The Road to a Virtualized Desktop

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The Road to a Virtualized Desktop
Neal Puff Chief Information Officer Yuma County,
AZ http//www.co.yuma.az.us
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Yuma County, AZ

• Located in extreme South West Arizona
• Temperatures can reach over 120º F
• Ranked a US top ten county for digital government
  for 2006 2007 (maybe 2008)?
• Population approximately 200,000 (approximately
  300,000 in winter)?
• Main industries Agriculture, military,
  manufacturing, retirement

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My Background

• 20 years in private industry IT Including disk
  drive manufacturing, consumer electronics and
  Arthur Andersen Business Process Outsourcing
  (BPO)?
• 3 years in county government as CIO
• Operations and network design
• CISSP, PMP, etc. (yada, yada, yada)?
• Lots of stories

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Types of Virtualization

• Server Virtualization
• Desktop Virtualization
• Local
• Vmware, XEN, etc.
• Remote
• Server Based Computing (Citrix)?
• VDI (Vmware)?
• Blade PCs (sort of)?
• We will be concentrating on
• Remote Desktop Virtualization

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Why Do It?

• Extend Client Hardware Life
• Improve Security
• Decrease Time to Deploy Clients
• Improve Remote Access
• Improve Business Continuity Capability
• Improve E-discovery Capabilities
• It's Green
• Save

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Why Not Do It?

• Requires Constant Network Connectivity
• Increased storage requirements (VDI)?
• User perception
• Generally bad with multimedia
• New skills required for PC technicians
• Were just going back to mainframes.

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Recent Developments From VDI Supplier(s)?

• Off-line VDI Eliminates need for constant
  connectivity
• Scalable Virtual Image technology reduces storage
  requirements by up to 90

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Considerations

• User Perception
• Disk De-duplication Possibly addressed by
  Scalable Virtual Image technology
• Cost (VDI versus Terminal Server)?
• Network Performance / Reliability
• Off-line VDI changes everything

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Yuma Countys Current State

• Using VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.0 for
  server virtualization Blade Servers with all
  virtual images stored on the SAN
• VDI pilot program in place
• Terminal server in production for a single
  application

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How Did We Get Here?

• Terminal Server Result of a delivery problem
  with specialized case management software
• VDI Natural outgrowth of successful server
  virtualization and Linux desktops

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What Now? (Current Plans)?

• Pursue three levels of desktop virtualization
• 1. No virtualization (CAD and similar)?
• 2. VDI for power virtual desktops
• 3. Terminal Server or Citrix for base
  level virtual desktops
• Build user acceptance
• Evaluate thin clients

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Questions?
Neal Puff Chief Information Officer Yuma County,
AZ neal.puff_at_co.yuma.az.us