Is VDI really not “serious” production?

This post is in response to a tweet by Chris Evans (Who I have MUCH respect for and is one of the people that I follow on a daily basis on all forms of internet media). The discussion on twitter was unrelated (Discussing the failings of XtremeIO) and the point that triggered this post was when he stated VDI is “Not serious production”.

While I might have agreed 2-3 years ago when VDI was often in POC, or a plaything of remote road warriors or a CEO, VDI has come a long way in adoption. I’m working at a company this week with 500 users and ALL users outside of a handful of IT staff work in VDI at all times. I”m helping them update their service desk operations and a minor issue with VDI (profile server problems) is a critical full stoppage of the business. Even if all of their 3 critical LOB apps going down would be less of an impact. At least people could still access email, jabber and some local files.

There are two perspectives I have from this.

1. Some people are actually dependent on VDI to access all those 99.99999% uptime SLA apps so its part of the dependency tree.

2. We need to quit using 99.9% SLA up-time systems and process’s to keep VDI up. It needs real systems, change control, monitoring and budget. 2 years ago I viewed vCOPS for View as an expensive necessity, now I view it as a must have solution. I’m deploying tools like LogInsight to get better information and telemetry of whats going on, and training service desks on the fundamentals of VDI management (that used to be the task of a handful of sysadmins). While it may not replace the traditional PC and in many ways is a middle ground towards some SaaS web/mobile app future, its a lot more serious today than a lot of people realize.

I’ve often joked that VDI is the technology of last resort when no other reasonable offering made sense (Keep data in datacenter, solve apps that don’t work under RDS, organizations who can’t figure out patch/app distribution, highly mobile but poorly secured workforce). For better or for worse its become the best tool for a lot of shops, and its time to give it the respect it deserves.

At least the tools we use to make VDI serious today (VSAN/VCOPS/LogInsight/HorzionView6) are a lot more serious than the stuff I was using 4 years ago.

My apologies, for calling our Chris (which wasn’t really the point of this article) but I will thank him for giving me cause to reflect on the state of VDI “seriousness” today.

How does your organization view and depend on VDI today, and is there a gap in perception?