Over the years, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has received its fair share of praise and also some criticism. For many, VDI is the golden ticket to better security, management, BYOD support, etc. - and there’s no turning back. On the other hand, for some, moving desktops to the datacenter is an approach that falls short. The truth is, VDI can be great when it’s implemented to address the right use case. Which scenarios make the most sense? There’s the rub.
From Leostream’s position as the most widely deployed vendor neutral connection broker, our software has helped to facilitate countless VDI environments (as well as hosted workstation and DaaS deployments!). There’s no doubt that building out a virtual desktop infrastructure has a time and a place. When it comes to rolling out VDI, we’ve seen great success across a variety of industries that address the following use cases:
Securing BYOD
A sure benefit of implementing VDI is the security advantages of supporting a mobile workforce and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) efforts. Since administrators are using back-end servers to centrally run applications, this improves BYOD security by keeping the data of the actual endpoints.
Read: Mobilizing the Workforce – How to Handle Task, Knowledge, and Power Users
Implementing Kiosk Environments
Kiosk environments are ideal for certain high traffic login environments such as labs and classrooms where a fresh desktop needs to be presented to each user at signin. As part of a VDI strategy, non-persistent desktops, which are single-use desktops created from a customized image, can be spun up to give users access to a clean slate on every login.
Supporting Remote Employees
Just about everyone has heard of LogMeIn or Citrix GoToMyPC remote access solutions, so why consider VDI? These typical remote access solutions are designed for individuals, not enterprises, making them difficult to configure and manage in a corporate environment. By designing your VDI with remote access in mind, you can manage user-to-desktop assignments and connections in large-scale enterprise environments. Plus, you can use whatever client device is most appropriate and cost effective for the entire workforce. For example, thin clients within the corporate environment, and repurposed fat clients for telecommuting contract workers.
Read: Remote Access Solutions for a Productive Day out of the Office
Running CPU-Intensive Workloads
Advancements in workstation and hypervisor technology have made it possible to migrate even graphics-rich applications into the data center. Take the example of dedicated virtual pass-through GPU, which allows you to create a virtual workstation that gives users all the benefits of a dedicated graphics processor at their desk. Essentially this technology improves the density in your data center without compromising performance for users.
Read: Hosting Graphics-Rich Applications in the Datacenter
Testing and Development
An added benefit of your VDI initiative is to use it as a testing environment for development work. What better place to trial new software/applications than in the flexible and manageable environment that is already ready-build for IT testing. Once the testing stage is complete, you can simply spin down the instance and rollout the new update.
VDI has been a big win for many of our customers. Planning out the use cases and matching it to the right technology is key. Is your organization looking to VDI? We’ve compiled a tip-sheet of five top considerations to help give you a head-start to your planning. Make sure to download a copy of this tip-sheet for some direction during your initial stages.