Virtualization, a technology of abstracting the logical capabilities from the underlying physical resources has become a cornerstone of the data center architecture. Virtualization allows organizations to run not just one operating system per physical server in the data center, but tens, dozens, or even hundreds, on a single physical server. The benefits of virtualization are many, including a reduction in hardware, power, and cooling costs. In addition to these, virtualization allows new techniques of distribution and resilience to be applied, such as VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware High Availability (HA). Server virtualization, the virtualization of server operating systems on server hardware, is now a mainstream technology that is readily accepted, adopted, and implemented in organizations across the world.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), the virtualization of desktop operating systems on server hardware, is another story.

The reason for the slower adoption of virtual desktops was originally due to many factors, including an immature technology, cost of storage, lack of general understanding of a comprehensive solution, a proven delivery methodology, and a clear understanding of the success criteria of a given virtual desktop project. Another key hurdle for the adoption of VDI has been the Microsoft VDA licenses, which many consider a desktop tax. Today, many of these hurdles have been removed. The supporting technologies from communication protocols to computing density, platform stability, and desirable end devices now exist. Design methodologies have been built by some of the largest integrators in the world; yet virtual desktop projects continue to fail, falter, or stall.

This book will provide the architect, the engineer, the project manager, the freelance consultant, or the contractor with a proven blueprint for success. More importantly, this book will teach the key success criteria to measure the most important design considerations to make and tip the probability of the project's success and sign-off in your favor.

This book assumes a familiarity with server virtualization, more specifically, VMware vSphere.

Before these concepts can be covered in depth, it is important to understand the components of a virtual desktop (vDesktop) solution.

This chapter will review improvements on: