VIRTUAL BRIDGES: THE SECOND GENERATION OF VDI IS NOW

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1 SOLUTION PROFILE VIRTUAL BRIDGES: THE SECOND GENERATION OF VDI IS NOW MAY 2011 In the last decade, server virtualization has transformed datacenter operations. Server consolidation has delivered unquestioned capital cost savings, and virtual machines have freed applications from physical server boundaries, enabling IT management to increase workload mobility, ensure higher availability, and streamline IT operations. At the same time, workers have become increasingly mobile, highly tech savvy, and have shown an insatiable appetite for a dizzying array of new endpoint computing devices, from smartphones to tablets. Businesses of all sizes now operate around the clock and their employees expect their apps and data to follow them wherever they go, on whatever device they prefer, and with consistent performance everywhere. Keeping up with this demand has tested the limits of many desktop IT support teams, who struggle to upgrade PCs and operating systems before they are obsolete again. These trends converge in desktop virtualization, which has gotten off to a rocky start. Early efforts to deploy server hosted desktop virtualization (or VDI, for virtual desktop infrastructure ) have often stalled under the weight of massive upfront costs and returns that never seem to materialize. Existing VDI offerings have evolved from an existing array of terminal services and hypervisor technologies, and typically require heavy lifting to integrate, customize, and optimize for a particular set of customer requirements. A new class of solutions is now emerging that herald the second generation for VDI: comprehensive, purpose built and turnkey offerings that combine virtualization with powerful access, security, management, and storage optimization technologies. In this profile we explore the drivers for and essential elements of second generation VDI, and take a close look at Virtual Bridges VERDE solution. WHY VIRTUALIZE THE DESKTOP? While the pace of desktop virtualization hasn t matched industry predictions, the drivers for it have grown more pressing than ever. Taneja Group regularly speaks with customers of all sizes who are both planning for and deploying VDI. Regardless of size and across industries, they share a remarkably consistent set of drivers, challenges and objectives for their desktop environments. Centralized and Simplified Management The cost of supporting all those new netbooks, smartphones and tablets is starting to overwhelm the IT managers we speak to, and many don't even expect to finish their Windows 7 migrations before its successor ships Indeed, hardware and OS refreshes alone are enough to prompt many companies to try VDI the move to Windows 7 is not an easy one, after all. It is faster, cheaper and safer to patch and maintain a small set of centralized and virtualized desktops from one location with VDI at least theoretically especially in the face of shrinking IT headcounts. Moreover, these overburdened support teams need provisioning and patching solutions that reduce complexity through fewer pointsolution tools, deeper and smarter integrations, and simpler interfaces. Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 1 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

2 Support for Multiple Endpoint Devices The user workspace of the future will look a lot more like a smartphone or tablet than a traditional fat PC, with applications driving infrastructure choices instead of the other way around. The traditional OS centric view of the user workspace (tied to Windows, for the most part) is in rapid decline, and IT must take a user s eye view of the desktop moving forward. This means collecting and integrating the disparate elements of each user workspace (apps, personal settings, data, files, etc.) on demand and delivering them consistently across a variety of devices. In other words, desktops that retain a user s customizations and are available anywhere a user has network connectivity. Consistent Performance Regardless of Location Whether users are on a main office LAN, working at a branch office, on the road or at home, they expect to have their personalized desktop environment plus quick access to all the applications and current data required to do their jobs. That s no easy task for IT to deliver with traditional PC desktops, and vendors to date have only offered partial solutions based on a mix of terminal services, application streaming, on line hosted desktops, and/or client hypervisors. All too often, the work of selecting the right mix and integrating multiple components has fallen on already overburdened IT support teams, however, and user experience suffers. In our view, customers see this challenge as a significant barrier to taking on desktop virtualization projects. Data and Application Security With virtualized desktops, sensitive corporate data and applications are safely retained on servers within the corporate firewall, or packaged into virtual containers for off line use (on laptops, for example). Access to these resources is protected, logged, and easily controlled from centralized management tools. If a security breach is detected, users can be deactivated or entire desktops can be disabled easily and quickly, helping to overcome the types of data leaks and access breaches so commonly reported today. Customers report that enhanced security is as important as simplified management when it comes to justifying a VDI project. Leverage Cloud Computing Economics Finally, there is no stronger driver in today s corporate IT department than to increase the efficiency of both resources and manpower. The service based economics offered by cloud computing elastic resources, pay as you go consumption, metered usage can apply to both internal and external IT, but only when the infrastructure is built on a service based computing foundation. VDI solutions must be designed from the ground up for such a service based delivery model, whether delivering a single application as a service (the SaaS model) or the entire desktop workspace as a service. In short, the next generation desktop must be user and performance driven, rather than operating system or device driven. Users have become increasingly comfortable with consuming applications and data that do not reside on their physical workstations. VDI solutions must now help IT departments become just as comfortable delivering these resources the same way. OVERCOMING THE DESKTOP DILEMMA In short, the fundamental desktop dilemma is the need to simultaneously satisfy two competing demands: user mobility and customization versus IT control and efficiency. Historically, giving users more options to personalize their workspaces and take them on the road have come at a high price for IT operations: less control, more security risk, and complex management. This dilemma is illustrated in Figure 1. Mainframe based environments were highly secure and very efficient from an IT management standpoint, but offered no user customization or mobility. Clientserver computing enabled today s Windows PCs, which turned the connected terminal paradigm on its head. Now, each desktop is highly customizable and mobile, but upgrades, maintenance and secu Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

3 rity cost IT more and more each year. Terminal services and application sharing, pioneered by Microsoft and Citrix, brought some measure of control back into the datacenter for a limited set of applications, but at the expense of flexibility. And more recently, server virtualization platforms (from VMware, Citrix and others) have been extended for desktop virtualization, but require excessive server and storage resources as well as labor intensive configuration. However, none of these desktop strategies have yet reached the sweet spot, optimizing both user flexibility and IT cost efficiency. This must be the goal of the next generation of VDI solutions. Figure 1: Aiming for the VDI Sweet Spot IT Efficiency (Cost and Control) HIGH LOW Mainframe Terminal Services VDI Sweet Spot Legacy Virtualization Traditional PC HIGH FIRST GENERATION VDI: MANY TECHNOLOGIES, FEW SOLUTIONS TANEJA GROUP Most first generation VDI offerings were essentially extensions of server virtualization strategies and architectures. However, in our view, VDI isn t primarily about virtualization at all. It s about leveraging the service based consumer computing model we've built up in the last 15 years (the Internet era) to completely rethink client computing. Today, there are many VDI technologies available, but few comprehensive solutions. These first generation offerings include multiple (and often incompatible) technologies to solve the same problem, or only offer one size fits all. Most require a different management interface for each of many server components, and deliver widely varying user experience depending on display protocol choice. It s clear that first generation VDI solutions evolved from prior technologies. The leading vendors have all acquired or redesigned existing products (virtual machine managers, hypervisors, connection brokers, remote display protocols, and user profile management tools, for example) to provide a wide range of choices for VDI. But these collections of strategies and technologies continue to address different aspects of VDI in very different ways, and no two look alike. User Flexibility (Mobility & Customization) VMware offers the most powerful (and expensive) server virtualization platform, and has one solution for VDI: the View suite. View includes strong image management tools (Composer) and storage capacity optimizations (Linked Clones), but doesn t offer true off line VDI (type 1 client Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 3 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

4 hypervisor). PCoIP is VMware s remote display protocol, and the company also supports application streaming with ThinApp; both technologies were acquired and integrated into the View suite. Citrix has built on its leading terminal services reputation (XenApp) with the addition of virtualization products based on the Xen hypervisor (XenServer, XenDesktop, XenClient) and a powerful remote display protocol (HDX). There is no single VDI strategy here: customers can craft a combination of these products to provide connected VDI and off line VDI, but must install multiple components and navigate several different management tools to integrate them all together. Microsoft offers server virtualization (Hyper V), but doesn t offer a VDI solution. Instead, the company offers several versions of application streaming and remote desktop technologies, but each is dependent on Windows. Microsoft works closely with Citrix in the market, but continues to be focused primarily on extending the Windows platform itself (along with the company s leading business productivity software packages). All too often, this hodge podge of approaches and tools makes choosing the best one nearly impossible. First, the customer must determine which desktop users and applications can be virtualized using each vendor s software, and whether she has the skills in house to support the chosen virtualization platform. Then, she must determine the required combination of components from each vendor and build a cost model to compare them against each other, and against her existing PC desktop costs. This effort is simply too much for most customers, and has derailed too many VDI projects before they even began. VDI Fails to Live Up to Expectations Where does this leave us today? Spotty customer success with VDI over the last five years has led to several persistent myths: VDI IS EXPENSIVE. It requires us to buy expensive server and storage up front and pay for multiple server and desktop virtual machine managers, display protocols, streaming technologies, etc. I ll have to hire new desktop support staff to manage all of this new infrastructure, and pay ongoing maintenance and support fees. VDI IS COMPLEX. Each of my user types might need a different type of VDI solution, and I ll have to integrate, configure, and maintain them myself. VDI means multiple management tools, new training, and higher support costs, because we re not VDI experts. VDI IS LIMITED. It s only cost effective for task workers such as call center staff, and then only when they use VDI over a fast LAN connection. Remote display protocols won t give my mobile workforce adequate application performance. Whether I choose VMware or Citrix, I have to compromise. In sum, first generation VDI solutions have required highly customized, roll your own implementations, with adequate performance limited to LAN connected, task worker use cases and delivering unclear or unattractive returns on investment. FORTUNATELY, THESE MYTHS ARE QUICKLY BEING PROVEN FALSE. Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 4 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

5 VIRTUAL BRIDGES: SECOND GENERATION VDI TODAY Luckily, as with consumer electronics, sometimes it pays to wait for the second release. In the case of VDI, this applies to the second generation of VDI solutions now available from innovative new vendors. A quickly emerging category leader here is Virtual Bridges and its VERDE VDI product suite. The founding team at Virtual Bridges includes pioneers with experience and credibility serving both Windows and Linux desktops from shared server environments across a range of customer types. Several years ago, the team set out to refocus their efforts on building a new approach to costefficient desktop management, to directly attack the problems they saw with early VDI strategies. In the company s words, the VERDE solution was designed from the ground up to eliminate the stigma surrounding early VDI solutions: high cost, complexity and lack of coverage. We ll address each of these claims by diving into the core architectural and technology differentiators that define the VERDE product & solution suite, as illustrated in Figure 2. Figure 2: The Virtual Bridges VERDE Product & Solution Suite KSM Memory Dedup CacheI/O COW COR* SOURCE: VIRTUAL BRIDGES ALL IN ONE SOLUTION Virtual Bridges understands that VDI requires more than a hypervisor. Powerful virtualization is essential, but must be part of a complete package optimized for the special needs of virtual desktops. VERDE s Cluster server platform includes connection brokering, desktop image management, automated provisioning, and management with each element tightlyintegrated, simplified, and purpose built for VDI. BASED ON A SCALABLE, CLUSTERED ARCHITECTURE The VERDE Cluster platform is built to scale. As the name implies, it s based on a fully clustered architecture in which peers automatically loadbalance and autonomically recover from failure. Virtual desktop images are served to authorized users from the least loaded node via a fully distributed, policy based connection broker. There are no single points of failure, and scale up or scale out are as simple as adding additional nodes to the cluster. Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

6 DELIVERS THE DYNAMIC DESKTOP VERDE builds a fully personalized desktop for each user on demand and as requested. User personalization and custom settings are applied to a small set of baseline master ( Gold ) images at run time without the need to manage Windows roaming profiles or, indeed, any add on profile management tools. Competitive solutions require expensive third party tools and/or complex configurations of clones and persistent/non persistent desktops in order to store and create large numbers of personalized desktops efficiently. With VERDE, a personalized dynamic desktop for each user is standard and requires no additional software or storage tweaks to implement. Storage capacity requirements are minimized by default. This is a key differentiator. Many early VDI adopters end up creating full desktop images for each user because in practice the suitability of non persistent desktop clones is limited to a very narrow set of users. But storing and managing personalized virtual desktops for each user with competitive solutions is often as costly and complex as supporting physical PCs was. BREAKS DOWN THE VDI STORAGE BARRIER Most first generation VDI solutions require a heavy investment in expensive shared storage. Static, fully provisioned virtual desktops eat up capacity quickly, and also generate an enormous amount of I/O on the storage network. A thousand virtual desktops requiring sustained IOPS each, for example, may generate 25,000 total IOPS the cost of a SAN to handle such a load is prohibitively high for most VDI use cases. VERDE s Dynamic Desktop keeps capacity requirements in check, and with patent pending CacheIO technology dramatically reduces the IOPS driven to the storage platform as well, whether DAS, NAS, or SAN. CacheIO utilizes local disk on the server to offload both reads and writes. In VDI, write offload makes a significant impact, since Windows in particular generates a very high load of transient writes under normal operation. And read offload is critical to handle the heavy I/O load generated when a large number of virtual desktops read from a common Gold image (a login storm ). Leveraging local disk to optimize both read and write IOPS, in our view, is one of the most critical technologies for broadening the reach of VDI to more use cases. PROVIDES UNIFIED MANAGEMENT VERDE s web based management and monitoring console is a single pane window into all virtual desktop provisioning and maintenance activities. A single console provides visibility across on line, off line and branch more VDI desktops. Role and taskbased workflows allow administrative teams to efficiently distribute the operational load and reduce labor costs. At a glance views and reports complete the management picture, taking out the complexity and confusion inherent in legacy VDI solutions that require many tools, many interfaces, and manual troubleshooting. Users can be authorized to launch multiple desktops simultaneously, an enormous benefit during staggered application or OS upgrades (such as a migration to Windows 7 requiring users to temporarily run older applications in an XP desktop). BASED ON OPEN, STANDARDS BASED AND ONLY PORTABLE HYPERVISOR FOR VDI: VERDE virtualization is built on the open source Linux based KVM hypervisor, which is purpose built for VDI. As the only truly portable hypervisor for VDI, VERDE KVM allows companies to manage a single desktop image that users can run online, offline, and in Branch office modes. This gives users flexibility to work however and wherever they are, and on whatever device they have, with consistent and Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

7 reliable performance. KVM is also a smart choice for the VERDE solution because it includes proven in memory deduplication technology (Kernel Same page Merging, or KSM). KSM allows customers to optimize server memory utilization, requiring up to 20% less RAM and supporting higher virtual desktop densities. INCLUDES BROAD CONNECTIVITY, PROTOCOL, AND DEVICE COVERAGE: VERDE VDI was designed for the way we work today, not re engineered. VERDE SmartCast sync technology provisions the best remote display protocol (SPICE, RDP or NIX) for a rich PC experience at run time, based on the user s current connection and the type of desktop they require. Desktops are available both online and off line (while traveling, for instance) via the integrated KVM based type 1 hypervisor. Synchronization is transparent. Plus, the VERDE Branch server extends high performance connectivity to users while in remote branch offices (or connected to a cloud environment), by synchronizing with VERDE Cluster servers to deliver desktops locally with consistent, optimized performance regardless of location. Finally, VERDE VDI delivers Windows and Linux user desktops to all of the most popular endpoint computing devices, including PC, Mac, thin clients, netbooks, tablets, and PDAs. The combination of a portable hypervisor with SmartCast sync technology clearly places VERDE in the second generation VDI solution category. SERVICE BASED PACKAGING AND PRICING: Finally, Verde is packaged in an all inclusive pricing model, designed to lower the costs of deployment both on premise (for shared, private cloud environments) or off premise in a public cloud. Customers can easily prove the benefits of VDI in house and optimize image management processes and performance before moving a VERDE implementation to a cloud service provider for even greater cost reduction and resource efficiency. WHY IBM CHOSE VIRTUAL BRIDGES In our conversations with customers interested in VDI, some ask, Is it safe to buy VDI from a young vendor? Our answer is yes, with two important caveats. First, the vendor must be uniquely focused on VDI as its top sales and engineering priorities. Second, the vendor must recognize its limits, and work quickly and aggressively to establish strong partnerships with established industry leaders. Start ups are the engines of technology innovation. Smart start ups are those who understand that their innovative technologies require solid partnerships to be successful. Virtual Bridges recognized this early on, and has teamed up with IBM to make VERDE the engine that powers IBM s Virtual Desktop for Smart Business offering. Simplicity and world class support are at the heart of IBM s VDI solution, and IBM chose Virtual Bridges to offer its midmarket customers a safe and easy way to radically lower the costs of desktop computing. This recognition is significant: IBM certainly has the resources and expertise to develop a VDI solution in house, but chose instead to package Virtual Bridges technology with pre tested hardware configurations. "Virtual Bridges has a really cool virtual desktop application, and here it is integrated into IBM Smart Business technology with its autonomic self configuring and self healing features," said Ron Kline, Global Director of Midmarket Marketing at IBM. "It lowers system management costs, so the actual cost of ownership is lower than VMware or Citrix, which are dominant on servers but haven't been as strong in the desktop environment." Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 7 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F:

8 THE VDI BOTTOM LINE The VERDE VDI solution aims directly at lowering the total cost of ownership for desktop computing: Lower capacity and I/O costs mean less storage infrastructure is required; Dynamic desktops built on demand mean lower integration costs and management overhead; Service based pricing means you can start small and pay as you grow; On premise, federated, or cloud means deploying VDI on the most cost efficient infrastructure; And broad connectivity means users have their full desktops however they work. There is simply no sustained TCO advantage in continuing to support the traditional PC desktop computing model. One need only look at the impact of the impending need to move to Windows 7 to see that the old ways are broken. For many companies facing this daunting task, any productivity gains users may enjoy from the new OS will be quickly eaten up in new hardware costs and IT migration and testing expenses. TANEJA GROUP OPINION Desktops don t look like servers. They re highly personalized and often messy, they move around often, and they connect to applications and data over a wide variety of networks. It stands to reason that virtualization platforms designed for servers aren t easily re engineered for virtualized desktops. We ve seen this in practice: first generation VDI from the legacy virtualization leaders is expensive, complex, and performance constrained. These vendors are limited by a surplus of acquired technologies that are clumsily integrated, as well as the need to protect their installed bases of hypervisor, terminal services, and application streaming products. As a result, VDI efforts to date have typically been successful only for a limited set of worker profiles and application types. These limitations have led to persistent myths about VDI in general, and have made it difficult for companies to build a compelling ROI/TCO case for moving away from the Windows PC desktop status quo. In contrast, second generation VDI solutions are purpose built for VDI and provide the foundation for a new approach to user workspace management moving forward. Second generation VDI is easy to acquire, easy to deploy, and easy to manage. The Virtual Bridges VERDE second generation solution, in our view, goes a long way toward tearing down the barriers to successful enterprise VDI. VERDE gives users the performance they need whether on line, off line, in a branch or connected to the cloud, via smart protocol selection; it creates personalized Windows and Linux desktop images on demand from a clustered and load balanced server farm, complete with connection brokering automatic synchronization; and it comes with an intuitive, policy based management interface to speed deployment times and simplify desktop lifecycle management. Moreover, Virtual Bridges combines its innovative technology with the global reach and support resources of its world class systems and service providers. Whether you deploy VDI in house or in the cloud, VERDE is designed to enable a pay as you grow desktop service. This allows more companies to realize the promise of VDI and create the workspace required for today s mobile workforce and tomorrow s. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN HAS BEEN OBTAINED FROM SOURCES BELIEVED TO BE ACCURATE AND RELIABLE, AND INCLUDES PERSONAL OPINIONS THAT ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. TANEJA GROUP DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY OF SUCH INFORMATION AND ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR FOR YOUR USE OF, OR RELIANCE UPON, SUCH INFORMATION. COMPANY, BRAND AND PRODUCT NAMES REFERENCED HEREIN MAY BE TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. Copyright 2011 The Taneja Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 8 of 8 87 Elm Street, Suite 900 Hopkinton, MA T: F: