Providing end-users with a full no-compromise PC experience is key to the success of a virtual desktop project. The PCoIP protocol integrated with VMware View delivers on these requirements and provides support for:

• Flash content and graphics
  
• Progressive build of graphics
  
• Multimedia redirection
  
• Multiple monitors
  
• USB redirection
  
• Print optimisations

VMware ThinApp integrated with View provides an agentless architecture with applications packaged as a single EXE file.

Run virtually any application from any device, even on locked down desktops with user-mode execution.

VMware vSphere 4.1 was optimised for the largest desktop environments including performance acceleration provided by memory compression, hardware assisted VMFS locking and faster vMotion.

Managing 100s or 1,000s of physical desktops is a real challenge. With desktop virtualisation all desktops are delivered from a small number of centrally managed master images. These can be periodically updated to deliver new applications or patches.

Modern multi-core hardware with plenty of RAM is able to support many concurrent desktops, nowadays expect to get around 100 per server.

A Virtual Desktop Access License or Software Assurance subscription is required for the end-point device. Check with your license provider to make sure you are suitably covered.

As the desktops are running centrally there is great choice with regard to the end-point:

• Thick clients - Windows, MAC or Linux
  
• Thin clients - with low management costs
  
• Zero clients - PCoIP devices without an OS
  
• Pseudo thin clients - convert your existing PCs into “thin-clients”

Accurately sizing and validating the server and storage hardware is key to the overall TCO of a virtual desktop project.

VMware View Planner enables you to define Workload Profiles and validate that your hardware (CPU, memory and storage) can support a specified number of concurrent users with an acceptable level of latency.

Desktop virtualisation solutions generate a high number of disk I/Os throughout the day.

Storage arrays that include dedicated Flash drives and acceleration via Flash caches will provide the optimum TCO.

As with all new technologies it is essential that you evaluate and validate the solution in your environment.

SNS has developed a series of services to enable you to quickly and cost-effectively determine if desktop virtualisation is right for your organisation.