What Are You Doing Right Now
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@thecreativeone91 said:
We don't use VDI at all here. It's a cost and management nightmare no matter how much people think it's better. We only use Terminal Servers.
We already use VDI here for Labs and such so students can access the apps for their classes if they don't have a (good enough) computer to use. Right now, VMware is what we use, but our CIO wants us to see if we can move away from that due to the price.
I am pushing for us to switch up and just use RDSH servers... We already have a few RemoteApps available and folks are using them.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
We don't use VDI at all here. It's a cost and management nightmare no matter how much people think it's better. We only use Terminal Servers.
Great use cases for both, but for average organizations, avoiding VDI is the best answer most of the time.
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@dafyre said:
Nothing so bizzare, aside from a request from the higher ups. It looks like we will have to have a separate RDS Collection (which means 2 more servers with beefy graphics cards...)
So no technical reasons, just someone who heard a term and repeated it? I wonder how often it wouldn't be better to provide what they need and not what they want and just be coy about it. "Is this what you were looking for?" Since they don't likely know what the words mean and can't tell which is which by looking at it, they might never know that you fixed their issues for them.
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@dafyre said:
I am recommending that we switch to Session Based Computing (RDP into a beefy server). Some of the Apps require a decent graphics card for heavy lifting (Adobe Premiere, AutoCad, and a few others).
Some of those are good VDI candidates.
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@dafyre said:
We already use VDI here for Labs and such so students can access the apps for their classes if they don't have a (good enough) computer to use. Right now, VMware is what we use, but our CIO wants us to see if we can move away from that due to the price.
I'm pushing Scale to expose Spice to make VDI on Scale easy to do.
Have you looked at KVM based or XenServer solutions? Both free. HyperV, of course, free too.
Really, no reason to be on VMware. They do offer some nice stuff, but there is plenty of excellent competition.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I wonder how often it wouldn't be better to provide what they need and not what they want and just be coy about it. "Is this what you were looking for?" Since they don't likely know what the words mean and can't tell which is which by looking at it, they might never know that you fixed their issues for them.
Fortunately, it was asked, "Can we do this?" and not "Here, do it this way". Since we already had the VDI environment setup and in testing, I figured I'd poke around and see if it could be done. Since it doesn't work the way I was thinking, I am offering what they need, now... Still planning how to get the best of both worlds.
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
I am recommending that we switch to Session Based Computing (RDP into a beefy server). Some of the Apps require a decent graphics card for heavy lifting (Adobe Premiere, AutoCad, and a few others).
Some of those are good VDI candidates.
Yeha, they are, and they work decently in our VDI setup. I think they would work even better as a RemoteApp or from a straight up RDP session. That is what I am in the middle of testing now. 8-) (Note: Premiere CS 6 runs good in Server 2012 over an RDP session on my server).
If we could come up with a reason to switch off of VMware, I'm sure we would. This is a state school, so I'm not sure if VMware is mandated or not, but we have at least 10 racks full of VMware servers and UPSes, lol. Switching would be quite painful. If it were my shop, I'd be either pushing for Scale clusters or give XenServer a shot.
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@dafyre said:
If we could come up with a reason to switch off of VMware, I'm sure we would.
How can you not have a reason? It's the only non-free option. Can you think of any reason to not switch off, other than "it's already there?"
Other than status quo or the lack of inerta, what's the upside to VMware today in an environment of your size?
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@dafyre said:
This is a state school, so I'm not sure if VMware is mandated or not.....
It's so sad that corruption is so common that it's just assumed to be a real risk. How the heck do Americans rank the US as being "not so corrupt as to impact me in day to day life". I'm convinced that America is so corrupt that Americans don't even recognize corruption whereas other countries, like Italy, are just not-corrupt enough that people still recognize it every day and complain.
Of course someone at a state school would find a way to funnel education money to the only vendor that doesn't offer what they need for free. You don't get kickbacks from free products.
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@dafyre said:
If it were my shop, I'd be either pushing for Scale clusters or give XenServer a shot.
Scale is nice, SO easy to use. They don't really have a VDI solution yet, though.
XenServer is amazing and does have VDI but it isn't up to par. KVM and HyperV are ideal for VDI scenarios.
Now if you are going with RDS, then XenServer and Scale would be excellent choices.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
If we could come up with a reason to switch off of VMware, I'm sure we would.
How can you not have a reason? It's the only non-free option. Can you think of any reason to not switch off, other than "it's already there?"
Other than status quo or the lack of inerta, what's the upside to VMware today in an environment of your size?
Regarding corruption in America...
The first would be I'm the new guy on the block. I don't have a lot of clout here yet. Second, being an Educational Institution, in the grand scheme of things I'm not sure where the straight up VMware Server falls in the budget. I know that VMware View is on the chopping block if I can get 2012 RDS for RemoteApps and / or VDI to work well.
Third... I don't actually have any experience with XenServer (I am working on that problem as we speak -- trying to get it set up at home, just haven't had time to dive in). Fourth... This being a state run school, things happen at the speed of...a snail. So I'm leaving not-so-subtle hints that we could save money by switching out VMware (although, as previously stated, I'm not sure how much). Some of our bigger applications, I am unsure about support in any environment other than VMware (Banner, the Student Information System and the oracle back-end that drives it).
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
If it were my shop, I'd be either pushing for Scale clusters or give XenServer a shot.
Scale is nice, SO easy to use. They don't really have a VDI solution yet, though.
XenServer is amazing and does have VDI but it isn't up to par. KVM and HyperV are ideal for VDI scenarios.
Now if you are going with RDS, then XenServer and Scale would be excellent choices.
I'm keeping my eyes on Scale. My experience with them has been very good. And I'd not be afraid to stand up another cluster with them at all.
XenServer would probably be our choice here if we went with RDS. I thought I remember you telling me that KVM was geared more towards Linux workloads?
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@dafyre said:
Some of our bigger applications, I am unsure about support in any environment other than VMware (Banner, the Student Information System and the oracle back-end that drives it).
Which leaves the questions of potentially.... were people choosing applications that not only cared what OS they ran on but cared what platform the OS ran on? This implies that they likely also would choose the brand of servers that they run on.
Logically, they might even dictate UPS brands, switching gear, racks. Once you go beyond the requirements to arbitrary requirements for support they likely breach US warranty law but more importantly, what IT person would read those requirements and do business with such a firm?
I realize it is only a concern and not one based on something that has happened there. But it is something that happens all the time in different places and is completely insane. Not just that it happens, but that management then allows the people accepting those problems to keep making decisions
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@scottalanmiller I'd insert another sad but true button here, but I used it above, lol.
I would be making lots of noise if I saw stuff like that happening here (and it may well be, I'm just not privvy to those discussions / decisions yet). I had to do that a few times at my last job and got myself in hot water a time or two (more because of the way I did it than what I did).
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Just got surprised by the door to our apartment just opening. Looks like maybe it is the cleaning lady. Unfortunately she speaks zero English and our Spanish is bad at the best of times and our Panamanian Spanish is so much worse than our Castillian!
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Maybe she can read? Type it out in google and translate it!
Or tell echo! -
@Minion-Queen said:
Maybe she can read? Type it out in google and translate it!
Or tell echo!No Echo here, did not fit in the luggage.
That's what we were doing, even with the Google Translate on the phone it was a bit of an effort.
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Ok, Google. Translate "I need new blankets" into Spanish.
Google's response returns something about shearing sheep to make wool.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
Nothing so bizzare, aside from a request from the higher ups. It looks like we will have to have a separate RDS Collection (which means 2 more servers with beefy graphics cards...)
So no technical reasons, just someone who heard a term and repeated it? I wonder how often it wouldn't be better to provide what they need and not what they want and just be coy about it. "Is this what you were looking for?" Since they don't likely know what the words mean and can't tell which is which by looking at it, they might never know that you fixed their issues for them.
That's what we do. All they care about is the end result anyway.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
That's what we do. All they care about is the end result anyway.
One hopes.
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We have a big Central American thunderstorm rolling in. Not sure if it is going to get to us or not. We can see it coming down hard north of the Rio Hato Airport and some to the south on the peninsula. Seems like anything like rain always passes by us here though.
