Windows Virtualization Team Blog : Virtual Desktop Architecture

Announcing the availability of the updated Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Virtualization and System Center

vtango — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:03:00 GMT

Microsoft has a comprehensive portfolio of technologies when it comes to Virtualization ranging from Presentation Virtualization with Remote Desktop Services to Server Virtualization using Hyper-V with many more in between as below.

· Server Hardware Virtualization. Also known as a hypervisor, Server Hardware Virtualization runs a very lightweight core operating system. The hypervisor can host independent virtual machines (VMs). This form of virtualization requires hardware that has embedded virtualization awareness capabilities. Since the hypervisor is very lightweight, there is little overhead in the system, which allows for more scalability in the virtual machines.

· Server Software Virtualization. An operating system, such as Windows Server® 2003 or Windows Server 2008, runs an application that is able to host virtual machines. Each virtual machine runs a completely separate operating system and application set.

· Presentation Virtualization. Centralized systems host multiple user sessions, and all processing is done on those host systems. The user sessions are isolated from each other. Only the presentation information, such as keyboard and mouse inputs, and video updates are sent between the client and the host system. The client can be a full Windows-based workstation or a Windows-based terminal device.

· Application Virtualization. An application is isolated from the underlying operating system by means of wrapper software that encapsulates it. This allows multiple applications that may have conflicting dynamic link libraries (DLLs) or other incompatibilities to run on the same machine without affecting each other.

· Desktop Virtualization. This is similar to Server Software Virtualization, but it runs on client systems such as Windows Vista®. The client operating system runs a virtualization application that hosts virtual machines. This is often used when a specific person needs to run one or a limited number of legacy applications on a legacy operating system.

With the richness and breadth of these technologies, customers should evaluate their needs against the capabilities and solutions that each of the technologies is targeted at. The Solution Accelerators team has been working furiously to create guides for customers and we are really excited to announce the availability of the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Virtualization updated for Windows Server 2008 R2, which can help customers start their planning and deployment process for Virtualization using the Microsoft portfolio. With detailed documentation and simple flowcharts customers now have a powerful tool in their hands as they plan their deployments. Once the decision to go with a particular technology has been made, detailed guides are available for each of the technologies as well giving business decision makers, infrastructure stakeholders, and the organization as a whole a comprehensive tool for designing their virtual deployments.

As Tom Bittman from Gartner had said “Virtualization without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the first place”. Our System Center suite of products provide a full suite of management solutions for this environment and the Infrastructure and Planning Guides for System Center have been updated for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2.

Vijay Tewari

Principal Program Manager, Windows Server Virtualization

Microsoft’s new VDI licensing: VDI Suites

porourke — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:48:00 GMT

Hi, my name is Manlio Vecchiet, and I am a director of product management on the Windows Server marketing team. I'm in New Orleans right now attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), and wanted to update you on new licenses we’ll offer for hosted virtual desktops, or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

When deciding whether to implement or even pilot VDI, most customers look for technical integration of the key VDI building blocks:

· the hypervisor,

· management of the virtual machines and the (physical) VDI host,

· a brokering and remoting infrastructure, and

· an application delivery technology for dynamic provisioning of applications to virtual desktops.

But customers also look for a simple and cost-effective way to license this scenario, as they will compare the technical and business benefits of VDI with more traditional desktop deployment options, such as session-based desktops and rich clients. Today we introduced two new licenses for VDI – the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Standard Suite and the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premium Suite. These licenses make it simple for customers to purchase the comprehensive Microsoft VDI technologies while providing excellent value compared with competing VDI offerings. The new VDI suite licenses will be available via Microsoft volume licensing in calendar Q4.

This is a pretty big deal, so let me explain what we mean by comprehensive, simple and excellent value. First, both new offerings include licenses for all the key technology components mentioned above when used in a VDI scenario: Hyper-V Server, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, System Center Configuration Manager, System Center Operations Manager, Remote Desktop Services (CAL) and MDOP. The Premium VDI Suite even includes additional use rights for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as well as App-V for RDS, to enable mixed environments with not only VM-based remote desktops, but also session-based desktops and applications. With these two new offerings, the only additional license you will need to correctly license a VDI environment from Microsoft is Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop or VECD (you will need VECD even to deploy VDI on a non-Microsoft platform)

By now, you are probably wondering how the licensing of these new VDI Suites will work given their standalone components have very different license schemes. The two new VDI Suites are designed to match the VECD license (which is a device subscription), so the math has become very simple now: As with VECD, the number of VDI Suite licenses equals the total number of client devices that accesses the VDI environment. The subscription-based license will ensure that customers always have access to the latest versions of the software.

But now comes actually the best part. At only $21 per year per device, the VDI Standard Suite is about one-third the cost of a corresponding VMware View edition (the comparison is based on the cost of licenses and software maintenance over a five-year period, which many customers tell me that’s what they base their desktop infrastructure investments on). Similarly, our VDI Premium Suite is about half the price of the premier VMware VDI offering, and it also offers the capability to deploy session-based desktops and applications, in addition to VM-based desktops. And for those customers who are still missing a feature or need an enterprise-ready solution, you can add a 3^rd party connection broker for Hyper-V such as Citrix XenDesktop - and most likely still pay less than if you chose to deploy VMware. In fact, Citrix today announced continued alliance in the area of desktop virtualization.

If you would like to see a demo of Microsoft VDI solution running on Windows Server 2008 R2, please come to the Microsoft booth at WPC if you’re attending the conference. For all others, please post your comments in the section below.

Manlio

UPDATE: to answer morriswj's question. I'm excited, too, about this new single licensing for VDI’s server infrastructure, which will complement VECD for a VDI deployment. Regarding High Availability, it is included in MS Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (the no-cost, standalone hypervisor) and will therefore be available as part of the VDI Suite offering. No other license other than VDI Suite (Standard or Premium) and VECD will be required for a highly available VDI deployment.

UPDATE 2: I'm responding to the question from cstalhood, and the similar question in Brian Madden's post today. For session virtualization using WS08 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS), you don’t need the VECD license. The Premium VDI Suite license includes full rights of the RDS CAL, in addition to the other components for a VDI solution. The Premium VDI Suite license, when available in Q4, will be available as a device subscription, while RDS CAL (the new name for TS CAL) is available as a perpetual user or device license. After all, some customers don’t want to buy on a subscription basis.

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization now available via MDOP

porourke — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:36:00 GMT

It's great to see that MED-V is now available to customers with the new version of MS Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for customers with Software Assurance.

See Ran's post here. Following are excerpts from Ran's post:

MED-V provides deployment and management of virtual Windows desktops to enable key enterprise scenarios. MED-V 1.0 helps enterprises upgrade to the latest version of Windows even when some applications are not yet compatible. MED-V builds on top of Microsoft Virtual PC to run two operating systems on one device, adding virtual image delivery, policy-based provisioning and centralized management.

A recent brief by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) emphasized some of the customer benefits of using MED-V: "We found that MED-V really solved our application compatibility problems. It allowed us to deploy the applications that we were having difficulty with, where third party vendors were not providing a supported version. Where we used to have hundreds of images, we were able to move to one [Windows] Vista image, and use MED-V to deploy [legacy] applications on top of that," said IT Deployment Manger at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, an organization of 22,000 staff members.

"We are really happy with MED-V. We can virtualize the applications that are made only for XP, and they work fine, with all the functionality intact," said a large European telecommunications company with almost 80,000 employees.

For a look-back at Kidaro's perspective prior to acquisition being completed, watch this interview with Kidaro CEO from May 2008, or listen to this podcast from February 2008. We announced the acquisition in March 2008, about 18 months after Kidaro announced their first desktop virtualization product.

Two other items caught my eye.

Ran's post said there are 14.4 million MDOP customers. There were 4.5 million seats in March 2008 according to my blog post. Wow, that's something. Wonder what the SA haters will say about that?
The new version of MDOP includes the update to App-V 4.5, which adds support for Windows 7 beta. See Karri's post here.

Patrick

New VDI, Management Technology Announced

porourke — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:17:00 GMT

A few items to call out.

First up is Manlio's post about the renaming of Terminal Services - it'll be known as Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 -- and the new VDI features. Here's an excerpt:

The key here is that RDS in Windows Server 2008 R2 makes the new server OS the ideal platform for companies to implement a centralized desktop strategy and for partners to provide additional innovation. It introduces the new Remote Desktop Connection Broker – an expansion of the Session Broker in Windows Server 2008 – which provides the administrator with a unified experience for setting up user access to both virtualized desktops (running as a full Windows client OS on top of Microsoft’s virtualization infrastructure) and traditional session-based remote desktops. Together with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, the Remote Desktop Connection Broker enables a VDI solution for low-complexity, departmental environments, and a platform for partners who are delivering rich, extensible solutions where heterogeneous client support is a prerequisite, and when enhanced management and scalability is a requirement. The Remote Desktop Connection Broker it complements other, shared RDS infrastructure components in Windows Server 2008, such as Remote Desktop Web Access or Remote Desktop Gateway. With the Remote Desktop Connection Broker, partners will find an extensive set of APIs that will allow them to continue innovation and deliver added value to customers.

Second, over at the System Center team blog, Paul announced the beta of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Check out the video with Barry Shilmover. Here's an excerpt:

The beta itself will include a number of enhancements including the cross platform capabilities that we originally released as separate beta at MMS earlier this year, some enhanced service level monitoring reports and dashboards, and a number of UI improvements that include a new version of the management pack authoring console. Combined these will provide a lot of opportunities for organizations to make their data center and server management activities more cost effective and efficient.

Last item is a recent CRN magazine interview with Microsoft GM Mike Neil (who's blogged here before). It's about 6 minutes long. See below or go here.

Patrick

Rationalizing a Virtual Desktop Architecture

porourke — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Hi, my name is Manlio Vecchiet, and I am a group product manager in the Windows Server marketing group at Microsoft.

I am on my way back from Interop where I participated in an industry panel about Virtual Desktop Architecture. I was joined by VMware, Citrix and Qumranet. I enjoyed discussing Microsoft’s approach and all the great work we are doing on this scenario.

Just as a level-setting since the taxonomy and terminology is still emerging in the space, Virtual Desktop Architecture was defined as the storage and execution of a desktop workload (OS, apps, data) on a virtual machine in the datacenter and the presentation of the UI via a remote desktop protocol (such as RDP) to user devices such as thin and rich clients. Other terms used in the industry are VDI, server-hosted desktop virtualization and desktop delivery. Yes… we really need to come to some agreement in the industryJ.

First of all, server-based client computing and centralized desktops are of course not new to Microsoft – Windows Terminal Services has been delivering centralized desktops and applications for more than twelve years, and many IT departments today are enjoying the proven benefits of this mature technology.

What is new, however, is the unprecedented interest in server-based client computing, and the availability of a new virtualization infrastructure that creates different technical implementation possibilities. Advances in all forms of virtualization as well as specific business problems, such as ensuring greater levels of data privacy, reducing the cost of desktop management and improving disaster recovery processes, are driving the interest in new models of client computing within the enterprise.

Deciding on the right desktop delivery strategy and the right technologies and tools to implement is not an easy task. Enterprise IT departments need to be able to respond to the various computing needs of their entire user base, and so they have to be able to choose from a full spectrum of client computing options from full rich PCs to thin clients and centralized Windows Vista/XP, and everything in between. There is no “one size fits all” model for optimizing the delivery of a modern enterprise desktop to a broad variety of information workers.

Companies with a centralized desktop strategy effectively have a choice between a terminal server-based architecture and a hypervisor-based (VDI) architecture to deliver data center-hosted enterprise desktops. Terminal services is an integrated part of Windows Server that takes advantage of the multi-user capabilities of the OS allowing IT to create multiple, locked-down user sessions sharing a single image of the server OS. VDI is actually quite similar to terminal services except that a full client environment is virtualized within a server-based hypervisor instead of a light-weight session. In either case, the desktop is accessed by the end user via a remote desktop protocol such as RDP.

While the terminal services model is proven, mature, extremely scalable and cost-effective, not all applications are compatible with the session concept. Furthermore, many users demand higher levels of desktop customizability than terminal services supports. In contrast, with VDI users are able to get a complete desktop experience (including full admin rights), and applications will run just fine as they are running on top of a standard client OS. However, VDI is still an emerging technology which is less scalable, requires more server hardware resources and introduces additional management complexity compared with a terminal services approach.

I should point out here that Microsoft’s offering for VDI includes a management solution with System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which complements Hyper-V as the hypervisor and RDP as the remoting technology for VDI. And for optimal manageability of a virtual desktop, applications can be provisioned and updated either by streaming applications to the virtual desktop on-demand (with Microsoft Application Virtualization), or with the Terminal Services RemoteApp feature which remotes specific applications to the virtual desktop via RDP.

Partners are also building on this infrastructure delivering end to end customer value. While I was speaking in the Interop panel, on the other side of the Las Vegas strip at Microsoft Management Summit, Citrix demoed a version of XenDesktop (their VDI product) running on Hyper-V and SCVMM. I am very excited that, with our Citrix partnership, we can offer a leading end-to-end VDI solution based on the Microsoft Hyper-V infrastructure, with common management for physical and virtual environments alike through the System Center line of products.

Centralized desktops, including virtual desktop architectures have a firm place in the ‘arsenal of weapons’ enterprise IT can choose from to best respond to the needs of specific users. At the same time we probably won’t see large production deployments of virtual desktops until some of the hard problems such as the provisioning of personalized virtual desktop images and the user experience over a remote protocol are addressed. In fact, I believe that Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Calista Technologies is proof that investments into areas such as improving the remote user experience are both necessary and instrumental in accelerating broad adoption of virtual desktops.

Virtual desktop architectures have caught the eye of corporate IT, and for a good reason. The technology is only emerging, and there are still many challenges around implementing and managing a virtual desktop environment. But the promise of VDI is real, and the payoffs of a rationalized implementation are potentially huge. So let’s enjoy the ride!

-Manlio Vecchiet