Rackmounted Desktops
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Things to consider with VDI costing:
- The level of skill needed is dramatically higher. VDI is specialized skills. Assume that you will be spending $50K minimum on specialists just to get your project off of the ground. Everyone that does desktop support today will need a lot of training. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you have questions about how VDI works, you don't have the staff necessary to support it, it's that simple. VDI is way more complex and would never be viably approached in this way. So assume that new support staff will be needed ongoing. You need system admins, not desktop support people after this. So either new staff or an MSP to do the support is needed.
- New server infrastructure, almost certainly high availability as the traditional risk mitigation of desktops will be gone. You can use products like Scale for this (we are testing this with them right now, in fact) and eliminate a lot of the needed expertise by letting a high end hyperconverged platform handle this for you. But you need a serious server infrastructure to make this work. All of the horsepower that has been in your desktops needs to be purchased again, and redundantly, in servers.
- Microsoft licensing. This is the killer. You need a lot of licensing expertise and will need to spend a lot of money as VDI licensing is crippling.
- Networking. You will easily do a 1,000 fold increase on your network demands.
- Access Clients. You can keep using your old PCs, but if you need to replace them you still need thin clients, zero clients or new PCs. So while you might save some money here, likely you won't since you need Windows licensing anyway for the VDI. So mostly you keep using PCs as before because you spend more getting thin clients. So don't expect to save any money here.
- GPU and performance issues. You are used to individual users having their own resources and lots of them. Now those are all shared and some things like GPUs that were simple before will now be hard, expensive or impossible. Expect lots of apps to perform badly and require a lot of work to get working or a lot of cost, both or exceptions so that you have VDI and regular desktops both.
- 24x7. If a desktop failed before, whatever, no big deal. If VDI servers fail, expect to be on call around the clock because a failed server will be catastrophic to your environment.
- VDI Management Platform. Not strictly required but always assumed and VDI is generally useless without it. Citrix XenDesktop would be the obvious choice here, but there are many. These are costly too but needed to make VDI effective.
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@wirestyle22 said:
I argue about this every day. I think thin clients make sense for my developmentally disabled client computer labs as security is a very real concern. I could also just buy Intel NUC's
and throw Linux on them while locking them down "completely"Where is the security concern with a thin client?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
I argue about this every day. I think thin clients make sense for my developmentally disabled client computer labs as security is a very real concern. I could also just buy Intel NUC's
and throw Linux on them while locking them down "completely"Where is the security concern with a thin client?
Security would be in favor of having thin clients I mean
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
I argue about this every day. I think thin clients make sense for my developmentally disabled client computer labs as security is a very real concern. I could also just buy Intel NUC's
and throw Linux on them while locking them down "completely"Where is the security concern with a thin client?
Security would be in favor of having thin clients I mean
Ah, okay. That makes more sense, then.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Things to consider with VDI costing:
- The level of skill needed is dramatically higher. VDI is specialized skills. Assume that you will be spending $50K minimum on specialists just to get your project off of the ground. Everyone that does desktop support today will need a lot of training. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you have questions about how VDI works, you don't have the staff necessary to support it, it's that simple. VDI is way more complex and would never be viably approached in this way. So assume that new support staff will be needed ongoing. You need system admins, not desktop support people after this. So either new staff or an MSP to do the support is needed.
- New server infrastructure, almost certainly high availability as the traditional risk mitigation of desktops will be gone. You can use products like Scale for this (we are testing this with them right now, in fact) and eliminate a lot of the needed expertise by letting a high end hyperconverged platform handle this for you. But you need a serious server infrastructure to make this work. All of the horsepower that has been in your desktops needs to be purchased again, and redundantly, in servers.
- Microsoft licensing. This is the killer. You need a lot of licensing expertise and will need to spend a lot of money as VDI licensing is crippling.
- Networking. You will easily do a 1,000 fold increase on your network demands.
- Access Clients. You can keep using your old PCs, but if you need to replace them you still need thin clients, zero clients or new PCs. So while you might save some money here, likely you won't since you need Windows licensing anyway for the VDI. So mostly you keep using PCs as before because you spend more getting thin clients. So don't expect to save any money here.
- GPU and performance issues. You are used to individual users having their own resources and lots of them. Now those are all shared and some things like GPUs that were simple before will now be hard, expensive or impossible. Expect lots of apps to perform badly and require a lot of work to get working or a lot of cost, both or exceptions so that you have VDI and regular desktops both.
- 24x7. If a desktop failed before, whatever, no big deal. If VDI servers fail, expect to be on call around the clock because a failed server will be catastrophic to your environment.
Is there an open source solution that is Linux based? There must be a way to not pay an arm and a leg for licensing in some way
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Scott you hit the hammer on the head with that last post...VDI is something i'm not going to provide to customers if I dont know much about it....
But for my own sanity....How does VDI work exactly...
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A super duper spec'd server will be provisioned inside the office (or hosted elsewhere) with some kind of software installed such as XenDesktop, citrix or Horizon and all applications needed and user profiles/accounts configured within there...
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A customer will have a thin client on their desk which when powered up and logged in, will automatically load into their virtual desktop which is configured/maintained from the server?
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licenses required per user (or per device) if using generic login
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This thread may help you understand licensing requirements to VDI a MS Desktop OS.
http://mangolassi.it/topic/7570/everything-that-there-is-to-know-about-vdi-licensing-with-windows/1
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@wirestyle22 said:
Is there an open source solution that is Linux based? There must be a way to not pay an arm and a leg for licensing in some way
Is there an open source VDI options? Of course, it's Linux itself. But, of course, if you have Linux, why would you do VDI? VDI exists solely (that's overstating it, but essentially) as purely a workaround to Windows software problems. If you had a solid working Windows platform or had Linux, you'd never consider VDI anyway as the entire concept sucks.
So yes... but no one would ever do it.
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@Joel said:
Scott you hit the hammer on the head with that last post...VDI is something i'm not going to provide to customers if I dont know much about it....
But for my own sanity....How does VDI work exactly...
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A super duper spec'd server will be provisioned inside the office (or hosted elsewhere) with some kind of software installed such as XenDesktop, citrix or Horizon and all applications needed and user profiles/accounts configured within there...
-
A customer will have a thin client on their desk which when powered up and logged in, will automatically load into their virtual desktop which is configured/maintained from the server?
-
licenses required per user (or per device) if using generic login
Yup, more or less.
- Server, but you "can" skip the XenDesktop, but it won't work well if you do that. So while not required, that's effectively how it will work.
- Thin client is an option but due to licensing needs, no one does that anymore. You use full PCs much of the time. Same as you do now. The VDI cost is all "on top of" your existing costs.
- If you use PCs, it's per user licensing. If you use thin clients, it is per device.
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If you have ever used Linux terminal servers (and most of us do and they are so powerful and easy and free) and are the only one logged in, it's VDI, too. VDI means a one to one setup. If you are the only one on the terminal server at a given time, that's VDI. Silly, but that's all that it is. So, for example, our jump server is VDI for me when I'm the only one logged on, which is not uncommon.
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@scottalanmiller said:
If you have ever used Linux terminal servers (and most of us do and they are so powerful and easy and free) and are the only one logged in, it's VDI, too. VDI means a one to one setup. If you are the only one on the terminal server at a given time, that's VDI. Silly, but that's all that it is. So, for example, our jump server is VDI for me when I'm the only one logged on, which is not uncommon.
Can you give some examples of software you use for Linux terminal services? #whatislifewithouttopicderailments
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@Kelly said:
@scottalanmiller said:
If you have ever used Linux terminal servers (and most of us do and they are so powerful and easy and free) and are the only one logged in, it's VDI, too. VDI means a one to one setup. If you are the only one on the terminal server at a given time, that's VDI. Silly, but that's all that it is. So, for example, our jump server is VDI for me when I'm the only one logged on, which is not uncommon.
Can you give some examples of software you use for Linux terminal services? #whatislifewithouttopicderailments
Well you have a few common choices. One would be to use xrdp to mimic a Windows style desktop. Not commonly chosen because it's not often that you want it to act like Windows and then... surprise, Linux desktop. But in case you have an RDP infrastructure in place, it works.
You can get VNC to do this but it is not well suited to it by default. So I've never seen this done. But possible.
The most common "Linux native" terminal server approach is using NX. This is the Linux world's equivalent to Citrix XenApp. It's very advanced and powerful and super easy to use. This is what NTG uses for our Linux terminal servers and have for over ten years. It works great. Very fast, security is built in, etc. We use it for traditional terminal servers and for graphical jump boxes. Very solid. Available in open source (X2Go) and commercial (NoMachine) versions.
If you want to spend some scratch on hard core Linux terminal systems and/or VDI, Citrix fully supports Linux on XenApp and XenDesktop, too.
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@Kelly said:
#whatislifewithouttopicderailments
ML would be a boring place with easy to read threads
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Rack mounted desktops like dell Precisions are great for high end 3d CAD (way way overkill for 2D), Animation, Video Production etc.
Pretty common setup. They make remote graphics cards with client stations designed for these setups.
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@Jason said:
Rack mounted desktops like dell Precisions are great for high end 3d CAD (way way overkill for 2D), Animation, Video Production etc.
Pretty common setup. They make remote graphics cards with client stations designed for these setups.
Yup, while not "in every corner office", the rack mounted desktop is a long standing use case and works quite well.
