From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!
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I'm about to start the migration of a VDI environment, back to… physical desktops! We aren't getting the performance that we need from a VMware Horizon VDI, that is backed by two servers providing 15 windows 10 virtual desktops, and a FC SAN (I'm about to replace it with local NVMe SSD, replicated).
My choice for desktops will be HP z240 with third party ssd (SATA or cheap NVMe). I will manage those workstations via AMT and I will use Veeam endpoint for the backups. (to our Veeam server, of course).Do you think I will regret? I like the flexibility of the VDI, but performance aren't on par with even 8 years ago desktop with a baseline local ssd… even on the LAN, everything graphical related is "not as good".
Have any of you had the experience of migrate back from VDI to dekstops?(Oh, I'm also about to drop our centralized fileserver for something like dropbox for business or onedrive… replicated on the local desktop ssd, of course)
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Regret would be very based around your use case, but from what I know of your environment from other threads this sounds like a good move. VDI rarely makes sense and there is so much advantage to physical desktops still. I think you'll probably be happy.
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I'm not Scott and don't know much about your environment why are you worrying about backing up the endpoints?
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There are a few cases to backup desktops (although I'm in the same lane as @Dashrender) Veeam Free Endpoint would be one.
Another although it isn't centrally managed would be Create Synchronicity, and one that I'm actually setting up now would be Amanda Backup (from source).
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Amanda Backup is centrally managed (if that wasn't clear).
Create Synchronicity is not.
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@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
I'm not Scott?
Then who are you?
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Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
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@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
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@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
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@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
That's often what you want with VDI. Pristine desktops every time.
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@scottalanmiller said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
That's often what you want with VDI. Pristine desktops every time.
Yes, we're working on getting persistent storage, not VMs, setup for staff. Then we're looking at doing OneDrive on student machines mounted via WebDAV.
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@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@scottalanmiller said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
That's often what you want with VDI. Pristine desktops every time.
Yes, we're working on getting persistent storage, not VMs, setup for staff. Then we're looking at doing OneDrive on student machines mounted via WebDAV.
Why WebDAV... is that to avoid automatic syncs to an ephemeral machine?
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@scottalanmiller said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@scottalanmiller said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
That's often what you want with VDI. Pristine desktops every time.
Yes, we're working on getting persistent storage, not VMs, setup for staff. Then we're looking at doing OneDrive on student machines mounted via WebDAV.
Why WebDAV... is that to avoid automatic syncs to an ephemeral machine?
Yep, don't want to sync every time a user logs in.
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@Dashrender we have a three node vSphere environment (x3550 M4, 64 Gb of ram), that host ERP, fileserver etc. Mainly windows VM, some linux. We got not-good-as-real-desktop performance on gigabit network (cat6, SG500 switches) with Praim zero clients, so after trying many tweaking on the connection server, I think that maybe is a lot less complex and cost-effective to migrate towards a fat client environment… the core i5 of today are very capable (including integrate graphics) and z240 is IMHO a very nice machine to do office editing, ero and other not so heavy tasks. In addition, the AMT capability is really nice when you want to provision or tweak a desktop in a remote fashion. We already have veeam b&r in production, so the endpoint on the desktop seems like a very clean and effective choice to re-image a broken machine.
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It's not about reimaging broken machines to me. The storage space for backing up endpoints seems like a waste to me. Why not maintain an image to use for fast restores?
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@Dashrender veeam backup include domain join, machine name… I'm not that experienced with windows imaging, I'm more a Linux sysadmin.
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@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@coliver said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
Good luck we've got about 100 virtual desktops deployed and are looking to do another 100 next summer. We've got a big IBM SAN and a half dozen hefty servers doing the processing.
How many compute nodes do you have? Coliver
Six right now. We're haven't gotten close to maxing then out yet. That being said these machines perform at the physical desktop level but they aren't persistent, yet, so every time someone logs in they get a new desktop.
@coliver do you use altro something like nvidia grid to boost graphical performance? Do you have SSD in your SAN? The price of the SSD for our SAN frighten me (IBM), I can buy a lot more PCIe storage for my server, enough to keep VMs replicated between two or maybe all three node. Intel enterprise PCIe SSD is now at 0,8€/Gb or less, and the performance are really top notch… not your usual two-way 8Gbit/s fibre channel!
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@Francesco-Provino said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender veeam backup include domain join, machine name… I'm not that experienced with windows imaging, I'm more a Linux sysadmin.
Well sure. It's a bare metal restore. I suppose if you have the storage for endpoint backups. But still seems like a large amount of capital spend (potentially) for something that will rarely be used.
Dedupe would greatly reduce the amount of storage for endpoint backups.But you're looking to deploy win 10... How are planning to do that? Imaging would be the fastest way to deploy a unified type desktop.
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@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Francesco-Provino said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
@Dashrender veeam backup include domain join, machine name… I'm not that experienced with windows imaging, I'm more a Linux sysadmin.
Well sure. It's a bare metal restore. I suppose if you have the storage for endpoint backups. But still seems like a large amount of capital spend (potentially) for something that will rarely be used.
Dedupe would greatly reduce the amount of storage for endpoint backups.But you're looking to deploy win 10... How are planning to do that? Imaging would be the fastest way to deploy a unified type desktop.
Regarding the storage: yes, our NAS has already plenty of storage, Veeam deduplication will save a lot of space.
Windows 10 is already deployed in the VDI, z240 will include it as OEM. -
@Dashrender said in From thin clients to desktops… not the other way!:
It's not about reimaging broken machines to me. The storage space for backing up endpoints seems like a waste to me. Why not maintain an image to use for fast restores?
@Dashrender do you know about some easy and simple tutorial to do an automated deploy of windows 10, AKA image it?
My plan is to eventually reset the workstation in an automated way via AMT, something like "fire that script and forget".
