Desktop virtualisation will become ubiquitous

Ever since I first heard about a client side hyper visor back in 2008 (I happened to hear it from VMWare first), I have been excited and anxious for the technology to be ready for mainstream use. I strongly believe that client hyper visors will be the thing that makes desktop virtualisation – in all it’s forms – become common place.

Centralised Virtual Desktops

Centralised Virtual Desktops (or Virtual Desktops hosted on central Infrastructure – VDI) have a range of benefits today.  For a start, most VDI implementations force you to separate the OS, from the apps, from the user data and settings. That in itself provides greater flexibility and more granular options for quick troubleshooting and repair (each layer can be treated separately by IT). And the fact that the virtual desktops are usually hosted in a central data centre that is “near” the data and application back-ends enables much of the layering to work efficiently, and can provide a better user experience in some cases for remote offices/home workers. And of course it also allows orgainisations to control their data and applications more closely – they never leave their network.

However, the number of VDI implementations in the world are relatively small. When many of my customers have looked to implement VDI solutions, they have found it doesn’t suite the requirements of the whole organisation. Now to be clear, I have nothing against VDI – in fact I think virtual desktops are great! Problem is, many people still have really valid reasons why centralised (or remote) virtual desktops aren’t always what they need.

Distributed Virtual Desktops

And that’s where client side hyper visors come in.  Client hyper visors will allow the virtual desktop to be run on user hardware (like a laptop), rather than on centralised servers. So it can be run offline, and you don’t have the constraints that remote video/audio imply.

So what is good about the client OS running virtually? Essentially, it’s about abstraction of the OS from the hardware. Once we have decoupled the OS, it becomes really easy to take snapshots, incremental backups, restore those snapshots/backups, or move the computer to new hardware. And speaking of moving the OS to new hardware – we should expect that most of the client hyper visors will have the ability to sync changes made locally up to a central copy, so that you can actually run that same environment from a variety of devices.  When you log off your computer at work, all changes are sync’d up to the network, so you can use the same virtual machine remotely from home  – this time running from a server hyper visor in your data centre – or in someone else’s data center on the internet (in the cloud). And changes made from home will be sync’d back down to your work computer when you turn it on next. Or if you loose your laptop and get a new one, then the whole virtual machine will be downloaded and you will be right where you left off.

The other great advantage of the client OS running virtually is that you can run multiple client OS’ at the same time – without any one of them being the ‘master’ or host. A typical example the vendors are talking about is running a personal desktop and work desktop. But there are many other scenarios, like different SOE versions, test machines, developer machines, etc.

Management

Both Citrix and VMware recognise the need for the client hyper visors to have management capabilities – these will be crucial to the successful adoption of client side desktop virtualisation. IT departments will need to be able to manage OS assignment, push, and sync. And controlling which devices/storage/networks the various virtual machines have access to will be critical in controlling the security and reliability of the environment.

After the market matures a little, the exact type of hyper-visor implemented will not be the major factor when choosing a client hyper-visor vendor. Instead, the  management capability, third party extension/plugin model, and integration with existing systems and processes (e.g. Microsoft Configuration Manager and Active Directory) will be the key differentiators orgainisations will be considering when choosing a product set.