VMware elevates its desktop virtualization view

Although VMware got its start with a desktop virtualization product aimed at developers, the company today is best known for bringing server virtualization to the mainstream.

Creating multiple virtual servers on a single physical system lets IT departments consolidate applications onto fewer computers and thereby cut costs. Over time, server virtualization has also enabled a variety of products and approaches that can simplify IT operations and generally make data centers more flexible.

VMware has continued to invest in virtualization aimed at the client. This includes client-side hypervisors such as its original VMware Workstation product. However, products and technologies associated with delivering applications and user desktops to the client are really the main focus.

Application and desktop delivery sometimes makes use of client hypervisors but it's a largely separate category of technology that's fundamentally about centrally managing user applications and/or operating-system images. In VMware's case, virtualized desktops fall under the VMware View name.

On Monday, VMware announced VMware View 4, the latest version of its virtual desktop portfolio.

Much of VMware's development focus with View 4 was in the area of the user experience--that is, making applications and desktops delivered from a central location perform with the same responsiveness and fidelity as if they were installed on a local PC, in the usual way.

Historically, this user experience has been one of the stumbling blocks for desktop virtualization in general. Older forms of Citrix Presentation Server (now rebadged and modernized under the XenApp label) and initial virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementations very much tried to simplify management and otherwise deliver direct benefits for IT operations. Whether users liked using the products was secondary.

As a result, desktop virtualization has been mostly something used by what are often called "task workers." Think call centers and other groups of users with specific jobs to do and not much say about the tools they use to do it. In general, desktop virtualization promoters have focused too much on delivering benefits to IT and not enough on delivering benefits to users. (They've also arguably paid too little attention to keeping up-front costs down and relied too much on promises of soft cost savings down the road.)

One of the technology pieces that VMware is leaning on to improve user experience is the PC over Internet Protocol (PCoIP). PCoIP was originally developed by Teradici to improve the responsiveness and display quality of virtual desktops. However, in Teradici's initial implementation, specialized hardware was needed on both ends of the wire. This effectively made it a premium solution for situations in which cost wasn't a factor, such as for financial traders and government agencies for which security considerations are paramount.

VMware has worked with Teradici to create a software-only version of the protocol. Desktop virtualization Chief Technology Officer Scott Davis goes into a lot of the details on his blog.

It's a User Datagram Protocol-based server-side protocol that transmits compressed bitmaps or frames to the remote client. This has the advantage of being able to make real-time adjustments to account for the available bandwidth and latency of the communications channel; the display quality degrades, if there isn't enough bandwidth but things still "work."

Although details differ, there are similarities to Sun's Appliance Link Protocol--which is well-regarded for its ability to deal with poor-quality connections. (A downside of server-side protocols is that they consume processing horsepower on the server, where it tends to be more expensive, rather than on the client.)

VMware will continue to support other remote display protocols, most notably Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol. However, VMware is clearly positioning PCoIP as its favored technology and a point of competitive differentiation for VMware View in general.

Also in the graphics area, View 4 adds "multimonitor, adaptive display support--resolution optimization for each monitor, with an option to pivot and rotate the display output, supporting rich audio and video content with increased performance."

Other user experience enhancements generally relate to better integration with the overall desktop environment. For example, View Printing automatically discovers local printers without the need to install print drivers. View Limited Access provides a single point of authentication across VMware View environments, Windows Terminal Servers, Blade PCs, and remote physical PCs.

VMware View 4 comes in two editions. The Enterprise Edition includes the basics: VSphere 4 (the back-end server virtualization product), VCenter 4 (management), and View Manager 4 (for provisioning user access). It's priced at $150 per concurrent connection.

The $250-per-concurrent-user Premier Edition adds ThinApp 4 (for delivering ad hoc applications that aren't part of a master image) and View Composer (for managing images), both capabilities that would typically be desired in a large or sophisticated deployment.

VMware as a whole approaches the world from the perspective of the enterprise data center. Delivering desktops from that data center was somewhat of a sideshow. Is it now as focused on application delivery as, say, Citrix? Not really. But that said, desktop virtualization has moved beyond the sideshow stage at VMware.

[Random_Walk]

"VMware as a whole approaches the world from the perspective of the enterprise data center. Delivering desktops from that data center was somewhat of a sideshow. Is it now as focused on application delivery as, say, Citrix? Not really. But that said, desktop virtualization has moved beyond the sideshow stage at VMware."

Dunno... we run both Citrix and VMWare View (3.5) here, and to be honest, each has their strengths. For most thin client and production deployments, VDI rules - you can't beat having the full separation of processes right down to the (virtual) basement of the stack, and a metric ******** of automated DR and load-balancing features. OTOH, for certain user apps and the licensing thereof, Citrix is still holding up as a decent, though almost-as-expensive solution.

It's good to see some competition against Citrix, though - I lost count of all the times I've had to sit with some arrogant sales droid or tech rep, all due to a lack of a better (and working) solution. They had us in a vise back then and they knew it. Their answer to nearly every support call used to involve writing a purchase request for more stuff.

Nowadays, the Citrix reps are practically begging us to use their wares, we've seen some hellishly nice price slashings over the past year. There's more Citrix-bourne chapstick on my backside than pants cloth some days. :)

It was amazing how fast their attitude turned around once I informed them that the VDI pilot had gone to full production, and that I needed to cut back the number of Citrix user licenses/ back-end support hours by roughly 75% for the next contract cycle, and down to 10% of original after that.

[ghaff]

Competition tends to be a good thing if you're the buyer :-)

My comment at the end wasn't intended as an evaluation of the relative merits of the two companies' product but rather how they view themselves strategically. And, as far as VDI is concerned, as you probably know, with XenDesktop, Citrix has added a lot in that space. By "application delivery" I was intending to refer to both individual apps and the deliver of multiple apps embedded in an OS image.

The terminology is unfortunately very messy.

[Random_Walk]

"The terminology is unfortunately very messy."

Too true - much thanks for the clarification. :)

I guess the biggest allures of VDI for me were three-fold:

* I already had VMWare-based farms, so adding this one was easy to pitch, test, and implement.
* the pricing is relatively sane by comparison.
* Not much new to learn - I was even able to hand off the day-to-day operations of VDI to the junior admins once it was set up and tweaked.

The biggest benefit I've seen has to do with the little Panologic devices - those things (as well as the new nComputing ones I'm testing out) are frickin' awesome from an operations standpoint. They're cheaper than thin clients, no local OS to support (if something goes wrong with one, you pitch it and stick in a new one), no fans to suck in carbide dust (in certain areas of our facilities), and they still only (each) eat the approximate bandwidth of two RDP sessions (which is something I can live with, considering our 10gE backbones and gigabit server room speeds). To top it off, w/ VDI I could keep my existing pile of HP-based thin clients as well, but rig them to simply boot and grab an image automatically.

Now Citrix has an advantage of being (somewhat) lighter on the bandwidth, but its complexity keeps daily care/feeding among the senior admins and still costs a bit more. The web-based portion is still nice, though...

[shellcodes_coder]

VMware Workstation 7 rocks

[Random_Walk]

Yes it does, but the VDI offline desktop rocks even more ;)