Demystifying desktop virtualization investments

Sonal Desai

Desktop virtualization is getting a new avatar.

Compared to the five years it took enterprises to earn their RoI on investments, technologies such as software-defined anything (SDX) and RAM cache, have not only reduced the cost of desktop virtualization by almost half, but has also almost led to elimination of IOPS.

Parag Arora, Area Vice President and Country Head, India Sub Continent, Citrix Systems, admits that storage costs and software licensing fees were the major bane for any desktop virtualization deployment, essentially because the IT administrators find it difficult to calculate the actual expense involved.

Arora and Girish Gupta, Director, Technical Services, Citrix Systems, talk about new developments that are making desktop virtualization deployments cost effective.

The duo contends that new developments in storage, GPU, servers and software-defined infrastructure (SDI) are playing a key role in reduced costs.

Storage:

Improvements in storage utilization through thin provisioning (PVS), storage layering (personal vDisk) and Flash storage have gradually displaced storage from its long time position as the biggest cost component of desktop virtualization.

For instance, thin provisioning technology has dramatically reduced the amount of high performance storage required for desktop virtualization, enabling a single 30 GB desktop image to boot by only allocating 4 GB to 5 GB of space, resulting in significant savings, remarks Gupta.

Through developments like these, enterprises can now pay less than $100 per user for high performance, redundant shared storage that provides better availability than a physical PC.

Cost Comparison

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Virtual graphics processing unit (GPU):

Virtual desktops are replacing the traditional workstations in design and manufacturing organizations that depend on high-end CAD, engineering and other processing-intensive graphical applications, by leveraging the horsepower of GPU computing.

For example, based on specific requirements, the IT organization can allocate specific GPU resources with the help of a vGPU.

For example, a designer could be provided with a dedicated GPU, while others can share a single GPU to view the resulting drawings. This balance of high-performance dedicated processing and cost-efficient shared resources helps the organization meet its goals for both cost and productivity, Arora shares.

Servers:

The rising demand for server, desktop and application virtualization has created the need for more powerful servers.

While vendors have responded by offering more power at the same price point for CPU, memory, storage throughput and architecture, an increase in mature virtualization models give enterprises more flexibility to support users in cost effectively.

Says Gupta, “Server-hosted desktops are now almost interchangeable with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in terms of cost. While VDI was formerly restricted by RAM, new technologies make it possible to add more RAM to a single server thereby enabling it to increase read/write performance significantly, reducing the need for shared storage and associated cost. This has shifted the focus of performance to CPU—and as more cores are added, more and more desktops can be hosted per server, yielding greater cost efficiencies."

Networks:

Ever since users have been able to access corporate resources over public network, enterprises are now thinking twice before investing heavily in distributed private network infrastructure.

An easy way out, says Arora is to leverage a public Internet service in tandem with a secure connection or WAN optimization which can ensure good user experiences even on mobile devices over 3G and 4G.

Citrix has enabled its customers to use the virtual WAN accelerator technology in CloudBridge to deliver high performance virtual desktops over any network.

For customers using another vendor’s WAN acceleration technology, network-based Quality of Service (QoS) is enabled through XenDesktop Multi-Stream ICA, which uses multiple TCP connections to carry ICA traffic between the client and the server.

New enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions focus on allowing remote users to access apps, desktops and data over secure network connections rather than joining their devices to the network, greatly simplifying network security for IT. Within the infrastructure, the virtualization of network appliances and the rise of software-defined networking (SDN) are reducing costs while increasing flexibility, Gupta states.

Endpoints:

According to Gupta, as the form factor changes from laptops, PCs and tablets to the smart phones, desktop virtualization need not rely on the data center for processing.

“Several desktop virtualization architectures are designed to leverage the local processing power of the endpoint for many compute- and graphics intensive tasks, greatly increasing efficiency while enabling a high-performance experience for users. Meanwhile, advancing consumer technology has increased the number of low cost endpoint options available to IT and users,“  he notes.

For instance, Google Chromebooks reflect the radical shift in thinking about end-points; at a price point under $200, the devices can be considered somewhat disposable. At the same time, mobile devices such as tablets can be viewed as some of the most powerful thin clients to hit the market, offering a high-performance experience at a low cost in a versatile form factor that lets people get more done, in more ways, wherever their work takes them, Arora adds.

Cloud computing:

Enterprises are increasingly looking at cloud vendors for cost-effective solutions to flex user workloads and support growth.

Says Gupta, without the need to procure, image and configure on-premise servers to support a larger user base, cloud computing provides instant infrastructure that can be scaled up or down, and pay-as-you use option.

To enable this desktop virtualization solutions allow IT to manage virtual desktops on premise, in the cloud or both, while allowing simple, transparent access for users regardless of where their desktops are hosted.