Can cloud computing save virtual desktops?

Desktop virtualization has achieved far more success in recent years than most other it technologies, and I don't think anyone will deny it. After all, we are still dealing with this technology in our own affairs. But then again, it never seems to get out of the negative, and when we talk about it, there's always an opposing voice, and that's why so many desktop environments are still not deploying virtualization. Even with more than 5 million customers, desktop virtualization technology is still drop. It is still a poor proportion of the world's businesses, compared with the vast traditional desktops.

In the current situation, the tendency to switch to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is ambiguous and unnecessary for most enterprises. This shift will require a lot of money, but does it have the effect of getting the entry fee? Freeing users from their reliance on traditional desktops and allowing them to use more flexible mobile devices can be an absolute bones change, can we prove the value of this change from the perspective of ROI?

Recently, however, the whole tradeoff has ushered in new considerations – the new member, who boasts not only to be able to bring more business flexibility, but also to reduce the overall operating costs of the enterprise. Yes, this is cloud computing, which has radically changed the way companies think in purchasing solutions and provides enterprise-class buyers with more centralized resources, including servers and storage devices. Based on the level of market acceptance, VDI seems to have the opportunity to step into the mainstream solution with this trend.

"Cloud technology enables VDI to rise to a new level of cost and profitability, as VDI will become easier to implement, more secure, and more pervasive with the support of a potentially large scale of economy." cloud-based VDI Services can help every member of the enterprise, regardless of which department they belong to, "said Dan O ' Farrell, senior director of Wyse Technology's product marketing department." "With the proliferation of large, secure, and fault-tolerant cloud data centers, the cost of virtual machines and virtual desktop systems allocated to each user will continue to decline, making it easier for VDI and cloud platform services to make decisions and pay for their purchases." ”

With the help of cloud technology, creating a complete set of virtual desktop infrastructures has become as simple as using cloud-based storage systems. This is not to say that the scheme itself is flawless in implementation or integration, but at least the internal VDI environment has improved significantly in terms of cost of use and complexity.

For those users who have a passion for virtual desktop systems, the good coordination between VDI and cloud will continue to be attractive. The desktop, the service developer Desktone, is one of them, and they have been busy building partnerships with top cloud vendors to help themselves become more proactive in transforming from traditional data center architectures to integrated cloud services, without being hindered by many challenges. The company recently collaborated with Time Warner's NaviSite cloud service, supported by this service project, to deliver system mirroring across more operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

"In general, the complaints about deploying VDI projects are mostly focused on its high demand for storage resources," David Grant, vice president of Marketing at Desktone Inc., told us. "And cloud technology is just good at this, and because of its experience and scale, it can provide a lot of the necessary extra performance for desktops." ”

Of course, whenever we talk about clouds, there will always be people who hold on to security issues. However, Grant believes that this is not a big problem in the virtual desktop world, because cloud-based VDI holds only desktop mirroring, not the application or the data itself. Justified

"Most companies still keep their data and enterprise applications in their own rooms," he added. "We access these files and applications through a sufficiently secure enterprise connection." In other words, what we do in the cloud is just a little work that shows the Windows system mirroring. We will of course (the same) choose those reputable and reputable world-renowned service providers such as Equinix, IBM and Rackspace, etc. They can not only provide sufficient data center processing capacity, but also have a lot of security mechanisms and the necessary verification system. In my opinion, data centers built by world-renowned suppliers are far more secure than most of their own infrastructure. ”

While the above argument seems persuasive, another key issue for many companies is the same concern: are their wans capable of handling additional traffic to support the creation of remote virtual desktops? Most companies are already working on the technology optimization of the WAN, This does enhance the performance of long-distance network transmission in applications, but such schemes do not perform well in dealing with multiple concurrent data flows, which is precisely the prerequisite for the smooth operation of VDI.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)