Desktop Over IP

Overview

In the early days of desktop computing the user experience was low and expectations were equally low. However, the desktop has now proliferated to virtually all desks and so needs to be able to manage many different types of user environments ranging from low end application users to high end computer graphics artists.

In large organizations the administrators of desktop computers and software are tasked with harnessing the processing power of their computers and providing that power to many different levels of users while maintaining higher levels of hardware and software security and reliability. The goals of the administrator (simplified provisioning, security and reliability) and the needs of the user (high quality experience, rich peripheral set and varied processing needs based on individual roles) can often lead to conflict and problems that cannot be solved by the current model of a computer on each users desk.

In many organizations there is also a drive towards improving the security of computer data as a result of legislation like Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA and newer EU regulations. These requirements are forcing the desktop administrators to question the validity of an individual PC on each user’s desk and look for alternative solutions where the data is not resident on the desktop device.

In parallel the drive toward virtualization of network servers along with the proliferation of software tools to enable virtualization has raised the possibility of desktop administrators realizing the same benefits as their server admin colleagues.

Traditional solutions

The primary solution offered by the industry to date has been the Thin Client model where all applications run on a background server and the user gains access to the applications from a Thin Client running a slim OS and a network connection.

These solutions also offer Thin Client access to a remote virtual operating system that is provisioned from a server over the network. Both of these solutions are targeted at users with processing needs that are focused around standardized applications and operating systems and where hardware is irrelevant in their experience.

The Thin Client model serves these users well but is lacking in rich user experience for those users who need higher levels of processing power, higher quality graphics, larger sets of peripherals at their desks or specialized software applications. This means that a traditional Thin Client model does not scale to all of the users in an organization and so the desktop administrator is left managing two completely different systems.

Additionally the Thin Client model requires the desktop administrator to implement a completely different computing model where all computers are replaced with virtualization servers (application virtualization or OS virtualization) and performance of those servers is shared between all users.

The inability of Thin Client models to provide a generic solution that applies to all end user types has prevented the technology from being widely adopted, and ultimately failed to deliver on the promises of back racked desktop computing.

So what is the ideal solution?

In an ideal solution the desktop administrator would have one solution that is acceptable to all different types of desktop users including the desktop PC users and high end workstation users, while giving all the benefits of a back racked model.

To achieve this, the administrator would replace each desktop computer with a zero client and consolidate all of the computing resources into a back room environment.

The solution would then allow the desktop administrator to provision any type of computing resource to any desk based on user login and admin profiles. This would allow any user to login at any desk and get access to the computer that is available to them in the back room.

This solution would use TCP/IP as its transport mechanism and would include the ability to provision many types of computing resource to a user desk including dedicated rack mounted PCs, rack mounted blade PCs, specialized computers with unique hardware and virtualized computers.

This ideal solution would allow many different types of users (application users, workstation users, etc.) to have rich access to a computer as though the computer was placed locally to their desk while allowing the administrator to realize all the benefits of Thin Client and back racked computing.

This rich computer access would include high quality graphics with an ability to use multiple video displays, CD audio and support for any USB peripherals at the desk.

An overview of the ideal solution is shown below. In this solution all user desks are equipped with a client that allows the user to access a given computer resource that is located somewhere remotely on the network. In the background the desktop administrator would provide various types of computing resources including dedicated PCs, blade PCs and possibly virtualized operating systems and applications. The administrator would then provision the appropriate computer to any given user desk based on the computing needs of that user.

As an example this ideal solution would allow one system to provide call center users with access to a standard set of virtualized applications, the office managers to have access to a standard set of PC hardware and software and the graphics design team to have access to dedicated workstations with unique applications and peripherals. All of this would be managed by a single administrator and be provisioned using the standard TCP/IP network that already exists in the organization. This solution would provide a rich computer experience for all desktop users using the same system for all.