VMTN Blog

Two interesting posts from Warren on the Virtual Desktop Blog:

VDI - Cardinal Healthcare - Webinar.

One of the most innovative things I feel they accomplished was in how they executed their client side strategy. After evaluating different alternatives from PC’s to thin clients. They decided to go with low-end PC’s. Because VDI was new at the time, Justin’s team had to create their own custom image. The image is PXE booted from the network by each of the client end points. In essence this enabled them to create their own low cost unmanaged client end point. When a device is powered on it downloads its image from the network. Once the boot process is complete, the user is given a chooser created by Justin’s team for selecting the environment they need. Once the user has made their selection, a connection is established to their hosted virtual desktop. Simple, clean and affective.

Warren's post on using the new Longhorn Terminal Services feature RemoteApp engendered some lively discussion, including some illuminating comments from the CTO of Provision Networks. VDI + RemoteApp = Match made in heaven

One of the features I have been waiting to see from 2008 server and the Terminal Services team is RemoteApp. RemoteApp is a new feature that introduces usability concepts that have been around for a while, but have really started to take off even more, as the desktop environment continues to change.

So what is the concept? A RemoteApp application accessed from a Terminal Server displays as if it was another application loaded on the user’s local desktop. This concept is nothing new really. On the Terminal Services front there have always been seamless windows from Citrix. Sun’s SGD product had the concept of the integrated client that took the seamless windows concept a step further by integrating the applications into the start menu and desktop. On the virtualization front, its similar to the Unity feature of the VMware Fusion product for MAC.

And a highlight from the comment of Peter Ghostine, CTO of Provision Networks:

One of the reasons why many IT organizations are favoring VDI over TS is because VDI mainly revolves around hosting a "standard" Windows desktop OS. Therefore, no special TS know-how is required. And it's not just about TS know-how, but also about the myriad apps out there that just won't work out of the box on TS without drastic steps to mitigate multi-user conflicts. There are many use-cases that I've documented over the years.