The VDI Image Management Problem

The total cost of managing the lifecycle of a PC including provisioning, patching and upgrading its image can cost enterprises hundreds of dollars per user per year. Whether you are using traditional PCs or virtual desktops, image and desktop management consumes 25–26% of the IT Operations budget even when the PC is locked down and well-managed.1

Why VDI Doesn’t Solve the Image Management Problem?

VDI was introduced by many organizations to lower the costs of managing desktops by centralizing all administrative functions and desktop images. However, according to Gartner Group, VDI only saves organizations between 2% and 10% in total cost of ownership when compared to physical desktops . The reason for this is that VDI doesn't solve the image management problem. Instead, VDI offers customers a choice between three undesirable image management choices:

1. Non-Persistent VDI Desktop—The operating system and corporate applications are installed in the VM. After every session, all user data including user files, settings and installed applications are lost. This approach minimizes storage but is not useable by users who want to have access to their personalized files, settings or user-install applications.
2. Persistent VDI Desktop—User data, settings, applications and operating system files are all stored in the VM, requiring massive storage capacity that increases linearly with every additional user. This approach preserves user files, settings and applications across multiple sessions but comes with prohibitively high storage cost and poor performance.
3. Non-Persistent Desktop with a Shared Master Disk (AKA Linked Clone or Copy on Write)—The operating system and corporate applications are created in a read-only shared master disk. User files, settings and applications are written to a differential disk image. The two components are synthesized at boot time. However, each time you change the shared master disk to patch the operating system or upgrade a corporate application, the VM's differential disk image stops working. So, after you create the first shared master disk, you must provision each patch and application one at a time using traditional desktop management tools such as Microsoft SMS. This approach adds tremendous complexity and has minimal benefit in terms of storage or IT operations cost reduction.

For a detailed explanation of the VDI Image Management problem, read Brian Dump: Atlantis Computing hopes to solve the “file-based” versus “block-based” VDI disk image challenge at Brianmadden.com.

Atlantis ILIO Image Management Solution

ILIO transforms the way enterprises manage desktop images from manually configuring, upgrading and patching hundreds of monolithic images to managing a single set of master image components. Atlantis ILIO composes each desktop on-demand from image component including the operating system, IT applications and user application, data and settings. When IT organizations need to deploy patches or upgrades, the affected OS or application components only need to be changed once on a single centralized image. In a matter of minutes, administrators can propagate a patch or upgrade to all desktops, even when the desktops are powered down. By taking a new approach to image management for VDI, ILIO provides the benefits of centralized image management with the ability to allow users to install applications, maintain a personalized user desktop and give administrations the ability to provision changes to the master image instantly.

 

Demonstration of Atlantis ILIO Image Management with VMware View

1 Desktop Total Cost of Ownership: 2008 Update, January 24th, 2008,Gartner, ID Number: G00153705. Percentage Calculated based on “Desktop Management” as a percentage of the “”IT Operations”