Getting our Applications to Become Virtualization Friendly

In an earlier post, I brought up how we are taking what we know as VDI and approaching it as a Desktop Management strategy, that encompasses six layers that make up a desktop. While this is not necessarily a new concept, we still don't see it being put into practice when solutions are being proposed in environments we are in.  I want to pick on the application layer today.  This layer gets tons of attention and has for as many years as I've been in this business, but still needs some TLC so we can get our desktops in a more dynamic state and more apt to allow virtualization to be embraced on the desktop.  Application Delivery through a virtualized means is a key component to realizing a positive management experience and a better ROI when leveraging virtualization on the desktop.  The great thing about it is you don't have to be hosting a desktop on a server to use it.  You pull that layer out of the O/S and it can be used on physical/virtual/Windows XP/Windows 7, etc.   

I rarely walk into to a sizable environment where they have not used Citrix or Terminal Services.  Citrix can present applications to an end user from a central location so that it appears they are running local, so we get some great central management functionality with that. The thing that pains me is seeing it only being used on a very small portion of the overall applications in use.  Many times it is in place just to deliver two or so applications to remote users or to one particular use case.  Now, I'm a fan of Citrix XenApp, but many of the organizations I see are in the "we tolerate" it mode.  Many also don't know that the XenApp of today operates differently than the XenApp Server of yesterday.  So the first step we like to take is understanding how to leverage that investment to accelerate the desktop management strategy.  It may be just using what they have more or putting them on a roadmap to upgrade and implement new features.  It many be looking at a different technology such as VMware's ThinApp, which does a great job of simplifying the packaging process and can provide quick results for some common applications like MS Office.   

Now to something I feel is very important to our success.  As many of us have seen with virtualization efforts, application support has been slow to come around.  Desktop or client side applications have normally been put on the back burner behind getting our server apps up and running on a virtual platform.  Numerous business application vendors have given a positive nod to Citrix Presentation Virtualization as a delivery method since you are still running the application on top of the operating system.  When it comes to putting an application in a bubble, we are back to the normal "not supported" statement.  This appears to be changing as we successfully package more applications and as the vendors (i.e. VMware) work closely with software companies on certification programs for virtual appliances (i.e. VMware Ready).  With this added support, next put in a solid approach to assessing our application needs, what our environments are performing like and what kind of users we have.  In my opinion, all of these efforts should lend to better collaboration, integration and applications that are virtualization friendly.  

What Is Good End User Experience?

When we discuss desktop management and delivery using virtualization, the various vendors in the space like to bring up end user experience as a selling point.  Matt Hensley discussed this in his blog and gave some great direction on some of the tools out there that have focused on monitoring and placing a metric around end user experience when VDI is in use:

http://matthensley.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/vdi-monitoring-and-the-end-user-experience/ 

I want to continue to build on that conversation and add in some of the approach details we have seen to be successful as we have started to tackle the desktop.

The first thing we have to make sure is clear: VDI is a subset of an overall desktop management/delivery strategy.  Since the desktop has multiple layers, our approach should not focus just on putting a desktop on a server.  We need to look at how we can break the desktop into manageable layers, then deliver those layers in a method that the use case calls for.  With that in mind, we need to approach the end user experience the same way.  Each use case will call for a different type of experience based on the way the end user needs to work, the applications they use, their environment and location.  Once we determine these items, this will feed into the overall design and deployment path we need to take.

Why do we go through this trouble?  If money is no object and you have limitless network, storage and compute, you could probably get away with just picking the heaviest use case and using it to design the infrastructure for everything.  But we know that isn't possible.  Much of the debate has been around the financial viability of leveraging desktop virtualization.  But many times that is because we just focus on VDI and not the approach of how to delivery a more efficient desktop, and all of it's layers. 

In the past, we haven't had the ability to measure the inner workings of the desktop environment enough to figure out what the users need to get the experience they need. There are many desktop management tools that can give us numbers, but they were not created with virtualization in mind.  Those times are changing, Matt discusses tools that we can use to look into the environment and monitor key metrics to put a score around end user experience so we can design, deploy, optimize and grow the environment.  Some of those tools like Liquidware Stratusphere help us to assess before we even start.  We can group our users, assign the kind of experience they need and design the environment to meet those needs.  We can't promise it will be an easy process, but it normally is a process that can give us the best results.