Category Archives: Top 10 Virtual Desktop Mistakes
A Virtual Desktop Storm Approaches
Rush hour. Something we all can relate to. Way back in time when I used to go to an office daily, I hated rush hour. If I left home at a certain time, it would take me 45 minutes just to get to the office. But if I left just 15 minutes earlier, that same 45 minute trip would only take 15 minutes. You might be asking yourself what this anecdote has to do with virtual desktops. Well, it’s all about managing a storm. I managed the rush hour storm by changing the time I left for work in the morning. With virtual desktops, we need do something similar. If you don’t, you will encounter the fifth mistake in my list of top 10 mistakes to avoid Read the rest of this entry
Protection From Anti-Virus
Protection from antivirus. Are you wondering if you read that correctly? Yes, it is correct. Odd isn’t it? Anti-virus is there to protect us, but we also need to be protected from antivirus. Antivirus solutions are critical, even in a virtual desktop environment. Many people believe that because a hosted VM-based virtual desktop image is created from a real-only image that they are immune from virus. That is only partially true. When you reboot, the virus goes away because the changes to the base image are destroyed (including the virus), but what about that time period between getting infected and the next reboot? Those few hours are dangerous. Read the rest of this entry
Beware of Improper Resource Allocation
If you ask me what type of desktop I need, I’m going to say, 2+ cores with at least 4+ GB of RAM, 500+GB hard drive, etc. If you look at what I really need, you will see 1 core and maybe 2 GB of RAM. In fact, when I look at my resource consumption, I get close to 2 GB of RAM by the end of the day due to the number of applications I have running, memory leaks in some of my applications, and applications not freeing up memory when closed.
Like me, many users only consume a fraction of their total potential desktop computing power, which makes desktop virtualization extremely attractive. By sharing the resources between all users, the overall amount of required resources is reduced. However, there is a fine line between maximizing the number of users a single server can support and providing the user with a good virtual desktop computing experience.
Improperly allocating resources to the virtual desktops is the 7th most common mistake make. Read the rest of this entry
Lack of Application Virtualization Strategy
One app, two apps.
Red app, Blue app.
Old app, new app.
What a lot of apps there are (Based on the original by Dr. Seuss)
The pond is full of apps. And so is your organization. And you are probably not even aware of 50% of your applications. How does this relate to desktop virtualization? Well, many people fail in their desktop virtualization endeavors because they do not consider application virtualization, which is the 8th common mistake made when deploying virtual desktops followed by:
10. Not calculating user bandwidth requirements
9. Not considering the user profile
My virtual desktop profile is important
Mark Twain said “When angry count to four. When very angry, swear”. Unfortunately, I’ve heard many users swear. It is amazing how one little action can cause so much anger towards the IT organization or bring a new project to its knees. Take the following, real world scenario, as an example:
An organization had a profile strategy in place. Users started working in the new system. One day, a user had a profile corruption issue. To solve the issue, the profile was deleted. This meant the user had to recreate their entire personalized environment. After the profile was deleted, the user quickly noticed all of their documents were deleted. Upon closer inspection, the user stored their documents in the “My Documents” folder. When the profile was deleted, the My Documents folder was also deleted. Can you say Bye Bye data? Bye Bye 3 weeks worth of work.
Not convinced that profiles are important, then let me give you another example (You can’t make this stuff up):
An organization was running a hosted VM-based VDI desktop solution for a few months and decided the profile solution required modifications. Upon the updates, every user lost all of their personalization configurations. NOOOOO
The user’s profile is one of the major ways the pooled virtual desktop becomes personalized. Forgot about virtual desktops for a moment. The user profile is important for traditional desktops. Read the rest of this entry
