It has arrived (at least it has in Allstate), the day our Infrastructure deployment teams were dreading, the day we started to convert from Windows XP to Windows 7. 2014 is the year Microsoft has set for Windows XP support to cease and we at Allstate we are making the jump! 80,000 users are going to be moved from old faithful (and horribly dull in my opinion) XP and moved to a brand new, all singing and dancing Windows 7. Along with this feat, we at Allstate are scaling up our virtual world and moving 40% of our users to a virtual environment, me included! I have been chosen to participate in the pilot, and so far I can tell that there is some distinct Pros and Cons (for users and the company) when moving to a virtual world.
Everyone gets the same OS image
Pro - When I got my virtual machine (VM) it came as a standard image. This was a deliberate decision; virtualization allows our deployment team to deploy VM’s with a standard image quickly. This image can be attached to the VMs before deployment, and 30 minutes later a machine is born, ready to go…
Con – I say ready to go, I had to install the applications I needed before I could set off, Visual Studio, SQL Management studio along with a lot of specialized applications… and as some of you may now, these products don’t install from a network location instantly. It took me a further day to get going with my VM; In saying that saving unique machine images isn’t a better alternative. I would have a fairly unique set of applications, as would a vast majority of ‘heavy’ users, so saving these unique images for use in the build process would need a lot of storage space and would make the deployment process a tricky business to manage.
The space below my desk is clear
Pro – I now have a thin client; a slender, attractive, little slip of plastic and metal. There is probably more processing power in my digital watch, but I don’t need this client to do anything other than act as a gateway to my VM. All my computing power is in America, next to the servers I work with. This client only acts as a bridge to the datacenters. This saves the company money; we don’t need to invest in high spec personal hardware for virtual users. Instead one Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) server does the processing for all the machines it hosts. Now, the space under my desk is machinery and hazard free and suitable for my River Dance impressions.
Cons – There is a huge initial investment required. There may be a need to update the VDI servers, the network storage, and the networking infrastructure. This cost will far outweigh the cost of upgrading the individual user’s machines. At the next stage of OS upgrading we will have the infrastructure in place already so upgrading costs be less (than a non virtual environment), it’s at this point when this financial outlay will seem worth it.
Costing and Budgeting is easily managed
Pro – Applications usage and user’s hardware resources can be easily monitored and metered, so that the right people are getting the right applications and system resources. This means the company is not paying for application licenses or hardware that are underutilized. Every VM process can we centrally monitored removing the need to for expensive metering software and allowing the people holding the purse strings to use the budget wisely.
Con – Cash flow takes a hit initially. Instead of upgrading numerous machines in batches as cash flow allows, there is a huge initial cost at the start to get the premium environment setup. Once you have your environment though, upgrading could be staggered for future upgrades. There is also a cost involved with training or hiring the right people to administer the new systems.
Available ‘virtually’ anywhere
Pro – I only need an IP enabled device to get access to my machine. This gives me the ability to react quickly to outages or work from home. This allows me to provide more flexibility to the company and to my own personal work life balance. Since my machine is based in our datacenter, I have noticed that I get information or data from my servers in the blink of an eye, during peak networking hours on a heavily used server I have waited 15 minutes to get the same information using my old non-virtual machine.
Con – This is a big one, if the server that hosts my VM goes down, I’m useless (no jokes please!). I have lost the power to complete my tasks; along with all the other users who had machines hosted by that server. Obviously this issue wouldn’t happen with non-virtual machines, and the only way to avoid this is to have server redundancy…which comes at a cost!
Troubleshooting
Pro – the help desk will be happy to know, that VM’s can be accessed through the central console. Problems and usage trends can be recorded easily and reports of failings and issues can be sent to the right people automatically, even if the main user hasn’t reported it yet. Patches and updates can also be applied to the host server, which in turn will pass the updates on. This will reduce the network traffic during the patch Tuesday rollout.
Con – As I have mentioned, there is a lot resting on the host servers, if the proper precautions and VDI redundancy are not implemented, then (especially in a remote site scenario) there is a long wait for the onsite technicians to fix the affected server. If that happens in your office I recommend Candy Crush…
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