On the desktop cloud

Since the concept of cloud computing has been introduced, there are a variety of clouds drifting past us, the desktop Cloud (Desktop Cloud) is one of the clouds. This article mainly describes what is the desktop cloud, what is driving the desktop cloud business requirements, the desktop cloud infrastructure, and the desktop cloud is now a number of shortcomings and the desktop cloud is now the main challenges

Since the birth of the computer, it has been changing our lives, with the development of technology, our life can not leave the computer, but the traditional computer desktop (PC) use of many restrictions, these restrictions have caused us a lot of inconvenience. For example: now because of the increasingly developed transport, mobility between people, which also caused the rapid spread of the epidemic virus, such as the current epidemic of swine flu, many units in the affected areas from the trip back to the staff have isolated observation requirements, But many people who are isolated at home can not easily and quickly visit his usual office environment, which brings many losses to the business. So do we have a desktop environment that can be accessed at any time, anywhere, or in any device? The answer is yes, the desktop cloud is such a solution. What is a desktop cloud? What are the benefits of a desktop cloud? What is the structure of it? Look patiently, we'll give you a secret.

What is a desktop cloud

What is the desktop cloud, the first thing we have to answer is what is cloud computing. There are many definitions of cloud computing, and it is widely accepted that the definition of cloud computing on Wikipedia, namely: "Cloud computing (cloud computing, Taiwan Translation Cloud computing), is a new way of resource utilization on the Internet, for the public to rely on the internet heterogeneous, Autonomous services perform on-demand computing, and cloud computing resources are dynamically scalable and virtualized, delivered via the Internet. The desktop cloud is a cloud that conforms to the definition of cloud computing. On the IBM Smart Business Desktop (IBM Smart Business Desktop Cloud) Introduction page, we can see that the desktop cloud is defined as: "Access cross-platform applications through thin clients or any other network-connected device, as well as the entire client desktop". That means we only need a thin client device, or any other device that can connect to the network, through a proprietary program or browser, to access the personal desktop and applications residing on the server side, and the user experience is exactly the same as the traditional personal computer we use.

The business value of the desktop cloud

The desktop cloud has a lot of business value, and there are some important business values in addition to the one mentioned above where you can access your desktop anywhere:

Centralized management

In the overall cost of using a traditional desktop, management maintenance costs are a large part of the overall lifecycle, and management costs include operating system installation configuration, upgrades, repair costs, and hardware installation configuration, upgrades, maintenance costs, data recovery, backup costs, various application installation configurations, upgrades, maintenance costs. In traditional desktop applications, these jobs are basically done on a per-desktop basis, with a lot of work to do. For industries that need frequent replacements, updating desktops, the workload is even greater. For example, for the training industry, they often need to configure different operating systems and run programs to meet the needs of different training courses, for hundreds of machines, the workload is already very large, and this work is often.

In a desktop cloud solution, management is centralized, and IT engineers manage hundreds of virtual desktops through the control center, and all updates, patches, only need to update a "base mirror". For the training centres mentioned above, management maintenance is very simple: we just need to configure several basic mirrors based on the course, and then different training courses can be connected to these different base mirrors separately, and we need to make any changes that need to be done on these basic mirrors, As long as you restart the virtual desktop students can see all the updates, which greatly saves the management costs.

Security improvements

Security is a very important aspect of IT work, on the one hand, the various units on their own security requirements, on the other hand, the government has some mandatory security, once violated, the consequences are very serious. For enterprises, the data, intellectual property rights is their life, such as the banking system in the customer's credit card account, the insurance system in the user details, software companies in the source code and so on. How to protect these confidential data from being leaked is a constant challenge for many corporate IT departments. They have used various security measures to ensure that data is not used illegally, such as the use of USB devices, the use of outside e-mail, and so on. For government departments, data security is also very important, the British recently occurred a government official's notebook lost, the result of confidential documents by reporters, the official had to resign himself.

In the desktop cloud solution, first of all, all the data and operations are on the server side, the client is only to display their changes in the image, so do not need to worry about the client to illegally steal information, we see in the film business spy holding a U disk crazy copy of the company's business secrets will never appear again. Second, the IT department produces a variety of new rules based on security challenges that can act quickly on each desktop.

Apply more environmentally friendly

How to protect our limited resources, how to consume less energy, this is now scientists in various countries continue to explore the problem. Because the resources on our planet are limited, they will soon fall into the trap of resource availability without protection. Now the world is looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions, and many measures have been taken, such as the use of cleaner energy such as wind. But the traditional personal computer power consumption is extraordinary family, in general, each traditional personal computer consumption of about 200W, even if it is idle when the electricity consumption is at least about 100W, according to 10 hours a day, 240 days a year work to calculate, each computer desktop electricity consumption in 480 degrees, It's amazing. Besides, in order to cool the heat generated by the use of these computers, we must also use certain air-conditioning equipment, which consumes a great amount of energy.

With Cloud desktop solutions, each thin client's power consumption is about 16w, and only 8% of the original personal desktop, the resulting heat is greatly reduced

Reduction in total cost of ownership

The cost of IT assets includes many aspects, initial purchase cost is only a small part of it, others include the entire lifecycle of management, maintenance, energy consumption and other aspects of costs, hardware update upgrade costs. As we can see from the above description, compared to the traditional personal desktop, the desktop cloud in the entire lifecycle management, maintenance, energy consumption and other aspects of the cost is greatly reduced, then what is the cost of hardware? Desktop cloud in the initial hardware investment is relatively large, because we want to buy a new server to run the cloud service, but because the traditional desktop Update cycle is 3 years, and the server's update cycle is 5 years, so the cost of the hardware is basically equivalent, but due to the significant reduction of soft cost, and soft cost in the TCO Occupies a very large proportion, so the overall TCO of using the Cloud desktop solution is greatly reduced. According to Gartner, the TCO of the cloud desktop can be reduced by 40% compared to the traditional desktop.

The architecture of the desktop cloud

What is the basic architecture of the desktop cloud? Here's a clear picture of a basic architecture of the desktop Cloud (selected from IBM Cloud computing smart Business Desktop)

Figure 1. Example of a desktop cloud architecture

Thin Terminal

The thin terminal is the device that we use the desktop cloud, is generally a built-in independent embedded operating system, can be connected through a variety of protocols to run on the server desktop equipment, in order to make full use of existing resources, to achieve the maximization of IT assets application, the framework also supports the traditional desktop to do some transformation, install some plug-ins, They also have the ability to connect to the desktop running on the server.

Network access

The desktop cloud provides a variety of access modes for users to connect to. Users can connect through a wired or wireless network, which can be either a LAN or a WAN, either by using a common connection or by using a secure connection.

Console

The console can configure the server running the virtual desktop, such as configuring network connections, configuring storage devices, and so on. The console can also monitor some of the underlying performance metrics of the runtime server, such as memory usage, CPU usage, and so on. If you need to monitor more resources, we can use IBM's Tivoli related products.

Identity authentication

An enterprise-class application solution, must have a security control solution, the security program is more important is the user's authentication and authorization. In the desktop cloud is usually through Active Directory or LDAP These products for user authentication and authorization, these products can easily add to users, delete, configure the password, set its role, give different roles different permissions, modify user rights and other operations.

Operating system or application

There are certain application scenarios, such as the use of users who are call center operators, who generally use the same standard desktop and standard should, and basically do not need to be modified. In this scenario, the Cloud desktop architecture provides a way to share services to provide desktops and applications. This allows for more services on specific servers.

Application Server

Desktop cloud Solution, more applications are distributed to virtual desktops, so customers need to connect to a single desktop to use all applications, as if they were installed on the desktop, and the experience provided to the user in this architecture is exactly the same as using a traditional desktop.

Of course, the architecture above is just a general description of one of our reference implementations, in which we should make various decisions in the framework according to the customer's specific circumstances. These considerations are mainly the types of customers, customer size, customer workload, customer use habits, customer service quality requirements to make the corresponding and so on, this is a relatively complex process.

The difference between a desktop cloud and a diskless workstation

A diskless workstation is one that does not have a hard drive, connects to a remote server through some network protocols (such as PXE), but locally or retains hardware such as a motherboard. Diskless Workstation program execution and desktop cloud, but also on the server side, can also effectively ensure the security of data. So what's the difference between them? In fact, they are completely different from the concept to the structure, the specific difference is as follows

The main difference is that the desktop cloud can dynamically adjust the user needs of resources, diskless workstations can only allocate fixed resources. The desktop cloud can customize personal information as needed, install the programs you need, and make it possible for users to make no changes, and diskless workstations can run only one unified operating system. The desktop cloud requires only a thin client device with very little energy consumption, and diskless workstations need to retain all the hardware of traditional PCs other than hard drives. Desktop Cloud Front-End device configuration is very simple, for some devices even as long as the installation of a plug-in can be run, diskless workstation front-end equipment has special requirements.

Desktop Cloud Current development

The development of the desktop cloud of course also can not be separated from the support of major manufacturers, in fact, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SUN and other large companies in which there are many inputs, such as IBM's cluster of intelligent business desktop solutions, SUN's Sunray solutions. There are also a number of small companies involved, such as the Swedish xcerion company has launched the ICloud beta, this is a virtual desktop services can provide a platform, the platform can run the entire operating system through the browser. IBM offers a number of value-added service offerings in addition to the overall solution, such as providing early-stage objects with business environment assessments, software to reduce disk usage, and more.

Some of the problems the desktop cloud needs to address

Although the desktop cloud has all the above advantages, but now an important factor hindering its development is the initial investment problem, although the total cost of desktop cloud is lower than the traditional desktop, but the desktop cloud in the initial need to buy servers, networks, storage and so on, so the initial investment relative to the traditional desktop is still relatively high, So some companies, especially small businesses, are more skeptical. The market has also reacted to this scepticism, in which IBM's Desktop Cloud solution includes a server and other background resources residing within IBM, managed by IBM, customers only need to use the desktop through the network, according to the customer's use to charge the solution, This solution is a good news for the growing small business.

Concluding

Through the introduction of this article, I believe that you have a preliminary understanding of the business value of the desktop cloud, the architecture of its desktop cloud also has a preliminary concept, in this series will be a large-scale application of its characteristics to do an introduction.