The next component and feature that we are going to discuss is View Composer and what linked clones mean in a desktop environment. We will spend a bit more time concentrating on this subject, as it's a key part of delivering a successful and cost-effective VDI solution. It's also one of those things that often gets confused, so we need to give this subject the justice it deserves.

Let's start with why this is important. An all-too-often reason why a VDI project fails or doesn't even get started comes down to the perceived storage requirements, both from a capacity as well as cost perspective in deploying a storage platform that delivers the performance required for VDI. The reason we see this typically comes down to the fact that the VDI project is being approached in the same way as a physical desktop project would be.

This would mean that each user will get their own dedicated virtual desktop and the hard disk that comes with it, albeit now a virtual...