Scott Wallick posts at ITopinions.com about VDI: Living in an ever more virtual world.
I attended VMworld 2006 a couple of weeks ago, and perhaps the single most revolutionary thing that I saw was actually the most retro thing I saw – the return to the Terminal.
Using a combination of VMware’s VI3 infrastructure and VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), there is a small quiet movement towards returning to computing via a (anything but dumb) terminal. All that is old is new again!
Why, you may ask? Number one on the VDI hit list is security. If the access point to a computing environment is inherently “dumb” (as in not intelligent, also as in not where the computing power or data are), then a user who removes the local access unit cannot take sensitive information with them (à la the V.A. debacle).Also high on the list of reasons of why go to what is commonly referred to as “Thin Computing” is disaster recovery (DR). Because each session is virtual (which in VMware-land is simply a file containing the data related to a session), the file can be backed up, replicated and otherwise copied, migrated or archive.
And Sun’s Warren Ponder also is keeping busy post-VMworld with their VDI solution. He’s writing a new white paper that will be ready in a few weeks, but in the meantime part one is here. Link: Sun Desktop Virtualization Solution White Paper – Part2
Ok, I am getting overwhelmed with requests now after VMworld and
Sun’s Immersion Week. This is a good thing trust me, I am not
complaining. We have been secretly working on some sauce for VDI
based solutions. It is a long story actually, and I will not go into
it now. If we ever come across each other in person just ask and I
will give you the whole story. It really was secret, even my really
really good buddy thinguy did not even completely know 🙂 I felt bad
because he just found out this past week at Sun’s Immersion Week what
we had been working on. I usually share everything but I really did
keep forgetting to tell him with everything that is going on.We started talking about the VI Access Kit openly at VMworld.
Simply put, the VI Access Kit is the glue between Sun Desktop
Infrastructure Products and VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. It
introduces the ability to automate virtual desktop lifecyle
management for virtual desktop environments. We introduce a concept
we call a factory which dynamically creates the virtual desktops on
the fly based a few different variables. It also handles the pooling
and recycling of virtual desktops as well.
