THE EDGE
irtual Desktop Infrastructure
(VDI) has peaked and
troughed in popularity since
it came into existence in
2006. But it is a technology reaching new
heights of growth in recent years, with
predictions stating that the global VDI
market will be worth close to US$5 billion
by the year 2020.
V
The concept of VDI was simple and
excellent: if we virtualise desktops
we can reduce hardware spend, cut
the three-year refresh cycle, simplify
desktop management and ultimately save
businesses time and money.
It all seemed straight-forward and, at a
glance, the technology looked elegant –
especially for the desktop user that wasn’t
exposed to the back-end infrastructure.
On the other hand, for those who were
exposed to it, the back-end infrastructure
was bulky, complicated and costly.
VDI software went hand-in-hand with
hefty licensing fees and lock-in to
vendor hardware, both of which pushed
up adoption prices. Because of this,
VDI adoption stayed limited to large
enterprises for a long time.
for specialist skills when just a couple of
hours of training is typically all you need.
Once the virtual desktops have been
rolled out, software and anti-virus updates
for each user can be remotely managed
and maintained. The centralisation and
automation of various time-consuming
day-to-day tasks help IT teams deal with
emergencies better, should they arise.
Some Edge Computing systems also
provide in-built, automated disaster
recovery capabilities, including replication,
snapshot scheduling and file-level
recovery that assist in the retrieval of lost
files from individual virtual desktops.
They can also protect the entire network
with self-healing machine intelligence.
This centralisation and resilience means
that IT teams can create a consistent
disaster recovery plan that runs in the
background, without individual users
having to take any action. Ultimately,
this ensures there is no longer a need to
rely on employees to update their own
anti-virus software or schedule backups of
their own data.
Simplifying and streamlining
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
For even more redundancy, full network
backups and snapshots of individual
desktop profiles can also be sent over the
wider network to either a remote data
centre or a cloud repository.
Working in a VDI environment also allows
a user to simply move to a different
machine and log back in, in the event of
a terminal or other network access point
failure and, in most cases, this means their
profile and data remain undamaged as
both reside on the Edge Computing unit.
Plus, a replacement machine can be
quickly configured without any need
to perform time-consuming data
recovery. This ensures they have an
IT infrastructure with much higher
availability and reduced risk of downtime,
while making the IT team seem focused,
responsive and streamlined.
But, in the past few years, Edge
Computing and hyperconvergence
have disrupted the VDI market. These
technologies have made deployment
opportunities available to more
businesses. So, it seems that Edge
Computing and VDI have emerged as a
perfect pair, but how?
Rolling out VDI is simple and practical
when utilising Edge Computing
hyperconvergence solutions, even for
lean IT teams that look after hundreds of
users. There is no longer a requirement
RUNNING ON A
HYPERCONVERGED
EDGE COMPUTING
SOLUTION, THE VDI
DEPLOYMENT CAN
PROVIDE IMPROVED
WORKFORCE
AGILITY AT AN
AFFORDABLE COST.
Alan Conboy, Office of the CTO at
Scale Computing
Another advantage of running VDI in an
Edge environment is that data can be
stored close to the point of creation and
access. This reduces dependence on
remote centralised servers or distributed
local servers and solves the problem of
slow connectivity, latency and bottlenecks
that have arisen on legacy deployments
running over a WAN or VPN.
Issue 07
69