There is a debate raging on BrianMadden.com and elsewhere as to whether local storage can be used with VDI, and if it is good enough.

This strikes at the core of why we founded Kaviza, so here are our perspectives. Folks are debating between 2 options:

Option 1: Shared storage. You get high availability, dynamic load balancing, etc but cost is high.

Option 2: Local storage with traditional VDI. None of the above but cheap. 

They are not talking about Option 3. Where is Option 3??

The conclusion here seems to be that Option 2 is good enough for VDI.  Or is it? What are you losing? The main reasons people go to VDI is to streamline management, and increase desktop uptime.  Will Option 2 give these?

i) What happens when you go beyond 1 server? Do you manage all the desktop images manually on each server? Keep them up-to-date? Statically provision to each server?

ii) What happens when a server fails? These are not server workloads, but users care about their desktops being up. No redundancy means downtime.

The critical question is whether we can retain the inexpensive, high performance, and obvious choice of local storage in VDI when we need scalability and high availability.  Can we get a scalabile, highly available desktop service without the high upfront and ongoing costs of shared storage?

So, what if you had an Option 3?

Option 3: Local storage with a new VDI architecture designed to deliver high availability and dynamic load balancing on DAS.

This can be done - in fact, it's exactly what Kaviza has.  Again, this is not aimed to be a plug but to technically highlight how an architecture can achieve DAS and HA.

Kaviza was founded on the notion that those features critical to VDI can be retained in a distributed, local-storage architecture by implementing an abstract common store of the images through a desktop-specific management layer.

Kaviza maintains the desktop images locally on each server.  The actual desktops running on each server, generally as thinly cloned VMs, use the local images solely.  As admins go through image lifecycles to update and patch the base images, those changes are automatically transferred to the local storage on the other servers that need them.

Thus the appearance to the administrator is that there is a single store common to the entire installation.  But the implementation of the store is entirely on local disk.

As new servers are added to the installation, those images that need to be sent to them are automatically transferred there.  And if a server is lost due to failure, the desktops running on that server are automatically reprovisioned on surviving servers.  Hence Kaviza supplies both scalability and high availabilty using only inexpensive local storage.

For many customers, desktop forklift to justify high investment in traditional VDI is a non-starter. What they want is a solution that gives them an immediate return on their investment for every refresh cycle, no matter if its 30 desktops or 3000.  For these customers, local storage is the only way to go.  And Kaviza has a comprehensive virtual desktop solution that linearly scales throughout that range at a constant price per desktop.

Labels: Brian Madden, DAS, desktop virtualization. VDI cost, Kaviza, Kaviza Citrix HDX virtual desktops user experience performance cost affordable low-cost price PC refresh Windows 7, SAN, Shared storage

Its been crazy busy, so I haven't had time to blog in several weeks!  Good things are happening! 

Gartner picked Kaviza as a Cool Vendor in Client Computing for 2010.  Yes!!

From our briefings with Mark, it is clear that Gartner understands the need for a simple, affordable virtual desktop solution that can be deployed within desktop refresh budgets by desktop IT.  Apparently they get a huge amount of calls on desktop virtualization, and cost and complexity are two key issues customers bring up.

This is consistent with our experience.  Simple, quick, affordable, open, flexible - these are the primary points we strive for.

Speaking of which, another company that is doing interesting things around making IT efficient, easy-to-procure, and easy-to-manage is Matrix42, who is leading the charge with "IT-Commerce". They are a strong market leader in Germany and are growing operations worldwide.  We announced yesterday that we have entered into a partnership with Matrix42.  They will co-brand and resell Kaviza VDI-in-a-box as the preferred virtual desktop solution that users can procure from their IT Service Catalog.  This is very exciting, and we look forward to a strong collaboration with Matrix42. Checkout the Kaviza microsite on their site.

We are heads-down preparing for the Citrix Synergy show May 11-14th in San Francisco, CA, more on that in the next post!

Labels: affordable, award, Citrx Synergy, Cool Vendor, Desktop Virtualization, desktop virtualization. VDI cost, Gartner, Kaviza, Matrix42, virtual desktops

I am always curious to see who Time Magazine picks as the Person of the Year because their pick not only honors that person's achievements but more importantly, it recognizes a key theme or trend that was a major focus for all of us that year.


I wish Time would do the same for companies - if they did, my pick for 2010 would be the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME).SME's today can enjoy the same superior technology infrastructure, sophisticated forecasting applications, and cutting edge innovations for a fraction of the costs that large enterprises paid for these innovations.

Who would have thought a few years back that you could now have a global CDN for pennies, thanks to cloud computing players like Amazon, or that for a few dollars a month, you could have sophisticated sales forecasting or marketing automation applications thanks to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies.

These "as-a-Service" and cloud  innovations with flexible pay-as-you-go models level the playing field, enabling SMEs to compete with the same level of sophistication as the big guys.  But, there is one area where this cost disruption has not yet happened - on-premise virtualization.

Virtualization infrastructure still requires massive datacenter buildouts, with expensive shared storage, and custom built setups that are complex and labor-intensive to manage.   But it doesn't have to be - especially not with desktop virtualization.  Virtualizing deskotps streamlines and drastically cuts down desktop support costs, improves uptime, and gives companies a competitive edge where it matters most - its employees' productivity.  This is of value not just to large enterprises, but perhaps even more to SME's, who have to do more with less.

Which is why Kaviza has re-designed the hosted desktop virtualization stack so companies do not require the expensive datacenter buildouts or shared storage pools to run virtual desktops - for under $500/desktop, starting with as few as 25 desktops, a company can quickly and cost-effectively get immediate ROI on virtual desktops with Kaviza.  Try it for yourself, and see how Kaviza is changing the game in desktop virtualization.

Labels: Cloud Computing, Desktop Virtualization, desktop virtualization. VDI cost, Person of the Year, SaaS, SME, Time Magazine, virtual dekstops

VMWare's executive recently talked about how he believes Windows 7 will be a catalyst for desktop virtualization, but expects adoption to be slow. What he doesn't tell you is an important reason why: cost. If its going to cost you $1000-2000/desktop to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 either with traditional PCs or virtual desktops, CIOs are asking if its worth it.

Gartner's VP Research, Michael Silver estimates that when you include replacement hardware, admin costs, application testing, and replacing incompatible apps, -- in a hypothetical organization with 2,500 Windows users -- the cost of upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 will run $1,035 to $1,930 per user. For 2,500 users, this is a $2.5M-$5M effort, which is substantial. Migrating to first generation VDI architectures such as View would be no cheaper. Analysts estimate the average upfront cost/desktop to be $1,200-2,000 for traditional VDI.

But what if you could upgrade from XP to Windows 7 for under $500/desktop, and get all the benefits of virtual desktops, with lower operating costs, greater security and the option to preserve the XP desktops to smoothen migration woes?

We are announcing today Windows 7 support with Kaviza's VDI-in-a-box^TM , a beta is coming in the next few weeks. You can get a Windows 7 virtual desktop for under $500, and this includes all the hardware, software licensing and storage costs. We are already getting a lot of partner and customer interest in this, so its going to be exciting!

Click here for a free trial of Kaviza's VDI-in-a-box^TM.

Labels: desktop virtualization. VDI cost, PC upgrade, VMWare, Windows 7, Windows 7 cost

Labels: Brian Madden, desktop virtualization. VDI cost, Kaviza