Check list: What not to forget when implementing VDI

Why VDI?

When you choose remote tools, the following factors are critical to your virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI):

Mobility Employee can work from anywhere in the world, virtually on any device. This may be interesting not only to large companies, but also to medium-sized businesses. Security Using VDI reduces the risk of unauthorized access and data loss. This is due to the fact that:

Data is stored centrally in enterprise storage (storage). Using highly reliable NetApp or Huawei storage minimizes threats; The transfer of employees to unified thin clients allows you to limit the ability to copy information to unauthorized media; Since the data is not processed on the end device of the user, unauthorized access to it by the user device is excluded; Encryption of channels through which data is transmitted, such as video files or personal information, significantly reduces the risk of data interception.

Шаблон:Quote 'author = Alexey Cherevkov, RUSTEK Product Director of SBClaud

Lower operating costs Including lower cost of ownership, simplified infrastructure administration, and streamlined operations.

You should not expect direct economic benefits from the introduction of VDI. It will require the cost of licenses, equipment, and the attraction of qualified specialists. But, going to such costs, the business gets the opportunity to earn more, "said Alexei Cherevkov. - If you calculate the total savings from reducing the burden on the office, increasing the speed of infrastructure maintenance and reducing the cost of this maintenance, reducing the downtime of employees and adding to this the opportunity to attract highly professional employees with comfortable working conditions for them, you can confidently talk about a significant advantage in the business that the company will achieve using this technology.

Preparation for Implementation

Before designing a project, it is important to define a set of intersecting user sets based on several characteristics:

The need for your own desktop and the ability to adapt it to your requirements. Here, both minimal changes and complete user control are possible; The level of data the employee works with (low, medium, high, critical); Employee Mobility Requirement; Applications used; Load created on the network and computing power.

You then select the appropriate VDI model for each employee group. There are two main VDI consumption models:

Public model. With this model, the organization receives VDI from a service provider from a public cloud. Private model. In this case, the entire infrastructure, including channel capacities, is allocated only to a specific user company. Both the service provider and the company itself can serve such an infrastructure. In any case, it is important to assess the real needs of the business so as not to overpay for redundant tools or not be in austerity mode. Consultation with a provider with experience in implementing large-scale VDI projects will help minimize these risks.

{{quote 'An example is the project for the implementation of VDI infrastructure implemented by us in RTI Group, "says Alexey Cherevkov. - The company's strict requirements for information security forced employees to work with two independent sets of equipment, that is, each had two monitors and two computers. In addition to significantly increasing the cost of purchasing and maintaining the IT infrastructure, this format was inconvenient to users. Accordingly, the objectives of the project were not only to reduce the cost of owning IT infrastructure, but also to increase employee satisfaction due to a more convenient organization of work, while complying with all corporate security standards. In addition, one of the main requirements was the maximum use of Russian software and equipment. As a result, the virtual desktop infrastructure was deployed. The final device was a thin client of the Russian assembly, modified to meet our requirements with established security tools, including trusted download. As a virtualization platform, the RUSTEK platform developed by our specialists, certified by FSTEK and included in the Register of Russian Software, was used. }}

Design and Implementation

Once the customer has identified the ultimate goal of the VDI implementation and critical requirements for desktop security and availability time, the solution is designed and software products selected.

The step-by-step instruction may look like this:

1. Unify the applications used;
2. Determine whether each application can work with a VDI model;
3. Calculate the load created by the application on computing capacity and its impact on the entire infrastructure;
4. Identify the current architecture of your IT infrastructure;
5. Define a valid project budget;
6. Based on the data obtained, design the solution architecture;
7. Determine the extent to which business processes and company infrastructure are changing and assess budget opportunities;
8. Purchase equipment, licenses;
9. Implement solution (implementation, testing, pilot operation).

The timing of implementation depends on the size of the company, the state of the current infrastructure, the requirements.

Based on our practice, the minimum period is one-and-a-half months. It took so long to deploy VDI to 80 jobs per customer. During the survey, our experts found that OS Russian operating systems are used as guests, all office programs are domestic, while user workstations operate under OS control, "recalls Windows Alexei Cherevkov. It took about a week to create the project and approve it. Two more weeks - for the deployment of the platform virtualizations and VDI solution with integration into the customer's infrastructure. The same time took subsequent refinement and experimental operation. Another significantly larger project for several thousand jobs took about seven months.