VDI post on Madden: good observations, different conclusions

Last month, I predicted that VDI will be just a niche play as the cloud matures. Yesterday Brian Madden posted a dramatically different perspective about the extent to which VDI will penetrate computing.

This perspective was not his own, but he thought it interesting enough to write about it. The problem though is that although the observations are reasonable, the conclusions are awful.

Let's look at specific examples.

First, the post notes that computing is changing rapidly, and of course I agree. More apps are moving toward the cloud for simplicity and portability reasons. The apps that will be left behind are rich applications that require local execution. The problem with VDI in this scenario is that you get the worst of both worlds: you get neither the simplicity of the cloud app, nor the functionality of a local app. It just doesn’t make sense to take your fat desktop and stick it into the cloud (except in niche scenarios), since VDI will only become more cumbersome as the cloud matures.

A second observation in the post invokes Moore’s law, saying that as servers become better and cheaper, the cost of VDI will drop. This might be true if users continue to use the same applications, but that’s not how computing works. Applications will continue to expand and consume the additional server bandwidth, negating any savings from Moore’s law.

Thirdly, the post goes on to describe deployment models. The primary pain point that desktop virtualization solves is desktop deployment and centralized management. With a client-based solution, IT can provision an additional VM simply by publishing an html link and sending an email. It’s cheaper, faster, and more resilient than provisioning additional boxes in the datacenter, as you do with VDI.

The post also completely ignores some fundamental issues with VDI. For example, a defining characteristic of VDI is the pooling of resources in the datacenter, but the downside to pooling is that you are magnifying the risks and complexity of desktops—the classic “eggs in one basket” problem. With VDI, you are taking inherently resilient, distributed desktops and turning them into a highly concentrated system that is vulnerable to malfunction. With VDI, if the system goes down, all your desktops go down. A related problem is that IT has to over-provision in order to prepare for peak capacity (e.g., 9:00am on Monday morning). But it’s difficult to predict group behavior, and your “over-provisioning” may prove inadequate, anyway.

Finally, the post fails to address Madden’s own Offline Paradox. Offline capability is at the core of VDI’s shortcomings. There are many times when a user finds himself without an Internet connection, such as on a plane or when the connection goes down for whatever reason. With VDI, users without a connection are unable to access their virtual desktops. This is a key area where a client-based approach excels.

What do you think the future holds? Will virtual desktops live in the datacenter or on the host machine?

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products and Marketing

MokaFive 2.0 now available!

It's is a big week for the team here at MokaFive. As many of you know, MokaFive started as a project at Stanford to use virtual machines to make it easier to manage desktops. A little over a year ago we released our 1.0 product, which was a hosted solution. We got a lot of positive feedback from customers about our 1.0 product, but the number one customer request was to provide the capability to run the MokaFive service in-house.

So this week, we announced 2.0! The 2.0 technology comes in the form of an enterprise-ready Desktop-as-a-Solution platform: MokaFive Suite. With 2.0, you can install and run MokaFive Suite in your data center, behind your firewall, and serve your end-point clients without depending on us. You can integrate with all your existing management solutions. You are in total control.

Enterprise computing is reaching a turning point right now as desktop virtualization technologies mature - answering business challenges that haven't been solved before. Our customers are innovating with the quick to deploy MokaFive Suite, taking advantage of mass user-customization, policy-based security. We will share detail of how different businesses (across healthcare, legal, finance, other professional service companies) are solving their challenges - and the benefits they have achieved.

We have also added some exciting new capabilities on the client side. For a long time, we have been working behind the scenes on a new layering technology that dramatically changes the way you can deploy and manage virtual desktops. This technology allows you to separate the machine into layers that can be independently managed and updated. Among other things, you can now allow users to install their own applications, while you can still manage and update a single golden image. That's right, your users can install any applications (even kernel drivers) and they will persist across rejuvenation and updates, as long as you set the policy to allow them to do so. This is a major breakthrough and one of the biggest barriers to widespread adoption of desktop virtualization, and MokaFive is the only solution on the market today that gives you that ability.

We also re-designed the client and it is now using a new disk format. The new format is much more reliable and has better performance, especially if you are running a LivePC off of a USB flash drive that can be suddenly removed. Users running v1.x LivePCs will need to manually migrate to 2.0 to take advantage of the new features. The migration process is pretty straightforward. Export the LivePC with v1.x Creator and then import it using the v2.0 Creator. Here is a detailed document to walk you through it [link]. Let us know if you need help.

Stay in touch with the MokaFive blog for information and perspective on the concerns and trends related to the modernization of enterprise desktop computing. We invite your feedback, questions and opinions - starting with the announcement of MokaFive Suite.

If you're on Twitter, follow us at http://twitter.com/MokaFive

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.