Here, I discuss HP’s innovative client virtualization solutions for both small and medium businesses, and large enterprises.
Introduction 3 Chapter 5: Nine Client
Virtualization Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
I give you some hints on how to avoid mistakes.
Appendix: Additional Resources for Client Virtualization
The appendix provides additional Internet resources to help answer all your client virtualization questions!
Icons Used in This Book
Throughout this book, you occasionally see special icons that call attention to important information. You won’t find smiley faces winking at you or any other cute little emoticons, but you’ll definitely want to take note! Here’s what you can expect.
This icon points out information that may well be worth com-mitting to your nonvolatile memory, your gray matter, or your noggin — along with anniversaries and birthdays!
You won’t discover a map of the human genome or the blue-prints for the International Space Station here (or maybe you will, hmm), but if you seek to attain the seventh level of NERD-vana, perk up! This icon explains the jargon beneath the jargon and is the stuff legends — well, nerds — are made of!
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the book, please take care of your writers! Seriously, this icon points out helpful suggestions and useful nuggets of information.
Proceed at your own risk . . . well, okay — it’s actually nothing that hazardous. These helpful alerts offer practical advice to help you avoid making potentially costly mistakes.
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Where to Go from Here
If you don’t know where you’re going, any chapter will get you there — but Chapter 1 might be a good place to start!
However, if you see a particular topic that piques your inter-est, feel free to jump ahead to that chapter. Each chapter is individually wrapped (but not packaged for individual sale) and written to stand on its own, so feel free to start reading anywhere and skip around! Read this book in any order that suits you (though I don’t recommend upside down or backwards).
Chapter 1
Client Virtualization Basics
In This Chapter
▶ Understanding client virtualization
▶ Recognizing BYOD and flexwork trends
V
irtualization is one of the hottest and most disruptive technologies of the past decade and continues to be so.Many organizations have already adopted server virtualiza-tion in their data centers — in fact, Gartner estimates that close to 50 percent of all x86 server workloads are virtualized today, and that more than two-thirds of all x86 servers will be virtualized in the next three years! For organizations that are already realizing the many business and operational benefits of server virtualization, client virtualization is often the next logical step on their virtualization journey. Be aware, though, that client virtualization has its own rules and don’t assume it will be just like server virtualization.
This chapter explains client virtualization, its potential bene-fits for organizations of all sizes and types, and several trends that are driving the need for client virtualization.
What Is Client Virtualization?
Virtualization technology partitions a single physical server into multiple host environments (consisting of operating sys-tems and applications), thereby emulating multiple servers or client devices.
Some of the most popular client virtualization software products today include Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and VMware View.
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A key component of virtualization technology is the hypervisor.
The hypervisor is a layer of software between the hardware kernel and the computer OS that allocates memory and pro-cessing resources to virtual clients, allowing multiple virtual clients to run concurrently on a single physical server. Users can then access virtual clients from practically any number of client devices, including desktop computers and mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones, and laptops.
Why Virtualize Clients Now?
Due to the past decade’s challenging economic climate, many organizations have found it necessary to modify or abandon their typical three-year PC hardware refresh cycles. These organizations now face new challenges because they’re unable to deploy the latest operating systems and applications (are you still running Windows XP and Office 2003?), and worker productivity can suffer. However, a complete PC hardware refresh can be cost prohibitive, and the task of deploying new hardware and installing new applications daunting.
Although many organizations are continuing with a traditional thick client (a complete desktop PC with CPU, memory, hard drive, and peripheral devices) in their desktop environment, client virtualization is emerging as an ideal solution to the refresh challenge. However, client virtualization is much more than just a desktop replacement strategy. It is a means to address key pain points that the current PC environment isn’t well suited to solve, including the following:
✓ User needs
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• Unmanaged endpoints
• Operating System (OS) migration (for example, Windows 7/8)
The most common reasons for adopting client virtualization today include the following:
✓ Enhance worker productivity: Anywhere, anytime, and any device with secure mobility
✓ Control costs: Delay costly end-device refresh cycles and reduce support costs
✓ Streamline desktop support: Maintain the desktop envi-ronment without business interruption
✓ Mitigate risk: Centralize desktop, data, and applications in the data center
✓ Improve business agility and flexibility: Scale and adapt to changes quickly through dynamic provisioning of end-user clients and rapid delivery of new applications Several important trends are driving a fundamental shift from the PC era — in which users are tied to one device — to the cloud era — where business users can take advantage of a greater variety and larger number of devices to get their work done from anywhere and at any time. These trends are dis-cussed in the following sections and include Bring Your Own Device (or BYOD) and flexworking.
A recent Citrix survey found that 42 percent of business users have three or more compute devices that they use daily.
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
The BYOD trend has taken hold in corporate networks as businesses and organizations increasingly allow their employ-ees to use personal mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) for both personal and work-related use.
Consumerization is a related trend that is further driving BYOD in the workplace. Consumerization occurs when end users find personal technology and applications that are more
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convenient, powerful, and easier to use than their corporate IT solutions.
Many organizations are still unsure of how to leverage the BYOD and consumerization trends in their business pro-cesses. Such organizations typically either implicitly allow BYOD and consumerization by ignoring the ubiquitous use of personal devices and applications in the workplace, or they explicitly prohibit their use. In addition to lost productivity and missed opportunities, both of these approaches intro-duce a number of risks for the organization including the following:
✓ Security threats from unknown, untested, and unpatched applications.
✓ Potential violations of regulatory compliance mandates such as HIPAA (U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards).
✓ Risky behavior by employees seeking to circumvent restrictions and controls by using external proxies, encrypted tunnels, and remote-access programs.
✓ Lack of control over sensitive data that is potentially stored and accessed from personal devices and may be compromised if these devices are lost or stolen, or if an employee leaves the company.
✓ Creation of back-channel or undocumented business processes that are critical to the organization, but only known to a few individual users and fully dependent on personal technologies and applications.
Many forward-thinking organizations are increasingly con-sidering BYOD as a strategy to gain competitive advantage, increase productivity, improve morale, and control costs.
These organizations define explicit policies that clearly explain what is permitted — and what isn’t. Using client virtu-alization technology, such companies are able to control the costs and administrative challenges associated with support-ing an ever-changsupport-ing array of devices. Client virtualization further enables centralized control of the applications installed on personal devices — including installation,
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security permissions, patching and updates, and removal — thereby reducing or eliminating many of the inherent risks associated with BYOD and consumerization.
Flexwork: The new work paradigm
Until recently, going to work meant commuting to an office, and going to a meeting required packing up and traveling to a different location. But with the advent of mobile computing devices, working and meeting have taken on new meanings.
No longer bound to an office, today’s workers can do their jobs from just about anywhere, using a wide variety of mobile devices. The flexibility appeals to many employees, enabling them to be online and productive during more hours of the day or night. Enticed by these increased productivity levels, many employers have embraced their new mobile workforce.
Adding to changes in the current business climate are demands for real-time response. Today’s workers are expected to do more in less time, so they expect information to be delivered instantly.
Meeting that demand is now attainable. But organizations that embrace flexworking must address numerous challenges, including
✓ IT and workforce support
✓ Complexity, compatibility, and performance
✓ Operating costs
✓ Information security
✓ User experience
Rather than try to meet the needs of this new business para-digm with an old computing model, many companies have found a simpler, cost-effective solution that is also more flexible: virtualize the client. As with BYOD (discussed in the previous section), client virtualization takes much of what is traditionally managed at the client or endpoint device, and centralizes those functions. With this approach, your data
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is better protected, system management is easier, you gain greater flexibility, and your workers receive a better overall experience — irrespective of their device type or location.
Forrester Research recently reported that inquiries on virtual desktops outpace questions about cloud technologies by two to one — indicating client virtualization is one of today’s hot-test technology trends.
Chapter 2
Digging into Client Virtualization
In This Chapter
▶ Comparing client virtualization types
▶ Getting to know your users
▶ Understanding the tradeoffs between different desktop strategies
C
lient virtualization provides several flexible models to meet an organization’s unique user requirements. In this chapter, I talk about the different client virtualization architec-tures and how to match your user requirements to the most appropriate architecture.Recognizing Key Characteristics of Client Virtualization
In addition to business and financial benefits such as enhanced productivity, cost control, risk mitigation, and business agility (discussed in Chapter 1), there are several key IT benefits asso-ciated with client virtualization, including the following:
✓ Centralized computing: Whether delivering a single application or a fully customized desktop environment to multiple end-user devices, client virtualization gives IT better control over the end-user environment than in a distributed client-server model. This level of control provides additional security and stability for the orga-nization, because user and application data are stored and processed in the host environment — located in a
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that may not be used safely and securely. In many ways, client virtualization represents a shift toward the more controlled and stable days of centralized computing, which was a characteristic of the mainframe era.
✓ Device independence: In the mainframe era, users connected to the mainframe via a “dumb” terminal in a data processing room. But today’s end-user devices are anything but dumb. With client virtualization, users can securely connect to a corporate infrastructure from just about anywhere using any number of devices, includ-ing desktop and laptop PCs, thin clients, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones. Thus, client virtualization is a key technology that enables organizations to leverage today’s BYOD and flexwork trends (see Chapter 1).
✓ Quick recovery: Client virtualization enables end users to quickly access their “desktop” environment from practi-cally any device. Thus, a lost or stolen laptop or a PC hard-ware failure doesn’t cost the organization an entire day (or more) of lost user productivity. Instead, users can simply log onto a replacement device and continue working within their normal desktop environment. Similarly, client virtualization can support an organization’s business con-tinuity and disaster recovery plans by enabling employees to work remotely when the office is otherwise inacces-sible, for example, due to a fire or inclement weather.
Differentiating Client Virtualization Types
Several architecture options are available for different client virtualization strategies. Major differences between these archi-tecture choices surround the ratio of clients to hosts, and the compute and graphics requirements of the applications. Client virtualization types are explained in the following sections.
Session (and application) virtualization
The session virtualization model (see Figure 2-1), also known
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instance of a server operating system and run client desktops built on the server OS. Although this model can be relatively low cost and can scale to support a large number of concur-rent users, many client applications aren’t written for a server operating system and it typically doesn’t support intensive compute operations or advanced graphics requirements well.
Plus, the session virtualization model provides limited cus-tomization and configuration options for different users.
Popular session virtualization solutions include Citrix XenApp and Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS).
Application virtualization is very similar to session virtual-ization, but rather than logging into an entire desktop ses-sion, users simply launch the desired application from their desktop. Application virtualization isolates the applications from the underlying operating system, which improves compatibility in mixed environments. For example, a user on a Window 7 workstation could run Internet Explorer 6 (which isn’t natively supported in Windows 7). Additionally, application virtualization technology enables applications that might otherwise conflict — for example, due to shared dynamic link libraries (DLLs) or different versions of Java — to run concurrently on the same client.
Application virtualization:
Streaming versus hosting
Using Citrix XenApp, you can deliver an application to users either by stream-ing it to the user’s virtual desktop or by hosting it on the XenApp server.
✓ Application streaming simplifies delivery by allowing you to install and configure an application on one file server for delivery to desktops. To upgrade or patch the application, you make the updates only in the location where you installed the application.
✓ Application hosting makes appli-cations available to users from the XenApp server, instead of from their desktop. When a user runs an application that is published on XenApp, the application is virtualized on the desktop and so appears to run locally to the user.
However, the application is run-ning on the XenApp server, which keeps application processing on the endpoint device to a minimum.
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Figure 2-1: The session virtualization model supports many clients but has limited compute and graphics capabilities.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) delivers a complete desk-top experience to users across the network by providing a sepa-rate client operating system instance, like Microsoft Windows 7
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applications locally on the user’s PC, VDI allows the operating system and applications to run in your data center. A hypervisor (explained in Chapter 1) runs on the server and creates virtual desktops for each individual user or group of users. Unlike the session virtualization model, in which multiple users are con-nected to the same operating system instance, VDI gives your users control of their Windows desktop in a one-to-one manner.
So any client device can be used to access a user’s “desktop” — a desktop or laptop PC, thin client, tablet, or smartphone, for example.
Figure 2-2: The VDI model runs a single OS instance for each individual user.
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With a properly architected client virtualization infrastruc-ture, user expectations are more consistently met — this means you get less resistance from your users during your client virtualization project.
Graphics-accelerated VDI
Graphics-accelerated VDI (see Figure 2-3) is similar to VDI, but runs on a blade workstation with a graphics accelerator card.
This configuration brings the benefits of VDI to users that have more intensive compute and high-resolution graphics requirements, such as users of computer-aided design (CAD) applications.
Chapter 2: Digging into Client Virtualization 17 Dedicated workstation
The dedicated workstation approach provides a single virtual client to a single end user (see Figure 2-4). A dedicated work-station is similar to the graphics-accelerated VDI, except that it doesn’t have a hypervisor and therefore can only support a single user. The dedicated workstation approach is most appro-priate for users whose requirements are extremely complex and compute/graphics intensive. The dedicated workstation provides these no-compromise users with the experience they demand. In this case, the desktop operating system is installed directly onto the workstation — providing optimal performance.
In addition, the dedicated workstation approach can be imple-mented without full VDI infrastructure.
Figure 2-4: The dedicated workstation approach provides one virtual client
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Determining Your End-User Requirements
You should begin your client virtualization project by getting to know your users. Specifically, you need to know the following:
✓ What applications are being used and how?
✓ What devices are being used and from where?
✓ What unique performance and security requirements exist?
✓ How frequently are applications changed or updated?
✓ How much end-user control and customization is needed?
Next, you should define broad classifications of your users based on their application usage. For example, user catego-ries might include the following:
✓ Knowledge/power workers: For example, these users may run multiple applications or applications that are compute-intensive and require access to large volumes of data within the data center.
✓ Mobile users: These users may include sales teams and users that travel frequently, requiring secure access from a number of mobile devices across various Internet connections.
✓ Remote users: Users in remote locations may have lim-ited IT support available to them, but otherwise access the network from a known device (for example, a thin client or desktop PC) across a stable Internet connection.
✓ Standard or task users: These users require access to a core set of applications, but otherwise have limited needs. For example, these may include call center repre-sentatives, administrative support staff, and data entry personnel. Many organizations may find that one client virtualization type doesn’t meet all of their unique end-user requirements.
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Getting Started with HP CVAM Service
One of the keys to a successful client virtualization implemen-tation is correct analysis of the existing physical desktops’
current load and use characteristics regarding both applica-tions and resources (for example: CPU, memory, disk I/O).
Don’t apply testing guidelines from software vendors when designing your environment. This is a common mistake that often results in investing misguided capital into supporting infrastructure that is later determined — usually too late in the implementation cycle — to be insufficient to meet your organization’s performance requirements.
To help you avoid relying on sizing and performance models
To help you avoid relying on sizing and performance models