Virtualization: Hype vs Reality, Part II

And we’re back with Part II of our series on what is hype and what is reality when it comes virtualization. Here is our perspective on two more topics that are getting a lot of play lately:

Reality: Virtualization is cheaper than other traditional infrastructures

Obviously a major issue for anyone in any industry right now is cost. People are looking to save money in every way they can. In light of this, many vendors in the virtualization space are chiming in about how their products and solutions can help you cut costs. Is this true? For the most part yes. BUT it’s not quite so black and white, so let’s break it down.

A desktop virtualization deployment can save you money in terms of management and support, but it can potentially be more expensive than a traditional deployment – it all depends on how it you approach it.

Right off the bat a VDI deployment costs 20-30% more from a CAPEX perspective than a traditional physical desktop deployment. However, once it’s up and running the deployment can make it much easier and cheaper to manage your IT infrastructure in the long run, *if* you do it right.

• For instance, if you go with the model of creating one image for each user, the deployment will not scale and it will end up being just as expensive to store and manage the virtual desktops as it would in a traditional physical desktop deployment, if not more expensive.


• To achieve real cost savings and make up the CAPEX expenditure, you need to leverage virtualization to make IT more scalable. What does this mean? Creating one golden image that goes out to all of your users or to large groups of users.

Hype: Remote display is the way to go

Remote display can work well, but only in very specific environments.

• Remote desktop is fast over LAN, but slow over thin pipes.


• Gigabit LAN to the server can achieve speeds nearly indistinguishable from local execution but at a much higher cost.


• Low-latency WAN connections can get acceptable performance but only if
  they are not using any graphically intensive applications.


• High-latency WAN connections are not viable for real-world usage.

Basically what it comes down to is that there are fundamental limitations to the interactive performance of applications across low bandwidth and high latency links, and we are getting close to the limit. Remote desktop just does not work well over wireless networks or on laptops.

So what do we recommend? For applications that require a high refresh rate or rich graphics, a locally executed solution is always going to offer the best performance, no matter what. Remote execution will always face speed of light limitations even with the fastest of connections.