VMWare View 4.5 Deployments

This is the first of many posts coming on VMWare View 4.5 deployments. First, some background around this Blog site and my history around Virtual Desktop architectures.

1) I have been working on the display rendered Virtual Desktop (New age VDI) for the past 4 years.
2) I have deployed VMWare View 2.x to 4.5 at this point
3) I have deployed XenDesktop 2-4 (not too successfully)
4) I have published several white papers that I will post discussing architectures and best practices, that VMWare and Citrix does not let you in on:)

So, with that said, I have been in the process of building several 100+ VDI deployments around View 4.5. (Since most of the VDI deployments these days are still pilots and not too many in production...the technology is now finally ready for prime time)

The foundation of these deployments is the focus on user profiles and not so much on the architecture. I strive to have a architecture that is manageable, scalable, reproducible and predictable (sorry Citrix XenDesktop). The big question comes down to cost. For a 1000 seat VDI deployment, the overall cost is about $700K, or $700 per desktop. That is about the same for traditional physical desktops. However, I can support 1500-3000 (even more on the academic model) users for 1000 virtual desktops, single golden image, end user profile management, follow me desktops, kick ass security and 1 full time engineer to support environment!!!!.

Intrigued? Stay tuned for more since it is very late tonight and I will be posting several documents, blogs, etc around this technology.

Later,

Superdave