VDI Options - Modernization
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@dashrender said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
It doesn't sound like he's in charge. Those in charge have already told him what to do - upgrade the current solution without changing the principal of the solution.
So while we could keep beating a dead horse here - that will go on deaf ears.
The reality is there is little to no presence of anyone using VDI on these forums - so there's no one here to make any recommendations to such.
That makes sense, thank you.
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@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
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@jt1001001 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
What other products do you plan to look at? Still VDI or something else? Any experience of VMWare Horizon?
We have around 600 - 1000 users globally (mostly developers) on the VDI I need to replace. The company dictates that the VDI must be in the same datacenter as the rest of the developers environments, so I don't think Azure VDI would work for us because of that mandate.
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Just had a very quick look at Azure Virtual Desktop and the calculator for 3 years up-front shows around 1.5m usd. Were looing upper limit of 1m usd, which would cover us for the next 5-7 years, making Azure look expensive.
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So FWIW, my previous gig (changed 3 weeks ago) was full on VDI for the office workers.
Without getting into anything that could risk confidentiality here's what was working and was being built on....
Citrix VDI infrastructure (Netscaler, storefront, director etc)
Non-persistent VDI
Nutanix hosts (clustered) with their AHV hypervisor
User profiles managed with Citrix Profile management on dedicated profile serversThere's much more detail that could be explored, but those are the main elements of the 3rd iteration of VDI.
Not sure if the option of Windows / Azure / cloud VDI makes sense unless your workload is in the could as well. Assuming that the main reason that you need / want VDI is to keep the endpoints near your ERP or workload so having the VDI off-site would defeat the purpose and probably cost an arm and a leg.
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Has VMware + VMware Horizon View been considered?
If what you have is working well and you can't find any decent competitors, why not consider just staying with your current setup and making sure you are on the latest VMware and Citrix versions?
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
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@jimmy9008 We in I-T want the app to go away. For only 5 users we pretty much ruled out Citrix from the start and VmWare really isn't a great solution for only 5 users though my co-worker is pricing it out. We're hoping once c level sees teh cost of either solution they'll say no and we'll come up with a different app to use.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jt1001001 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
What other products do you plan to look at? Still VDI or something else? Any experience of VMWare Horizon?
We have around 600 - 1000 users globally (mostly developers) on the VDI I need to replace. The company dictates that the VDI must be in the same datacenter as the rest of the developers environments, so I don't think Azure VDI would work for us because of that mandate.
If you have a solution that works, and at the moment VDI is a must, then it makes no sense to change the fundamentals of what you already have. That's just an unwarranted risk.
So keep Citrix and VMware as is. Just replace the hardware and consolidate it. You are only averaging 16 cores per physical server and 370GB RAM per server if my math is correct. You could easily cram 3 to 8 times as much into each server. 128 cores per server is nothing special today as well as several TBs of RAM. AMD is the leader and the way to go.
You could replace your 20 servers and have 384 cores and up to 12TB of RAM with only three Dell R6525 or R7525 dual CPU servers. You might want 4 or more though. But no need to go to blades when you only need a couple of servers. No need for complex hypervisor management solutions either when you only have a couple of servers.
Use vSAN instead of SAN for the VDI. With the proper drives these servers are certified for ESXi and vSAN. You should use U2 NVMe drives and avoid SAS. It will outperform your old SAN - by a lot.
Since you have 1 PB of data, storage for non-VDI workloads needs to be researched. I think I would want to separate VDI from the rest. Gut feeling would be to have completely separate physical environments for everything VDI related and the rest. Consolidation is good but overconsolidation can be too risky.
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@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!
You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!
You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.
You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!
You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!
You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.
You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.
So, are you even considering basing things on Scale or Starwind as your underlying solution, or are we just ignoring half of what I say?
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@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!
You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!
You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.
You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.
So, are you even considering basing things on Scale or Starwind as your underlying solution, or are we just ignoring half of what I say?
If you're serious about checking out other platforms, I can vouch for Scale. I had them at my last job, and they now have two x 3 node clusters and the guys there are extremely happy with it.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jt1001001 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
What other products do you plan to look at? Still VDI or something else? Any experience of VMWare Horizon?
We have around 600 - 1000 users globally (mostly developers) on the VDI I need to replace. The company dictates that the VDI must be in the same datacenter as the rest of the developers environments, so I don't think Azure VDI would work for us because of that mandate.
I know this isn't VDI, but what about something like GitPod, Eclipse Che, Coder, etc? In everyone's defense, developing over VDI truly sucks. This would keep the development environments in the same data center, but would give a much better experience.
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@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!
You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!
You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.
You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.
So, are you even considering basing things on Scale or Starwind as your underlying solution, or are we just ignoring half of what I say?
I’ll take a look at Starwind, but not Scale. Unless I am mistaken Scale do not use ESXi as the hypervisor layer. Don’t they use KVM? I didn’t write previously but we have to stay standardized to VMWare. That would remove Scale as an option.
For Starwind, I do not see a specific VDI product. The site seems to say they can build for VDI, but it feels a bit ‘Mum and Dad’ shop. The highest model stack listed, well the one on their site, seems a lot smaller than we would need.
Compare that to the VXRail, they have a specific VXRail for VDI which tells me a lot more information such as how many VDI sessions can be concurrently supported, how large it can scale, how many GPUs can be supported by each node. I can also find very specific reviews about VXRail VDI where Starwind reviews are generic about the HCA. Yes, I know they are retrofitting their HCA to be for VDI - but that’s not the same as seeing specific reviews about purely being VDI.
Edit - I do actually use Starwind now in production for vSAN storage, it works well, but not quite sure I’d want to pull the trigger on a HCA from them.
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@dafyre said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@travisdh1 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
I get what ya'll are saying but thats just not how it is here. My options are replace what is there with new, or keep what is there and let it grow older.
I'll keep looking at options on my own, but thanks folks.
If you just want to buy a solution without doing your homework to figure out what's right for the business, just get new servers and keep paying the crazy license fees for VMWare/Citrix (I'm assuming you've got the HA VMWare license.)
Without knowing what apps are running in the VDI, all we can do is generalize.
Are you stuck with VMWare and/or Citrix because of management? Big cost savings in moving away from those, even if you keep paying for support IE: Scale or Starwind
More details would be needed to make any solid recommendations.
I am more than capable of being able to appraise solutions to meet our business needs. My question was asking for a list of solutions "What would you suggest we look at?", not to be told to not look at VDI as its wrong. I'll decide that. I was hoping the community could point me to solutions, vendors, resources which you have used and had experience of. I see the people on here as experienced so wanted to ask here, I should have just looked at g2.
Well, I think @scottalanmiller already explained much better than I ever could that VDI Modernization is a contradiction in terms. If you're stuck using VDI, then you by definition are not modernizing.
As to different platforms to run it on, that's why I suggested Scale or Starwind to run the Citrix solution.
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms. I like this forum but some time people on it can be ridiculous with rubbish like that. You can modernize many things in a wide range of ways and saying that a 'VDI cannot be modernized' as that is not how you think something should be done is just pure rubbish.
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Oh! You want to modernize and move from HDD/Spinners to NVMe... well tough luck, you cant modernize like that dumbass... your storage should be a blob in Azure.. Local storage, pfft. No way is that 'modern' anymore!
You want tomodernize your compute and use PMEM. Oh shoot! That cant be modernized as you should be using a VM in AWS. BS!
You can take outdated infrastructure and modernize it in many ways - just because ya'll believe in narrow minded dogmatic BS like 'my way is the right way' you think this is a contradiction in terms. LOL. WOW.
You can take old VDI infrastructure and modernize it. Contradiction my ass! If this is what I can expect from this forum I may as well post on Spiceworks. Gosh.
So, are you even considering basing things on Scale or Starwind as your underlying solution, or are we just ignoring half of what I say?
If you're serious about checking out other platforms, I can vouch for Scale. I had them at my last job, and they now have two x 3 node clusters and the guys there are extremely happy with it.
Do they support their stack using ESXi? We have to stay standardised to that.
Be it a ton of servers backed by a physical SAN, a ton of servers backed by a vSAN, be it a ton of servers with local storage, or whatever - we have to run ESXi.
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@pete-s said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jt1001001 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
What other products do you plan to look at? Still VDI or something else? Any experience of VMWare Horizon?
We have around 600 - 1000 users globally (mostly developers) on the VDI I need to replace. The company dictates that the VDI must be in the same datacenter as the rest of the developers environments, so I don't think Azure VDI would work for us because of that mandate.
If you have a solution that works, and at the moment VDI is a must, then it makes no sense to change the fundamentals of what you already have. That's just an unwarranted risk.
So keep Citrix and VMware as is. Just replace the hardware and consolidate it. You are only averaging 16 cores per physical server and 370GB RAM per server if my math is correct. You could easily cram 3 to 8 times as much into each server. 128 cores per server is nothing special today as well as several TBs of RAM. AMD is the leader and the way to go.
You could replace your 20 servers and have 384 cores and up to 12TB of RAM with only three Dell R6525 or R7525 dual CPU servers. You might want 4 or more though. But no need to go to blades when you only need a couple of servers. No need for complex hypervisor management solutions either when you only have a couple of servers.
Use vSAN instead of SAN for the VDI. With the proper drives these servers are certified for ESXi and vSAN. You should use U2 NVMe drives and avoid SAS. It will outperform your old SAN - by a lot.
Since you have 1 PB of data, storage for non-VDI workloads needs to be researched. I think I would want to separate VDI from the rest. Gut feeling would be to have completely separate physical environments for everything VDI related and the rest. Consolidation is good but overconsolidation can be too risky.
This could be a great option. New servers with more horse power, running the existing software stack. One problem is that due to another departments projects the underline storage is going from this solution. The storage is being ripped out leaving 20 servers, which need to be replaced, without any of the 1PB storage.
I was considering Dell PowerMax for this storage presented over iSCSI to a server on the Dell VXRail, also running the VDI.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@pete-s said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jt1001001 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
@jimmy9008 We have a use case involving a legacy client/server app that we've determined we're going to have to go VDI for in order to secure it. One lousy app for approx 5 users that I hope we eventually move away from. We are currently reviewing Azure VDI for this and it so far will fit the bill though we had to go throught a lot of "hoops" to configure networking, VPN back into our infrastructure, etc. We have not yet presented budget numbers to the bean counters but Im hoping when we do they will see the $$$$$ wasted for 5 users and will force them to a new product.
What other products do you plan to look at? Still VDI or something else? Any experience of VMWare Horizon?
We have around 600 - 1000 users globally (mostly developers) on the VDI I need to replace. The company dictates that the VDI must be in the same datacenter as the rest of the developers environments, so I don't think Azure VDI would work for us because of that mandate.
If you have a solution that works, and at the moment VDI is a must, then it makes no sense to change the fundamentals of what you already have. That's just an unwarranted risk.
So keep Citrix and VMware as is. Just replace the hardware and consolidate it. You are only averaging 16 cores per physical server and 370GB RAM per server if my math is correct. You could easily cram 3 to 8 times as much into each server. 128 cores per server is nothing special today as well as several TBs of RAM. AMD is the leader and the way to go.
You could replace your 20 servers and have 384 cores and up to 12TB of RAM with only three Dell R6525 or R7525 dual CPU servers. You might want 4 or more though. But no need to go to blades when you only need a couple of servers. No need for complex hypervisor management solutions either when you only have a couple of servers.
Use vSAN instead of SAN for the VDI. With the proper drives these servers are certified for ESXi and vSAN. You should use U2 NVMe drives and avoid SAS. It will outperform your old SAN - by a lot.
Since you have 1 PB of data, storage for non-VDI workloads needs to be researched. I think I would want to separate VDI from the rest. Gut feeling would be to have completely separate physical environments for everything VDI related and the rest. Consolidation is good but overconsolidation can be too risky.
This could be a great option. New servers with more horse power, running the existing software stack. One problem is that due to another departments projects the underline storage is going from this solution. The storage is being ripped out leaving 20 servers, which need to be replaced, without any of the 1PB storage.
I was considering Dell PowerMax for this storage presented over iSCSI to a server on the Dell VXRail, also running the VDI.
For compliance and security our development environment is totally separate from the production environment. So the cluster of development servers, network hardware etc lives in their own ecosystem.
We have large enterprise customers and they are splitting up their workloads in the similar ways. They're running on EXSi and vSAN but everything lives in different pools and on different networks.
I would try to keep the VDI solution separate including it's storage. Besides technical reasons like noisy neighbor and security there is also management reasons - for example the other department ripping out the storage is one such reason to avoid having all your eggs in the same basket. With software and OS you have dependencies and you have the same type of dependencies in the organization when it comes to who manages, who pays, who decides when to upgrade etc.
That's what I mean about overconsolidation. Just because it's technically possible to put everything into one box, doesn't mean you always should.
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@jimmy9008 M365 is what covers the licencing, so Compute is your biggest cost, and it's just like compute for any Azure VM. Use Reserved instanced if you will have some VMs on throughout a 24 hour period. Use burstable VMs if a VM will be kept on continuously and doesn't need a ton of power. Or just turn the VMs off (deallocate) when not in use. At my last company, we found turning VMs off to be the most effective with the personal VM route. If using host pool, you would only keep enough VMs online to meet demand.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
Oh come on, seriously. How on earth is that a contradiction in terms.
No, he's totally right. VDI is a legacy holdover technology specifically a high cost to allow those that have not modernized to get some advantages or access that their legacy infrastructure doesn't otherwise allow. If you have modernized, VDI has no real value.
VDI is a stop gap until you modernize so that you don't give up all of the flexibility that more modern network designs allow. And it's a Windows-only technology. It's not just legacy from a design standpoint, but effectively a "unique to Windows" problem. That's not good or bad, just that modern OS agnostic designs naturally don't need it, even when overall not modernized, because it's two different aspects of legacy to need VDI.
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@jimmy9008 said in VDI Options - Modernization:
You are running Windows Server 2008r2, and are considering migrating to Windows Server 2022!... that is not modernizing... your workload should be SaaS/Cloud! Yeah, BS. You can modernize without being SaaS/Online services.
Sure. But that's we weird reaction. Absolutely no one has even hinted that you should be looking at SaaS or Cloud. Why would you jump to that? Why mention stuff no one is talking about.
Just because you update your operating system, but not your infrastructure or design, doesn't make you modern.
