Solving The Application Provisioning Problem On Virtual Desktops

Transcription

1 Solving The Application Provisioning Problem On Virtual Desktops The future will be cloudpaged Osman Kent Chairman, Co-Founder & CEO Numecent

2 About Osman Kent Serial entrepreneur - was previously founder-ceo of 3Dlabs Has been in the graphics and virtualization industry for over 30 years one of the fathers of the GPU A deep technologist with numerous patents in graphics, virtualization and GPU virtualization Runs a record label in his spare(!) time

3 About Numecent BLOWN AWAY could change the entire software industry magic is the term to describe this A fast-growing software and cloud services start-up based in Irvine, CA Inventors and pioneers of cloudpaging, containerization and application virtualization Came out of stealth in 2012 to great acclaim Technology protected by 16 battle-tested patents A B2B business focused on web-scale and friction-free delivery of apps from the cloud without pixel streaming 1M users and counting

4 About This Talk Just going to focus on virtual workstations and GPU centric apps And the so called application on-boarding problem holding back virtual desktops Not going to talk about pros and cons of virtual desktops themselves This is a view from the trenches have so far helped deliver 10,000 different apps in over 20M sessions So we know the problems and the potential solutions first-hand

5 Why virtualize? Virtualization enables a limited resource to appear more abundant Most software systems have too much entropy Reducing entropy increases the apparent utilization of underlying resources Virtualization can reduce entropy but only if used correctly

6 1 st Rule of Virtualization But we should only virtualize to make things better than before This has not always been the case like in desktop virtualization Let s find out why

7 First let me share a story... Will show you how bad app provisioning can get in our world This was a major ISV who shall remain nameless With a major CAD application Had a 200 page installation manual Took 3 rocket scientist a week to install Had very complex dependencies And had 150,000 registry entries Same install cycle even for a patch Had extreme dislike of certain other installed apps You may think this is an outlier sadly no We have seen many others like this

8 On-Boarding Problem Desktop Virtualization simply moves such provisioning problems from the user s desk to the server room with a very long VGA cable over IP What was a problem on physical desktops remains a problem in virtual desktops In fact problems can often become compounded with virtualizing the wrong thing! Let s see what can go wrong

9 Wrong thing got virtualized What matters is NOT the desktop but the applications Libraries and OS are duplicated Server storage is typically much more expensive Applications are baked-in the VM image Libraries Libraries Upgrading one app effects the whole VM Dynamic provisioning is near impossible App combinations lead to too many images Virtual Machine 1 (VM) Virtual Machine 2 (VM) May even end-up with as many different images as users! Apps may even conflict across VMs (as in TS) Unused apps still incur license fees Server Hardware Unnecessary additional costs In fact some licensing systems break on virtual desktops! Severely restricts the appeal of Virtual Desktops App1 App2 App3 App1 App5 App7 Operating System Operating System Hypervisor

10 Wrong assumptions were made Our initial assumptions were wrong very wrong Assumed uniform app usage across users This is only true for task-workers Engineering/DCC environments are very varied Assumed apps to be static Some (like games) are patched every few days Assumed app combos to be static Not true in engineering and creative industries App1 App2 App3 App1 App5 App7 Libraries Libraries Operating System Operating System Virtual Machine 1 (VM) Virtual Machine 2 (VM) Hypervisor These require dynamic provisioning based on projects Assumed most would be on-premises In fact Graphics Remoting requires Edge Servers Assumed uniform implementations Whereas VDI, Terminal Services, home-brew etc give rise to different sets of problems Server Hardware

11 On-Boarding Can Be Solved Let s see how we can solve these problems in three easy steps

12 Step 1 :: Containerization Pre-virtualize each app inside its container There is now only one VM desktop image Applications and the VM are now totally decoupled App1 App2 App3 Plug-in 1 App Users can have infinite combination of apps Unique Libraries Unique Libraries Unique Libraries Unique Libraries Unique Libraries A totally liberating experience for users and IT Container 1 Container 2 Container 3 Container 4 Container Any app, any time dynamic provisioning on demand Introducing a new app has no ramifications Simply produce and publish a new container Apps can be independently updated/patched No interactions to worry about VM Cloudpaging Agent - NEW Common Libraries Operating System Hypervisor No unused license costs Licenses are invoked as used Server Hardware Works seamlessly on physical desktops too Zero installation - makes physical desktops IT Free

13 Step 2 :: Demand-paging Deliver containers a tiny bit at a time on demand Cloudpaging enables WAN delivery of apps This makes central cloud delivery possible Initial payload can be 5% of the size This is delivered first to get the user running Container The rest of the container is then demand-paged As the user invokes as yet undelivered portions Once fetched, the pages are stored in a persistent LRU cache Enables app repositories to be centralized Initial Payload Typically 5% Remoting typically requires VMs on Edge Servers to reduce latency One central repository can handle Edge Servers world-wide Huge reduction in bandwidth and app storage in the VM Typically 95% network footprint reduction between the repository and the VM Persistent Client Cache As the app is not installed, only the pages used consume VM storage

14 Step 3 :: License Virtualization Virtualize licenses and SaaSify the app does not need to change Existing licensing systems are universally disliked By the users, IT staff and the ISVs themselves They become problematic on virtual desktops Especially activation licenses which require persistence License virtualization avoids all this Paging Server Licensing Server Impose licensing on the container app remains unchanged Enables SaaS to be juxtaposed with no changes to the app Private SaaS inside the enterprise Enables optimal use of license assets Creates a minute-by-minute usage audit Important for compliance and true-up reports App Unique Libraries Container Cloudpaging Agent

15 The future is now All this technology actually exists today it is proven and is called cloudpaging

16 Cloudpaging is now Demand Paging over HTTPS Containerization Live Licensing of containers Containers On-Demand Page level abstraction (set of blocks) Typical 20x compression for apps Shrinks times expands pipes Virtualizes the application Virtualizes the file system/registry Virtualizes storage Runs apps with ZERO installation Cloudpaging Containers can be licensed in real time Manage centrally from the cloud Enables subscription Users/data can be wiped remotely Web-scale provisioning of Windows Apps for virtual and physical desktops friction-free, IT-free no install, no download, no pixel streaming

17 Cloudpaging is now Demand Paging over HTTPS Containerization Live Licensing of containers Containers On-Demand Page level abstraction (set of blocks) Typical 20x compression for apps Shrinks times expands pipes Virtualizes the application Virtualizes the file system/registry Virtualizes storage Runs apps with ZERO installation Cloudpaging Containers can be licensed in real time Manage centrally from the cloud Enables subscription Users/data can be wiped remotely Remember that app which took 1 week to provision? we reduced it to 3 minutes delivered inside a cloudpaged container and no rocket scientists were needed

18 Dissecting a major use case

19 Parsons insights Dynamic Provisioning was key Different clusters of apps on different days (project dependent) Multiple versions of the same app (for compliance) Multiple locations around the world Including customer sites and in the field In the end they only needed 2 cloudpaging servers One for failover standardized on Win7 64 as base image on client side Saved $50M since going live with cloudpaging Just need 2-3 IT stuff to support 1000s of engineers License centralization & enforcement enabled maximization of license assets

20 Our Predictions Virtual and physical workstations will co-exist for a long time Enterprise application provisioning will be inside cloudpaged containers CAD/CAM ISVs themselves will start delivering their offerings in cloudpaged containers with SaaS ISV Licensing will evolve into cloud based live licensing Cloudpaging engine for containers will move into the hyper-visor in time will deliver VMs

21 It is all about the applications Delivered friction-free, IT-free and on-demand Cloudpaged App Containers Pixel Streams Cloudpaging Server (Admin, License & Paging) App Container Repository VMs VMs Virtual Desktops IT-Free Physical Desktops Virtual Desktops

22 Thank You The future will be cloudpaged the future is now Osman Kent Chairman, Co-Founder & CEO Numecent