Like many of you, I've heard the predictions, analyst reports, and media fuss about the arrival of the post-PC era and how 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'm now a rabid convert and we're moving everyone else in our company to virtual desktops too. 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 very good because I increased the RAM to 4 GB 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 everywhere I went, carrying a backpack everywhere.
- Whenever I wanted to work, I had to find a place to plug in because even though it was on its third battery, the battery life was less than an hour.
- I couldn't get the VPN to work every time my laptop woke up from sleep, so I always had to shut down and fully boot my laptop every time I wanted to use it.
- It took 5-10 minutes for the laptop to boot up whenever I wanted to do something.
- Apps were slow, especially Outlook, and I had to use a VPN for 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 got started. my new way of working. I've gained one to three hours of work productivity every day, I'm more accessible, and I have no worries about losing data through theft or industrial espionage.
Productivity increases come in small increments throughout the day.
The laptop that I used to pack up in the morning and take with me stays at my house – I just grab my tablet, paper notebook and go. When I get to the office, I grab a cup of coffee, go to my desk, tap the button on the Wyse PCoIP terminal, and log into my Windows 7 desktop; login takes less than 10 seconds. I usually leave Outlook and my CRM app running, but if I had closed them, it would only take a few seconds for the app to start.
If I have to get up to leave my desk for more than a few minutes, I tap the button again to leave to comply with our security policy. By lunchtime, I've gained at least 30 minutes of productive time by not needing to shut down, charge, and boot up a laptop.
When I'm visiting clients, suppliers or in meetings and I have some free time, I use my tablet. Most of the time, I use the native email, calendar, and contact apps to maintain speed. Sometimes I need to access the 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 for 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 worry about 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 the 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 to access the internal Wiki, Sharepoint, or email archiving 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 WIFI mobile hotspot so I don't have to try to find free WIFI. I'm actually typing this while 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 work experience
. All my files are kept on the Windows share in the datacenter and I use the VDI client because the application performance is faster than on my laptop.
The configuration in the datacenter is very similar to what we deploy at our customers. We have two racks in the Quality Technical Services data center in Atlanta. One rack is full of 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 nearly 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 features Cisco's complete high-definition video conferencing infrastructure system, as well as some of our network security, 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 will use a combination of Cisco CIUS, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Apple iPad. In addition to using VMware VIEW, we will also deploy Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp. I've found that sometimes at my desk I just need to access one app, like Powerpoint or our CRM app. Citrix XenApp gives you the ability to remotely access just one application without having to log in to a full Windows desktop. I hope VMware also has this feature at some point in the future,
There are some things we will 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've ordered more memory for the servers and will run the Atlantis Computing application to improve desktop performance.
Ultimately, I'm very happy with the improved productivity and availability provided by my move to working from a virtual desktop. The technology is ready for all users to switch now and solves all the problems I was having using an old laptop and then some.