Microsoft VDI & MED-V

Whilst Microsoft seem to have published a lot of corporate vision statements about their VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) vision, they don’t actually seem to provide much in the way of technical roadmaps. As I am currently looking to deploy a full VDI, this is something I have been looking into closely, and here are some of my conclusions.

What we are looking to achieve; is a full desktop experience from a remote location. Ideally, this should be via a web browser, on any remote PC. The application for this is to allow staff to work from home or whilst on the move.
Currently a member of staff sits at their desk, and logs into an XP machine, and is presented with the pre-defined desktop, along with their redirected 'My Documents', their home area, and any crucial settings which we might choose to deploy. Of course they also have the core set of software such as Office, and MIS applications. What we want is an identical experience (or as near as possible) from a remote PC.

Microsoft's "vision" for this identifies several of their key technologies for this. Virtual Machine Manager, the System Centre Suite and Server 2008 Terminal Services. What they don’t yet seem to have is a way to put all this together to produce a working solution.

So what are the possible ways forward?

• Create a virtual PC for each member of staff who requires working from home, set the PC identical to the way any other staff PC is configured, and simply allow staff to Remote Desktop into the PC using ‘Remote Desktop. The PROS of this solution are that it’s simple to configure, and pretty much fool proof for the user. The cons are that it requires potentially a vast number of VMs, and systems management

• Allow staff to Remote Desktop into their own physical PC. PROS even easier to setup. CONS requires workstations to be left powered on, 110% chance of it not being workable!

• Use scripted HyperV, via the Virtual Machine Manager web portal, and powershell, to create VMs on the fly to start them up & shut them down according to usage. PROS sleek and sexy. CONS very complex to setup, potential for huge number of VMs

• Use Virtual Machine Manager / Hyper-v with Citrix. PROS Seems to have a reasonable amount of backing from MS partners. CONS Expensive, expensive & expensive!

We may have to revisit some of the above, but currently the leader is none of the above....it’s a product called MED-V which is currently in BETA. It’s another product “acquired” by M$ in a similar way to softgrid, so I can only assume it will become part of the System Centre Suite very soon.

The way it works (in principal) is that you create a Virtual PC (using Virtual PC 2007), and configure it as required. You then upload this to the Med-V server, which in turn clones it for clients over the net when the log onto the MedV server. This gives the user what appears as a virtual PC running on their desktop.... when running in full screen mode you are essentially sat in the office.
Obviously the setup is a little more complex as IP addressing, DNS and Active Directory all come into play to prevent conflicts, but the MED-V product does work... flawlessly so far once setup.

There are cons however. It requires a small client on the users machine, and the first time the user connects it takes an index of the users local PC. This is to reduce the amount of traffic which MEDV uses during connection. i.e. if you have a file called wibble.dll on your local pc, it won’t bother dragging it over your 500k connection every time a MEDV session requires it. This initial index takes a good 30 minutes on average. After that the user can expect to connect in the same time it takes to boot up a virtual PC.

Support for MEDV is currently non-existent, and you can expect to do a lot of self research if you are going to evaluate it. The setup process is complex and requires 2 server and at least 2 workstations, plus a virtual PC. I’m looking forward to an official release date, but with a bit of luck e may deploy the BETA to test users within a couple of months.