Experimenting with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

For a gadget geek, working in high-tech can offer up a pseudo candy-store like experience. When visiting HQ, I always do my best to run through our main data-center. It's staggering to see first-hand just how much technology has advanced in just a few short years. Long gone are the days of the MV8000 and countless racks of tapes.

So the interesting technology of the week? VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure.

Take a moment to consider the complexity of managing desktop / laptop infrastructure in any particular company. IT professionals need to worry about standards, interoperability, aging hardware, security, software deployments and so much more. Now consider the complexity of doing this across tens of thousands of desktops in a company such as EMC.

Through EMC's VDI program, I now have a dedicated Windows machine in the private cloud.

What does this mean to me?

First off, no more managing my own personal Windows image just for those occasional apps that don't work across platforms.

I can now access my dedicated virtual machine from anywhere... All I need is my RSA security token and I can access everything I need to do my work from any standard browser - anywhere.

Portability? You betcha. I use Pocket WYSE to access my Windows machine from my iPad. This has already changed my travel habits considerably, as lugging a laptop on trips is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Besides, sans Jailbreaking, this may just be the best way to get Flash to run on your iDevice ;).

I'm loving the whole virtual desktop thing, and can see a day not too far from now where my primary computing platform is simply a web browser.

Here's Chris Murpy, Director of International Operations at EMC, discussing our VDI deployment. You can learn much more about VDI and other virtualization techniques in EMC IT's Journey to the Private Cloud blog.