can just disconnect the session and connect in another location. Everything will be open no need to log off and on again.
  
• The apps follow the staff. Some computers around school may have different apps, different versions and different OS. You can assign an OS to a user and not a machine. This can be done with XenApp but some apps dont work as well with that as they do with XenDesktop.
  
• Remote access it better, connect to the VDI, the machine they always use.
  
• Easier to manage the machines
  
• Saves licensing costs. If one users needs say photoshop and they use 5 computers. You buy one license and put it on the VDI rather than each machine.
  
• Thinclients last longer than desktops, money saving there.
  

 

Don't seem to work!!

 

1. Hardly a case for mass adoption of VDI, otherwise terminal services would have been more widely adopted years ago

2. It may be worth revisiting what a well managed environment is. This is a problem for you to deal with not the staff and throwing VDI at it is not an effective way of doing it.

3. Better?? Define better. For whom?

4. Is this a valid reason for VDI, just to make your job easier?

5. I think Adobe might have something to say about this. Check their licensing documentation concerning remote access to their Apps

6. a) Do they? b) Why would you want them to! c) They are almost as expensive as a desktop

 

Look long and hard before you start down this rabbit hole.

[FN-GM]

Don't seem to work!!

 

1. Hardly a case for mass adoption of VDI, otherwise terminal services would have been more widely adopted years ago

2. It may be worth revisiting what a well managed environment is. This is a problem for you to deal with not the staff and throwing VDI at it is not an effective way of doing it.

3. Better?? Define better. For whom?

4. Is this a valid reason for VDI, just to make your job easier?

5. I think Adobe might have something to say about this. Check their licensing documentation concerning remote access to their Apps

6. a) Do they? b) Why would you want them to! c) They are almost as expensive as a desktop

 

Look long and hard before you start down this rabbit hole.

 

1. becuase VDI is still new, much better than terminal services. Its not a reason for mass adoption but a bonus.

2. What do you mean?

3. Read the original post, it explains it. The use the same VDI from home they do in school have the same apps, OS, config etc.

4. Adobe was an example it applies to thoughts of other titles

6a. yes

6b. Save mney

6c. Depends what you get. Ours dont. - you looking at £550 for a decent desktop PC (Dell Optiplex 790 USSF)

 

 

There are allot more pluses, there are just a few.

 

"Look long and hard before you start down this rabbit hole". - As i say i worked on a project dedicated to this, The company had about 60,000 computers on the LAN and was at the time deploying 15,000 virtual desktop devices, when i was there we did about 8,000, i have since been told then have been given the green light for another 15,000. I do have a fair bit of experience with this....... - If i could show you the system they had i think you would be impressed.

Edited May 22, 2012 by FN-GM

[Dave_O]

1. Not in my experience. Terminal services on Windows 2008 R2 is a) quicker b) cheaper and c) easier to manage. You do lose on isolation but if you have a robust virtual server setup then not much of an issue. We just have one licensing terminal server and a TS for each of the 5 classrooms we use thin clients in. The staff and student experience of TS is much better than VDI (VMWare View 5.0)

2. We have a single image all machines are the same laptop or PC so whereever you go your experience is he same. Apart from the thin clients (Wyse V10Ls) which by the way we are gradually getting rid of.

3. This is the only place where VDI is any use, for external access.

6a difference of opinion

6b I take issue with this, unless you are looking to keep a solution for over 8 years then there are few if any VDI solutions than are cost effective.

6c Not sure where you are getting your Dells from and in what quantities but you are being robbed.

 

Do staff and students really understand what the implications are of using VDI? Have you consulted widely? I'm sure you do have a lot of experience but quoting large scale implementations (unless it is in a school) is irrelevant, what matters is, does it work and work well, in the school environment.

[FN-GM]

Do staff and students really understand what the implications are of using VDI? Have you consulted widely? I'm sure you do have a lot of experience but quoting large scale implementations (unless it is in a school) is irrelevant, what matters is, does it work and work well, in the school environment.

 

Nope read my previosu post.

 

We get high spec dells with 5 years pro support. For what we get hte vaule isnt bad.

[techie08]

Im thinking of abandoning all plans now!!!! Seriously though its good to hear everyones feedback. A big part of me is now thinking maybe its just not the right time.

[Dave_O]

Nope read my previosu post.

 

I've read through your previous posts and I'm not sure which "Nope" you're refering to. Is that "Nope" they don't understand the implication or "Nope" you haven't consulted widely or "Nope" it doesn't work well in a school environment. "Nope" to any of the above would be a deal breaker for me.

[Dave_O]

Im thinking of abandoning all plans now!!!! Seriously though its good to hear everyones feedback. A big part of me is now thinking maybe its just not the right time.

 

My intention here is not to put you off, my intention is for you to question why and for whom you are doing this. My experience was a bad one, I'm sure there are others who have had a good experience. If you can find them and they are willing, go and see for yourself but take a teacher with you and see what they think because it is they who will be using it for the next n years (where n is a large integer) not you.

 

Having taught for 21 years (HOD, HOY, SLT) and then moved into the IT side of things I know the mentality of "Joe" teacher and sitting infront of Year 9 idiots on a Friday afternoon waiting for thin clients to do their job is not a pleasant experiece I can tell you.

 

Not sure where you are in the country but our door is always open. You are welcome to come and see the good, the bad and the terminally indifferent.

[glennda]

Im thinking of abandoning all plans now!!!! Seriously though its good to hear everyones feedback. A big part of me is now thinking maybe its just not the right time.

 

I don't see why - its the future so why not be forward thinking and go for it!

[Tallwood_6]

I'm with Dave_O on this one, I think visiting a site running a similar VDI setup to what your thinking of and getting the opinions of both techs and teachers would be a good idea.

[Dave_O]

I don't see why - its the future so why not be forward thinking and go for it!

 

Because it's school's money and children's education you are playing with.

[Cache]

Im thinking of abandoning all plans now!!!! Seriously though its good to hear everyones feedback. A big part of me is now thinking maybe its just not the right time.

 

I'm in a similar position and started off looking at VDI rather then desktop replacement. In the end I decided we don't at the moment have the money to throw at VDI and are focusing on some desktop replacement and more investment in the actual infrastructure and are planning to do this over the next 3 years. Once the funds are freed up again, hopefully it should be easier to expand our infrastructure and move out into trialing and implementing VDI.

 

I think VDI is pretty much there, you just need to make sure you have the money to throw at it.

[Dave_O]

I'm in a similar position and started off looking at VDI rather then desktop replacement. In the end I decided we don't at the moment have the money to throw at VDI and are focusing on some desktop replacement and more investment in the actual infrastructure and are planning to do this over the next 3 years. Once the funds are freed up again, hopefully it should be easier to expand our infrastructure and move out into trialing and implementing VDI.

 

I think VDI is pretty much there, you just need to make sure you have the money to throw at it.

 

 

A very pragmatic and reasoned approach.

[glennda]

Because it's school's money and children's education you are playing with.

 

VDI is the first major step to BYOD - which is the future so access can be from any device and time any where. I was in your shoes 3 years ago when i started replacing physical hardware (laptops) with hardwired desktops at my last school. we looked at VDI to run from the laptops back then but decided it wasn't worth it and the features where not there.

 

Therefore when i started my new job and they where a VDI solutions provider (along with loads of other stuff) i was very skeptical - having seen it in practice on multiple sites and multiple environments and the improvements since i looked at it 3 years ago I'm impressed with what it can do. To such an extent we managed to get some software working with hardware pass through that not even the Software dev's could think of a way to do it (it was rather simple but they had been trying over complex situations!).

 

VMware view is supported on Windows, Mac, Linux, Ios and Android therefore fully portable and will run on most devices out there.

[alttab]

VDI is the first major step to BYOD - which is the future so access can be from any device and time any where. I was in your shoes 3 years ago when i started replacing physical hardware (laptops) with hardwired desktops at my last school. we looked at VDI to run from the laptops back then but decided it wasn't worth it and the features where not there.

 

Therefore when i started my new job and they where a VDI solutions provider (along with loads of other stuff) i was very skeptical - having seen it in practice on multiple sites and multiple environments and the improvements since i looked at it 3 years ago I'm impressed with what it can do. To such an extent we managed to get some software working with hardware pass through that not even the Software dev's could think of a way to do it (it was rather simple but they had been trying over complex situations!).

 

VMware view is supported on Windows, Mac, Linux, Ios and Android therefore fully portable and will run on most devices out there.

 

BYOD maybe the future (i would argue it's A future along with many other things that people will continue to use) but presenting a windows desktop and scaling in down for the BYOD user to his or her smartphone or tablet isn't necessarily the future killer use case scenario (it may be a big deal to us geeks maybe less so for users who are embracing well designed mobile and web apps in increasing number), plus there are many ways to deliver business apps and shared areas besides VDI to non-smartphone BYODevices. These technologies often deployed in tandem with VDI, but also genuine alternatives. swell, if old x86 apps and the desktop desktop were the future of BYOD, why would Microsoft themselves spend so much time and money into making a touch based UI and HTML5 apps the front door to it's forthcoming OS for desktop, laptop and mobile.

 

i wouldn't want to argue against the very big vdi rollout projects that i've read about, and it's fine for specific use cases. To me at the minute in schools it's a bit like going down the mac route, would you want to do genuine thin client VDI with more than 10% of your installed base, based on cost and user requirements ? If your talking about VDI for fat clients, well then desktop management has become sufficiently mature for means and ways to manage large numbers of fat windows7 clients without too much fuss...so much so that the argument for VDI seems to be that people have these massively over specced virtual servers where they've got their dozen or so school servers on to, underutilizing the rest of the hardware, the idea of centralizing desktops and marvelling at how cool it is to manage desktops from one central location is a compelling one. I don't think the user base are particularly grarteful ? Management would be grateful if you can show them the cost savings, but if your not saving energy where are you getting the cost savings.. ? and your potentially hampering the user base if they need to do something very demanding that the old way of working would chew up with no bother.

Edited May 23, 2012 by alttab

[pcstru]

VDI is the first major step to BYOD - which is the future so access can be from any device and time any where.

 

Is it? So how (for example) are people going to access a large spreadsheet from a phone? Does BYOD mean that all content and contexts are LCD (lowest common denominator). I suspect that will lead to a GMBML (Give me back my Laptop) situation.

 

I've looked at VDI every year for the last 3. We are on a 5 year refresh cycle, which still (should) mean over 200 new desktops and laptops per year. VDI vendors tell me how much money I will save - but their figures made no sense (one particularly good one was assuming we employed one tech per 50 PC's and paid them £50K per year). They would tell me the ease of maintenance but neglected the training I knew we would need. I'm still looking but I can't make the case on cost savings.

 

I do like the access from anywhere aspect but a full VDI solution currently doesn't even make economic sense over (say) giving remote access to a classroom full of fat clients. I'm sure it will one day so I will keep looking at it ... every year.

[glennda]

BYOD maybe the future (i would argue it's A future along with many other things that people will continue to use) but presenting a windows desktop and scaling in down for the BYOD user to his or her smartphone or tablet isn't necessarily the future killer use case scenario (it may be a big deal to us geeks maybe less so for users who are embracing well designed mobile and web apps in increasing number), plus there are many ways to deliver business apps and shared areas besides VDI to non-smartphone BYODevices. These technologies often deployed in tandem with VDI, but also genuine alternatives. swell, if old x86 apps and the desktop desktop were the future of BYOD, why would Microsoft themselves spend so much time and money into making a touch based UI and HTML5 apps the front door to it's forthcoming OS for desktop, laptop and mobile.

 

i wouldn't want to argue against the very big vdi rollout projects that i've read about, and it's fine for specific use cases. To me at the minute in schools it's a bit like going down the mac route, would you want to do genuine thin client VDI with more than 10% of your installed base, based on cost and user requirements ? If your talking about VDI for fat clients, well then desktop management has become sufficiently mature for means and ways to manage large numbers of fat windows7 clients without too much fuss...so much so that the argument for VDI seems to be that people have these massively over specced virtual servers where they've got their dozen maximum school servers on to, underutilizing the rest of the hardware, the idea of centralizing desktops and marvelling at how cool it is to manage desktops from one central location is a compelling one. I don't think the user base are particularly grarteful ? Management would be grateful if you can show them the cost savings, but if your not saving energy where are you getting the cost savings.. ? and your potentially hampering the user base if they need to do something very demanding that the old way of working would chew up with no bother.

 

There is the market place for the tablet share but as we all know there is limitations to the use of tablets and vdi and tablets/smartphones I beleive will be working in tandem in the future - things like Ubuntu for Android(yes its not actually happened yet).

 

With VDI and some kind of docking station along with tablets/smartphones you get the mobility and functionality of tablet devices and use of apps/html5 along with the full functionality of sitting and getting a full desktop environment when needed - as there are things that will never been able to use on a tablet/smartphone.

@pcstru this thread will cover the first part of your post - I will answer the rest in the morning as heading out.

Edited May 23, 2012 by glennda

[bossman]

Just my pennies worth but I actually thought about going down this route but having thought it through decisded against it for the reasons that have been explained on here by quite a few people.

 

One of the main reasons is that the whole dynamics of schools is changing, certainly the mood is of BYOD which eventually will expand, with the advent of the cloud storage and apps I doubt very much that schools want the burden of the ever increasing costs for new hardware every 3 or 5 years which adds so much to the budget of the school.

 

The development of increasing wireless technology protocols means that large files can be transfered over huge distance in the blinking of an eye so why have storage in the school with the added factor of DRP to worry about should anything happen to the school.

 

I feel that soon schools will become a thing of the past and students will learn from home, what would be the point in spending all this money on buildings, heating and lighting to turn out students who don't even have the skills required by the companies that want to employ them.

 

For now I would go for a virtual solution using whichever hypervisor you decide for the good of the school and fat or thin clients and laptops on a good wired/wireless network.

 

The reasoning behind this is that in the future if you do decide to move to the cloud you can migrate your whole network into some third party cloud solution and have done with it hehe!

 

Good luck with whatever you decide.

[alttab]

I feel that soon schools will become a thing of the past and students will learn from home, what would be the point in spending all this money on buildings, heating and lighting to turn out students who don't even have the skills required by the companies that want to employ them.

 

 

well, they're hardly going to learn the soft skills that employers need 'studying' from home!!

 

i certainly see a lot of the trends you talk about, but we all know old routines and methods have a habit of being quite firmly ingrained. like the piles of paper that inexplicably pile up in paperless offices :0) Or the people who always seem to end up working from the same hot desk.

[DrCheese]

if your talking about VDI for fat clients, well then desktop management has become sufficiently mature for means and ways to manage large numbers of fat windows7 clients without too much fuss

and your potentially hampering the user base if they need to do something very demanding that the old way of working would chew up with no bother.

 

Your post is bang on. After looking at VDI for quite some time I concluded that at this point in time, there's sod all benefit to moving it and a shed load of disadvantages. To me, it looks like a lot of people are rushing head long into shoving in a VDI solution simply because it's touted as "the future" That may end up being the case, but it's not fit by any means for "the present"

 

VDI still struggles with doing basic stuff (Mainly media based, i.e Video/Flash/Aero/Google Earth/Image editing/etc) that our 6 year old thick clients can do with a minimal amount of fuss. When more and more software is relying on decent GPU performance nowadays this is just not acceptable. Heck, even Office is GPU accelerated these days (2010 upwards)

If the user experience is substandard or feels slow in any way your end users will think the system is crap, even if it technically isn't. They'll laugh when the expensive IT system can't do stuff that their cheap laptops or even smartphones can do. They won't laugh when this starts to mess up their lessons.

 

You can improve the performance with more expensive thin clients or accelerator software, but at that point they probably cost as much as a thick client that still does a much better job.

 

Management advantages? Where? At present, our thick clients are built from a single Windows 7 image that takes all of 20 minutes to deploy. Nothing of value is stored on the thick client & all software is either deployed via GPO or sits on a network share. If one dies, it's not really a big deal.

All I see is another layer of management to learn/babysit, another vendor to deal with, extra testing & another layer of things to go wrong.

 

On the client side, you are *still* stuck with upgrading the devices every few years. Depending on the model you buy, you have very little scope to upgrade the client software on them & often your left at the mercy of the OEM if they’ll release a firmware upgrade or not (i.e a new VMware View client.)

Thick clients you can do whatever you want with, i.e ours were bought on XP and have gone up to 7 with no issues, 6 years after purchase, 3 out of warranty.

 

I don't get the "BYOD" stuff either. You can do this already with a guest wireless network, a terminal server and/or file access via something like HAP. Easy & cheap.

I don't ever see BYOD taking off to the level in a school to a massive level as parents will (quite rightly) argue that if X equipment is required for lessons then the school should purchase & manage the devices.

Else you'll end up with a system of "haves and have nots"

 

Power usage is often held up as a reason to go to VDI, but I don't really see this either. Thick clients have improved this massively in the past few years and use a ton less power than they did previous. Whist yes, you'll never get it to the same level I feel the above disadvantages outweigh the benefits of this.

 

The only real advantage I could come up with was that most of your investment is server side, rather than clients that can be damaged by students. But again, Fat clients aren't exactly expensive nowadays.

 

So yeah, I'm lost as to why a school would want to throw in a VDI system as it stands at present.

Edited May 23, 2012 by DrCheese

[Dave_O]

Man after my own heart.

[bossman]

well, they're hardly going to learn the soft skills that employers need 'studying' from home!!

Why do you think that?

 

Most of what a child learns is from home, from parents and technology (web, social networking etc) Soft skills they will already have its the static and outdated curriculum that stifles a childs creativity and this has been proven by a academic technologist in India. The teaching of the core subjects have not changed for nigh on a 100 years, students sat in front of a teacher spouting the same boring stuff sending them to sleep then asking them to memorise and regurgitate when exams come round.

 

Teachers (Don't want to be cynical) are just highly paid baby sitters, some of which are in the job for the holidays and the good remuneration (I wouldn't want to be one as they also take a lot of s**t from the students).

 

Trends don't change in education i see the same lessons taught as they were to me over 30 years ago.

 

Time for change me thinks and remember you heard it from me first hehe!

Edited May 23, 2012 by bossman

[Tallwood_6]

I can certainly see learning from home become far more important in the future, however I don't see teachers and schools disappearing anytime soon. There is an awful lot after all that can't be taught or assessed sat in front of computer and as you have said schools are essentially day care and parents won't want to give up work and the goverment won't want to take that hit to the economy.

[alttab]

The only real advantage I could come up with was that most of your investment is server side, rather than clients that can be damaged by students. But again, Fat clients aren't exactly expensive nowadays.

 

So yeah, I'm lost as to why a school would want to throw in a VDI system as it stands at present.

 

it's hard to know where to put VDI clients. Do you implement as part of a rolling refresh programme targeting certain areas that you know need renewal. So, if ICT suite A is 8 years old and needed replacing last year do you replace 30 fat clients with 30 vdi clients....could be a possibility if you've got a couple of spare 96GB quad core xeon servers that can be the beginnings of a VDI farm. Would you even take the risk with VDI for ICT suite A if you thought there might be a need to do full frame rate video work ?

 

OR how about a learning centre or admin staff machines when they need renewing, you know that no-one has ever done anything too demanding. So you could replace machines reaching their end-of-life with VDI, i think some kind of VDI and BYOD in small quantities is preferable to a rolling refresh programme that purely consists of replacing an old PC with a new PC.

[alttab]

Why do you think that?

 

Most of what a child learns is from home, from parents and technology (web, social networking etc) Soft skills they will already have its the static and outdated curriculum that stifles a childs creativity and this has been proven by a academic technologist in India. The teaching of the core subjects have not changed for nigh on a 100 years, students sat in front of a teacher spouting the same boring stuff sending them to sleep then asking them to memorise and regurgitate when exams come round.

 

Teachers (Don't want to be cynical) are just highly paid baby sitters, some of which are in the job for the holidays and the good remuneration (I wouldn't want to be one as they also take a lot of s**t from the students).

 

Trends don't change in education i see the same lessons taught as they were to me over 30 years ago.

 

Time for change me thinks and remember you heard it from me first hehe!

 

yeah, we know that current schooling is stuck in a time warp, but a lot of how we go about day-to-day business in the uk doesn't seem to take advantage of what technology can offer. I see the miles of slow moving traffic on the other side of the A road going into the city centre first thing of a morning, and i question how many people *really* needed to be in their offices for that time that morning or attend that meeting they're trying to get to. Some of them need to be physically present somewhere, but we know that technology makes a lot of this stuff possible, Skype, redirecting phone lines. So much so that many more people could babysit their own kids instead of getting schools and after school clubs to do it!!!

[Dave_O]

Moving forwards Downes and Seimman's concept of connectivism is probably the best framework from which to approach education if e-learning is to succeed.

 

Anyway how did we even get onto this topic?

 

Reading back it looks like bossman!

Edited May 24, 2012 by Dave_O