Like many of you, I've heard the predictions, analyst reports and media hype about the arrival of the post-PC era and how the virtual desktop infrastructure will cure baldness, eradicate cancer and have cats and dogs living together in harmony.
To test this, my engineers moved my main desktop to Windows 7 running on VMware VIEW. After 4 months of use I am now a fanatical convert and we are moving everyone else in our company over to virtual desktops as well. My daily interaction with my PC is faster, easier and I no longer have to worry about running backups. Everything works better with VDI as long as I have some sort of device and a network connection.
I was getting really tired of my laptop.
It was a three year old laptop that I converted to Windows 7 last year. Performance was really good because I increased the RAM to 4GB and put Windows 7 on a new hard drive. There were many problems I had with my laptop, however:
- I had to carry my laptop wherever I went, carrying a backpack everywhere.
- Whenever I wanted to work, I needed to find a place to plug in, because even though I was on the third battery, the battery life was less than an hour.
- I couldn't get the VPN to work whenever my laptop came out of sleep, so I always had to shut down and fully boot my laptop whenever I wanted to use it.
- It took 5-10 minutes for the laptop to boot whenever I wanted to do something.
- Apps were slow, especially Outlook, and I had to use a VPN to get most apps to work properly.
- I had to make sure the laptop was connected to the backup drive at least once a week for a five hour period to complete a backup.
- I realize that I could have bought an expensive new laptop, hired an online backup service, and done other things to solve some of my problems, but that wouldn't have solved everything. I would still be carrying a backpack with a laptop from home to work and back, worrying about it being stolen and having to take it on vacation with my family.
Instead, I parked my existing laptop at home, bought a $ 500 Wyse terminal for the office, bought a $ 500 Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and a Targus Bluetooth keyboard for mobile computing, a Verizon 4G/3G Mifi WIFI device, and started my new way of working. I've gained one to three hours of work productivity every day, I'm more approachable, and I don't have concerns about losing data through theft or industrial espionage.
Productivity increases come in small increments throughout the day.
The laptop I used to pack up in the morning and take with me is at my house – I just grab my tablet, paper notebook and go. When I get to the office, I grab a cup of coffee, walk over to my desk, tap the button on the Wyse PCoIP terminal, and login to the Windows 7 desktop; login takes less than 10 seconds. I usually leave Outlook and my CRM application running, but if I had them closed it would only take a few seconds for the application to launch.
If I have to get up to leave my desk for more than a few minutes, I tap the exit button again to comply with our security policy. By lunchtime, I've already gained at least 30 minutes of productive time by not having to shut down, charge and start up a laptop.
When I'm visiting clients, suppliers or in meetings and I have some free time, I use my tablet. I mostly use the native email, calendar, and contact apps to keep up with speed. Sometimes I need access to full Outlook to see other people's calendars, so I use the VMware VIEW PCoIP Android client to access my virtual desktop. It doesn't matter if I logged out of the office or not, because the VIEW server takes care of switching the login to whatever device I'm currently using. It's fast and usable, even on the tablet. The battery life on the table is 15 hours – I don't mind using it whenever I want!
It took a few weeks to optimize the tablet experience.
I really like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Other people in the office use Apple Ipad 2, and that works fine too. In addition to the standard Android apps, I also use the Cisco AnyConnect client to get a VPN connection back to the office for when I need access to the internal Wiki, Sharepoint, or email archive server. I upgraded to Quickoffice HD so I can view and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents.
For accessories, I use a Bluetooth keyboard for serious typing, and I also use a 4G/3G mobile WIFI hotspot so I don't have to try to find free WIFI. I'm actually typing this as we're driving from Atlanta to Panama City and I'm glad I checked my email because there was a customer service issue that needed attention,
At home, although I still have my old laptop, I prefer to use our big-screen Apple Mac. I log into the same virtual desktop that's running on our company's servers in the datacenter, with everything open that I was using when I rushed out of the office at the last minute. If I really need to work, I'll use my old laptop, running the Windows VMware PCoIP VIEW client, which works great.
I have DSL at home and it's good enough bandwidth to give me a good working experience
. All my files are kept on Windows share in datacenter and I use VDI client because application performance is faster than on my laptop.
The configuration in the datacenter is very similar to what we deploy in our customers. We have two racks in the Quality Technical Services datacenter in Atlanta. One rack is filled with our Cisco Unified Computing System blade servers, Nexus 5000 and Nexus 2000 switches, NetApp connected Fiber Channel with SAS shelf and SATA shelf. The Cisco B-series chassis is almost full with Cisco blades running VMware ESX, VMware VIEW, and Nexus 1000V.
We run all of our production applications on Cisco UCS, including the Cisco Hosted Voice service. The second rack has a second NetApp storage array that provides a backup to the primary array through the use of snapshots and replication. The second rack also has Cisco's complete high-definition videoconferencing infrastructure system, as well as some of our network security services, monitoring,
Based on the positive experience I've had with desktop virtualization, we will move from pilot to full production in the coming months. For desktop clients, we will use a combination of existing PCs, Pano Logic, Wyse and Samsung clients.
For mobile clients, we'll be using a combination of Cisco CIUS, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Apple iPad. In addition to using VMware VIEW, we will also be deploying Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp. I've found that sometimes at the table I just need to access one application, like Powerpoint or our CRM application. Citrix XenApp gives you the ability to remotely access just one application without having to log in to a full Windows desktop. Hopefully VMware will also have this feature at some point in the future,
There are some things we'll have to do on the infrastructure and server side for full desktop virtualization productivity as well.
We have enough storage capacity and spindles. But I'm still concerned about performance, so we're asking for more memory on the servers and are going to run the Atlantis Computing application to improve desktop performance.
Ultimately, I am very happy with the improved productivity and availability provided by my move to work on a virtual desktop. The technology is ready for all users to switch now and it solves all the problems I was having using an old laptop and then some.