Solving The Application Provisioning Problem On Virtual Desktops

Solving The Application Provisioning Problem

On Virtual Desktops

“The future will be cloudpaged”

Osman Kent

Chairman, Co-Founder & CEO Numecent

Serial entrepreneur - was previously founder-CEO of 3Dlabs

Has been in the graphics and virtualization industry for over 30 years – one of the fathers of the GPU A deep technologist with numerous patents in graphics, virtualization and GPU virtualization

Runs a record label in his spare(!) time

A fast-growing software and cloud services start-up based in Irvine, CA

Inventors and pioneers of cloudpaging, containerization and application virtualization

Came out of stealth in 2012 to great acclaim

Technology protected by 16 battle-tested patents

A B2B business focused on web-scale and friction-free delivery of apps from the cloud – without pixel streaming 1M users and counting

About Numecent

“BLOWN AWAY

could change the entire software industry”

Just going to focus on virtual workstations and GPU centric apps

And the so called application ‘on-boarding’ problem holding back virtual desktops

Not going to talk about pros and cons of virtual desktops themselves

This is a view from the trenches – have so far helped deliver 10,000 different apps in over 20M sessions

So we know the problems and the potential solutions first-hand

Virtualization enables a limited resource

to appear more abundant

Most software systems have too much entropy

Reducing entropy increases the apparent utilization of underlying resources

Virtualization can reduce entropy – but only if used correctly

But we should only virtualize

to make things better than before

This has not always been the case

like in desktop virtualization

Let’s find out why

Will show you how bad app provisioning can get in our world



This was a major ISV who shall remain nameless

—

With a major CAD application



Had a 200 page installation manual

—

Took 3 rocket scientist a week to install



Had very complex dependencies

—

And had 150,000 registry entries



Same install cycle even for a patch

—

Had extreme dislike of certain other installed apps



You may think this is an outlier – sadly no

—

We have seen many others like this

Desktop Virtualization simply moves such provisioning problems

from the user’s desk to the server room

with a very long VGA cable over IP

What was a problem on physical desktops remains a problem in virtual desktops

In fact problems can often become compounded with virtualizing the wrong thing!

Let’s see what can go wrong

What matters is NOT the desktop but the applications



Libraries and OS are duplicated

— Server storage is typically much more expensive



Applications are ‘baked-in’ the VM image

— Upgrading one app effects the whole VM

— Dynamic provisioning is near impossible



App combinations lead to too many images

— May even end-up with as many different images as users!

— Apps may even conflict across VMs (as in TS)



Unused apps still incur license fees

— Unnecessary additional costs



In fact some licensing systems break on virtual desktops!

— Severely restricts the appeal of Virtual Desktops

Wrong thing got virtualized

Server Hardware

Hypervisor

Operating System

Libraries

App1 App2

App3

Virtual Machine 1 (VM)

Operating System

Libraries

App1 App5

App7

Our initial assumptions were wrong – very wrong



Assumed uniform app usage across users

— This is only true for task-workers

— Engineering/DCC environments are very varied



Assumed apps to be static

— Some (like games) are patched every few days



Assumed app combos to be static

— Not true in engineering and creative industries

— These require dynamic provisioning based on projects



Assumed most would be on-premises

— In fact Graphics Remoting requires Edge Servers



Assumed uniform implementations

— Whereas VDI, Terminal Services, home-brew etc give rise to different sets of problems

Wrong assumptions were made

Server Hardware

Hypervisor

Operating System

Libraries

App1 App2

App3

Virtual Machine 1 (VM)

Operating System

Libraries

App1 App5

App7

Let’s see how we can solve these problems

in three easy steps

Pre-virtualize each app inside its container

 There is now only one VM desktop image

— Applications and the VM are now totally decoupled

 Users can have infinite combination of apps

— A totally liberating experience for users and IT

— Any app, any time – dynamic provisioning on demand

 Introducing a new app has no ramifications

— Simply produce and publish a new container

 Apps can be independently updated/patched

— No interactions to worry about

 No unused license costs

— Licenses are invoked as used

 Works seamlessly on physical desktops too

— Zero installation - makes physical desktops ‘IT Free’

Step 1

::

Containerization

Server Hardware

Hypervisor

Unique Libraries

App1

Container 1 Operating System Common Libraries Cloudpaging Agent - NEW

VM Unique Libraries

App2

Container 2 Unique Libraries

App3

Container 3 Unique Libraries

App ∞

Container ∞ Unique Libraries

Plug-in 1

Container 4

Deliver containers a tiny bit at a time – on demand

 Cloudpaging enables WAN delivery of apps

— This makes central cloud delivery possible

 Initial payload can be 5% of the size

— This is delivered first to get the user running

 The rest of the container is then demand-paged

— As the user invokes as yet undelivered portions

— Once fetched, the pages are stored in a persistent LRU cache

 Enables app repositories to be centralized

— Remoting typically requires VMs on ‘Edge Servers’ to reduce latency

— One central repository can handle ‘Edge Servers’ world-wide

 Huge reduction in bandwidth and app storage in the VM

— Typically 95% network footprint reduction between the repository and the VM

— As the app is not installed, only the pages used consume VM storage

Container Initial Payload Typically 5%

Step 2

::

Demand-paging

Persistent Client Cache

Step 3

::

License Virtualization

Unique Libraries

App

Container Cloudpaging Agent Licensing Server Paging Server

Virtualize licenses and SaaSify – the app does not need to change



Existing licensing systems are universally disliked

— By the users, IT staff and the ISVs themselves



They become problematic on virtual desktops

— Especially activation licenses which require persistence



License virtualization avoids all this

— Impose licensing on the container – app remains unchanged



Enables SaaS to be juxtaposed with no changes to the app

— Private SaaS inside the enterprise

— Enables optimal use of license assets



Creates a minute-by-minute usage audit

The future is now

All this technology actually exists today

Cloudpaging is now

Web-scale provisioning of Windows Apps

for virtual and physical desktops

friction-free, IT-free – no install, no download, no pixel streaming

Demand Paging

over HTTPS

Containers On-Demand

Page level abstraction (set of blocks) Typical 20x compression for apps

Shrinks times – expands pipes

Containerization

Virtualizes the application Virtualizes the file system/registry

Virtualizes storage

Runs apps with ZERO installation

Live Licensing

of containers

Containers can be licensed in real time Manage centrally from the cloud

Enables subscription

Users/data can be wiped remotely

Cloudpaging is now

Remember that app which took 1 week to provision?

we reduced it to 3 minutes – delivered inside a cloudpaged container

and no rocket scientists were needed

Demand Paging

over HTTPS

Containers On-Demand

Page level abstraction (set of blocks) Typical 20x compression for apps

Shrinks times – expands pipes

Containerization

Virtualizes the application Virtualizes the file system/registry

Virtualizes storage

Runs apps with ZERO installation

Live Licensing

of containers

Containers can be licensed in real time Manage centrally from the cloud

Enables subscription

Users/data can be wiped remotely



Dynamic Provisioning was key

—

Different clusters of apps on different days (project dependent)

—

Multiple versions of the same app (for compliance

)



Multiple locations around the world

—

Including customer sites and in the field



In the end they only needed 2 cloudpaging servers

—

One for failover – standardized on Win7 64 as base image on client side



Saved $50M since going live with cloudpaging

—

Just need 2-3 IT stuff to support 1000s of engineers

—

License centralization & enforcement enabled maximization of license assets

Virtual and physical workstations will co-exist for a long time

Enterprise application provisioning will be inside cloudpaged containers

CAD/CAM ISVs themselves will start delivering their offerings in cloudpaged containers – with SaaS

ISV Licensing will evolve into cloud based live licensing

Cloudpaging engine for containers will move into the hyper-visor in time – will deliver VMs

It is all about the applications

Delivered friction-free, IT-free and on-demand

Cloudpaging Server

(Admin, License & Paging)

App Container Repository

IT-Free Physical Desktops Virtual Desktops Virtual Desktops

Cloudpaged App Containers Pixel Streams

Thank You

“The future will be cloudpaged – the future is now”

Osman Kent

Chairman, Co-Founder & CEO Numecent