XenDesktop Users

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calvinj

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 2, 2009
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Any XenDesktop Users here? We are in process of looking over VDI. We've plugged in the numbers for View and it just doesn't make any sense for us. We are looking over XenDesktop now. I would be interested in knowing what you think of it, thin clients your using, hardware maybe.

We would like to use the under utilized hardware that we have here to do everything. We do have another site that I'm not 100% sure how to get integrated as well.
 
Pretty easy.. It costs us $45.50 per setup (7 pro, office 2010, thin client, view license) vs getting a fat client PC with 7 pro and office 2010. Add that over 60 PCs it adds up. I have to admit the XenDesktop savings isn't that much better up front, but it shut as hell isn't costing us 45.50 per setup to do it
 
You will NEVER have VDI beat conventional desktops on hard cost. If that's what you need it won't happen. You have to look at other soft costs and operational savings. It's the only way. If a customer says it has to be a hard costs savings we end it right there.
 
Well then skip hard costs and lets talk soft costs.


EDIT: At this point I understand it won't be physical costs, but XenDesktop is beating View.
 
calvinj said:
Well then skip hard costs and lets talk soft costs.
Click to expand...

Your TCO savings will come from reduction in deployment and support costs.
The more think about it, justification for VDI is to reduce dependency on support staff - or
replace paying for support staff with paying for additonal licensing.

Hardware wise, I like the Wyse Xenith Zero Client .... but my experience is limited
to a quick POC...... Simply turn it on and it "pxe" boots and pulls a desktop with icons
that are published apps (XenApp lics included when used in a XD VDI deployment).
No real need for support staff other that initial deployment/replacement.
No second OS to support. No moving parts...low power.

We use Wyse v90's (XPe) which still require a VDA license :(
I POC'd those in the same manor .. XPe boots up to a desktop
full of published apps. Downside to XPe is it is still an OS to maintain/upgrade/protect from malware.

I actually backtracked from pushing VDI to just using server based computing (terminal services/citrix),
but when we tabulated numbers, there was only a difference of $100 per device..
CIO said VDI...so XenDesktop it will be...before year end.

As mentioned ... no real cost difference (Hardware + licensing) noted between deploying full PCs and
Xenith Zero Clients to use in a XenDesktop deployment. Both were about $800 per unit deployed.
 
Everything he said. You make your money back on ease of support, deployment, and management. Really, XD and View should come out to be about the same cost for software and infrastructure. It really comes down to requirements on what you want. We are about 67% View and 33% XD on deployments. Usually people default to View because it's easier to manage and they don't need some of the things in XD. Almost all the XD we deploy is XD on vSphere.
 
NetJunkie said:
Almost all the XD we deploy is XD on vSphere.
Click to expand...

I downloaded their Express Edition to play around with for a while and it looks pretty straight forward. Besides a couple little things to have changed in VCenter I got it setup no troubles. Did you dedicate vmware hardware to this or dump it in with existing hardware you had? Maybe a resource pool or two was setup?

We looked a the WYSE Zero clients, but the ones for XD are a tad on the expensive side vs Thin OS or even the Linux ones. I don't think we would go with (insert windows embedded here) versions of the thin clients because your right. One more OS to maintain and protect.
 
We chose XenDesktop over View because over half the company is remote and it performed better over WAN. It runs on vSphere since we already had the licensing, although if you are not doing persistent desktop's XenServers Intellicache will save you a ton of IOPS.
 
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