1 Overview 1. Who are the key desktop and application stakeholders within your organization? What areas of responsibility do each cover (workflows, coverage, 24/7 staff members are good to identify at this stage)? 2. Who is the project sponsor? Who is the project manager? 3. What are the primary business drivers behind the virtualization assessment effort? 4. What are the Security drivers behind your virtualization strategies and efforts? 5. In terms of benefits you hope to achieve from any desktop or application virtualization strategy, which ones, in order of importance, count: Manageability Scalability Reliability Interoperability Recoverability Security 6. What desktop systems, or specific users, or user groups do you think are the ideal candidates for desktop virtualization? 7. What desktop users, or groups of users, are the most difficult to manage today? Which ones are most exposed for security risks? Which ones must have the most uptime? Which ones do executives use? 8. Do you have multiple help desk or support teams dedicated to groups of users or desktops? If so, what is their desktop support strategy or work flow today when the help desk phone rings? 9. Are there critical security requirements for your desktop and laptop computers? Are you subject to any State, Local, or Federal compliance and regulations? Do you have a written security, compliance, or USEAGE Document in place? Do end users sign it?
2 Details of your organization s desktop usage 2.1 Financial Elements to complete TCO/ROI 1. How many desktops do you own / manage? 2. Does your virtualization strategy consider re-using your existing desktops as end points, or, do you want to explore thin clients? 3. What is the average hourly burdened labor rate for IT? 4. Do you pay overtime for help desk or support, or outsourced support? 5. What is the average annual increase in salaries anticipated over next 3 years? 6. What is the adjustment that should be made for any soft (indirect) benefits? 7. What discount rate should be used for net present value (NPV) calculations? 8. What is the current average existing desktop acquisition cost (hardware and operating system) per machine? 9. How long are your machines ON per day? 10. What percentage of the time is a typical users machine DOWN reboot, blue screen, etc? 11. How many hours per year per desktop (estimate) do you spend on each of the following: a. User Changes (adds, moves, etc) b. Hardware Configuration c. Software Distribution and Support d. Backup and Anti-virus?
2.2 Desktop 2.2.1 Inventory 1. Do you have an accurate and complete and current desktop asset inventory? a. Is your inventory divided by lines of business, departments, other? b. Does your inventory include applications installed? How about applications used? 2. Do you own thin client devices? Do you, or have you used them for TS? 3. What operating systems are you using on your desktops today? What is the next operating system you anticipate migrating to? 4. What Operating System and Microsoft Office licensing do you have today (Volume, OEM, etc)? Are you covered under an Enterprise Agreement or Software Assurance? Are you covered under VECD (Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop)? 2.2.2 Applications 1. Do any of your applications have any specialized licensing requirements? (i.e., use of a dongle or license tied to a MAC address) 2. Do you use any application virtualization? 3. Do you use electronic software distribution? [sms, landesk, system center, Unicenter] 4. Do any of your applications require an old or out of support operating sytem? 5. Is VoIP integrated into any of your applications? Does your CRM use a DIALER? 6. How many users utilize powerful Graphics Cards? 7. Do any of your applications require specialized peripherals? 8. Do you use Citrix, XenAPP, or are you currently using other server based computing (i.e., Microsoft Terminal Services) to deliver / stream applications to your users?
2.2.3 Management 1. How do you map, do you map, network printers? 2. Do users have local admin rights on their desktops and can they save documents and files to their local hard drives, or, usb sticks, external hard drives? 3. What method do you use to manage desktop patching and updates? 4. Do you have a Directory File System implementation? If so, what do your users use it for? 5. Do users have their own home directories? Are these backed up? When? How? 6. Do you have any utilization reporting or monitoring software user desktops? 7. Do you conduct folder redirection for desktops? 8. Are there special security requirements? Do you use 2 nd, 3 rd Factor Authentication for LAN, WAN, Remote users? VPN, SSL-VPN, etc 9. What aspects of your existing desktop environment are not performing, or managed in and ideal way that you would like to change? 2.2.4 Utilization 1. What does the day of a typical desktop, AND laptop user look like? Do they login in the morning, use their systems, logoff, turn off, and leave? 2. Do laptop and remote users have access to organizations resources while remote? Do you offer 24/7 support? 3. Do you have call centers, kiosks, or instances of multiple users logging into desktops? 4. Do some, or all, of your users require access to applications, data, etc at all hours of the day? 5. Do you employ contract workers who require access to their desktops either locally or remotely? Do you provision for them company owned assets? What do you do upon contract completion / termination? 6. Do all of your users have active directory accounts? Do all users, some users, require certain and differing levels of personalization?
2.3 Network 1. Do you use any Load Balancers within your organization? 2. What is the bandwith to the desktop today? What is the bandwith to your remote, branch, home users? Do you own, pay for, or support these external links? 3. Do you monitor network utilization? What do you use? 4. Explain your use of Firewalls for end users, both internal, within the OS, and external. 5. Are users connected via a Wide Area Network either as their primary office location, or, on occasion? a. Number and location of users b. Bandwith and Latency to these end points [if known]? c. Average utilization for these links? Any reported slowness? 6. Do your users require access to their desktops via the internet? 2.4 Infrastructure 1. Are you currently using virtualization today? Which hypervisor, version, and levels? 2. How many Hosts do you have in place? How many planned? 3. How many Citrix or Terminal Services Servers do you have in place? 4. How many users per? Total? 5. Do you have any virtual desktop in Pilot of P.O.C? a. Which connection broker are you using? 6. Do you have iscsi, Fiber Channel, or NFS storage in your data center? 7. Do you have storage capacity to spare, and how much? Do you intend to leverage this storage for virtual desktops? 8. What is the cost per gigabyte for the storage you expect to use for virtual desktops? 9. Do you have storage service level agreements (SLAs) that dictate a certain SAN architecture? 10. How do you back your desktops, physical servers, virtual servers, or virtual desktops (or all) today? Would you like to? 11. What else can you tell us about your infrastructure that could be important?
Document History Revision History Date Author Version Change reference 7/12/10 G.Bule.1 Initial draft for review/discussion Reviewers Name Version approved Position Date