There are applications where client hypervisors make sense: If you’re a helpdesk or QA employee, and you need to troubleshoot many user environments, it’s handy to run four different OS instances from your desk. But I suspect your average end user would prefer not to have to toggle between multiple desktop instances.

Wanova Mirage has some significant advantages over a hypervisor-based approach:

• No wipe and load: the Mirage client is a 2 MB MSI file that installs in minutes on any PC running Windows

• No change to user experience: Mirage runs as a service in the background. The user can install applications, personalize their PC and work exactly as they always have.

• Broad hardware compatibility: Mirage leverages Windows’ full hardware compatibility list, and Wanova does not need to consistently play ‘catch up’ as new drivers and models become available.

• No underlying, unmanaged OS: Mirage installs into (and allows management of) one single OS on the endpoint: Windows. There are no performance implications, as the client works within the OS, and the organization only pays for a single license for OS and apps.

When considering the breadth of available desktop virtualization approaches, make sure you clearly outline your objectives and requirements to find the best solution fit. For a good article outlining the capabilities and limitations of different DV approaches, check out Andy Wood’s article for The Virtualization Practice.

However, I think the discussion must move beyond addressing a problem created by non-persistent VMs. User virtualization might be a good solution for that specific problem, but is this really all that ‘user virtualization’ is about? I see user virtualization as a much broader concept: On the IT side, it is one which extends universally to desktop management, data protection, and user support. From a user perspective, the term should encompass desktop availability, ubiquitous data access, mobility, and consistent desktop experience. The reality is that most organizations will retain a mix of both physical and virtual desktops, so user virtualization must go beyond the VM user and extend to end-users in general, regardless of where their desktop resides.

Furthermore, in the case of persistent VMs and physical machines such as laptops, it is very common to have a 1:1 relationship between a user and the machine. In this case, user virtualization must be able to handle user personalization, while still allowing IT to manage the machine image without losing customizations and to port or migrate the entire user environment across different machines as needed. A common example would be a PC refresh cycle where the user may move across different laptops or get moved all the way to a hosted VM. A good user virtualization solution should support this portability without affecting personalization elements: the OS, apps the user has installed and configured on the original machine, as well as preferences and data. Many of these elements fall outside the standard user profile boundaries, and this is where intelligence becomes a requirement.

While we at Wanova are aware of how easy it is to install and work with Wanova Mirage, I thought it might make sense to clarify. Wanova Mirage software gives you the benefits of VDI: centralized management, data protection, and simplified desktop support, plus the benefits of traditional imaging and software distribution tools, like single image management and patching, without the complexity. And, it works with your remote and mobile workers as well.

To run Mirage, you need:

• Mirage Client software — a service that installs directly into the OS on the endpoint (ANY Win XP or Win 7 PC. Mirage doesn’t need Intel V-Pro, or a client hypervisor).
• Wanova Mirage server software — a standard Windows Server service that hosts and manages the desktops images (without executing them (execution runs on the endpoint). A standard quad core 8GB server can manage up to 1000 endpoints.
• Wanova Management service — used to manage the Wanova system.
• Low-end storage – to host desktop images (We love SATA drives).

That’s it. Compare this to a typical VDI deployment, where you need:

• Thin client application or device –  including RDP support and other vendor-specific client software.
• Connection broker – mediates access from thin endpoints to the hosted desktop farm, including user entitlement, pool management etc. To avoid it becoming a single point of failure, a redundant broker is required, adding further complexity.
• VDI agent – application that installs in the Windows OS that runs on the hosted images and interacts with the connection broker.
• Image management service – application that runs in the hosting virtualization platform and manages the images.
• A farm of servers — used to execute workloads of active desktops. A typical quad core 8GB server can typically host a few dozen desktops. Imagine how many of those you need for a deployment of thousands of desktops.
• Primary, high-end storage –  to host the desktops if you want access rates similar to the  local disk access in physical desktops.
• Virtualization infrastructure and management service – to provision/deploy virtual machines for the hosted desktops.
• Management service — web-based management application (runs on client and server).

I was pleased to hear an IT Director tell me that Brian Madden, during an impromptu session on the show ‘demo’ floor, commented (I’m paraphrasing), “If what you want to do is improve your control of your desktop environment, you don’t need VDI. You should look at Wanova.”

If you would like to see Mirage simplicity in action, you can sign up for a live demo and webinar, and we’ll be posting some video demos soon.

1. Single disk image for many users
2. Remote display protocols that are indistinguishable from local
3. Local / offline VDI
4. Broader compatibility for app virtualization

I (of course) was pleased to see that he mentioned Wanova in several of these categories, but I thought it was important to clarify a few points. With the emergence of XenClient and other proposed ‘offline VDI’ technologies, I find people assume Wanova is addressing the problem in the same way, using a hypervisor with some sort of ‘check-in/check-out’. This couldn’t be further from reality.

When we built Wanova Mirage, we started with the idea of how best to address real customer pain: helping IT better manage, support and protect desktops, especially for remote and mobile workers, without compromising user experience. We were not trying to force fit a technology that made perfect sense for servers to fit a mobile desktop model. That gave us a lot of flexibility.

Instead, we engineered a software solution that works within Windows. Hypervisors of any sort, while supported, are not required. Wanova Mirage centralizes the full contents of the desktop in the data center for management and protection, but distributes execution to the endpoint for optimal user experience (added benefit: no need for a massive server farm to run each desktop). Mirage’s virtual layers allow IT to create a single image and apply it to hundreds of users, easily addressing Brian’s first point. Because users are accessing a local cache of the centrally stored desktop, we can stay out of the ‘protocol’ war. Point 2 – Check.

And while connected, Mirage continuously and bi-directionally synchronizes the endpoint cache with the centralized desktop: IT changes to the managed image layer propagate down to endpoint caches, and user updates to the personal layer propagate up to the central desktop instance.  Further, Mirage employs in-data-path and sophisticated network optimization technologies that enable extremely efficient data transfer. The bottom line is that with Mirage, the desktop is always ‘checked-in’ and resides at the data center. It just leverages the available CPU cycles of the endpoint cache to execute desktop workloads. This architecture makes it possible for users to easily work online as well as offline, with full performance and complete access to their entire desktop. Point 3 – Check.

Finally, in the Mirage layered model, IT can define core applications that can be managed and distributed as part of the Base Image (typically, Office, antivirus, etc.). But in the second layer reserved for user-installed applications, Mirage is agnostic to how these are provisioned. They can be installed by the user, or provisioned centrally through SCCM/Altiris, or virtualized. Whatever works best for your organization. Point 4 – Check.

In my view, easier is better. Why create a whole infrastructure with connection brokers, server farms, high-performance storage, new clients, synchronizers, hypervisors, and the list goes on to virtualize everything, when you can just as easily manage what you have today?

Ah, the challenges of marketing in tech.

Anyway, Brian asked a lot of great questions and provided some good insights as Ady gave him a great deep dive into Wanova Mirage distributed desktop virtualization software. Highlights include a tour of the management interface, and a full restore of a complete desktop to new (and different) laptop hardware, complete with all user-installed apps and data. Oh, and did I mention the Mirage server is located in Israel?

Enjoy! http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2010/06/07/video-demo-of-wanova-s-offline-laptop-disk-management-thing-it-s-really-cool.aspx

This quote exemplifies the dilemma of IT — how to bridge the gap between user experience and cost-effective endpoint management. Furthermore, the challenge of supporting adequate user-experience is far greater when the managed endpoints are mobile laptops, especially those used by knowledge workers or power users. These users are accustomed to rich user-interfaces. They need to execute their advanced applications quickly, and must be able to work offline. Further, they do not want to depend on network latency for every keyboard stroke or mouse click they make.

What if there was a solution that could, as Ragland says, “…store [the desktops] on the server, where we can manage everything”  but do this without degrading the user-experience? This is the objective that we challenged ourselves to address when we founded Wanova. Now — 2 years later this vision is fully realized with the Mirage product. The key idea is to centralize the desktop contents in their entirety in the data center for total manageability, protection, and support, but turn the endpoints into caching devices that execute the workloads locally. This way, IT has all desktops in the data center, while users get the rich experience they want. What’s more, IT does not need to forklift upgrade their data center infrastructure to centrally host and power these thousands of desktops. With Wanova’s distributed design, only a small fraction of server and storage resources is required. We leverage extensive deduplication to reduce storage requirements, and because the applications execute on the endpoints, the server is used primarily for management. In fact, the same server that could host maybe a few dozen thin clients can support a thousand Wanova-managed endpoints.

So – IT enjoys all the benefits of centralized desktops –  central management, backup, continuity, migration, provisioning and support — while end users stay fully productive. Sound too good to be true? Why don’t you try it out for yourself ?

The Wanova alternative: Use distributed desktop virtualization, which allows IT to manage groups of endpoints with a single image for core IT-approved OS and core applications (and patch them regardless of whether the endpoints are connected). By “splitting” the PC into separate layers, Wanova also creates a persistent area for user-installed applications, as well as user data and settings. IT can manage the apps that are critical on a departmental or company level, while end users can install their own applications without compromising IT’s ability to control the base image. Further, if a user loses or damages his or her PC, IT can restore the endpoint, complete with applications and personalization.

Good for IT. Good for the end-user. This is how desktop virtualization should be!

In order for desktop virtualization to gain broader deployment, we must provide an architecture that supports the way companies really work: with strong centralized management so IT can easily provision or migrate endpoint hardware, and use a single base image for patching and updates. We also must also take into account the needs of end users – especially those who are remote or mobile. They want to work as they always have, without complicated check-in procedures or being tethered to a slow network. The right approach can add value far beyond image management.  Companies can improve their support SLAs by troubleshooting an ailing laptop – even if the end user isn’t connected to the network, or re-imaging a remote PC in minutes instead of days. Wanova can do this — in-place, and without losing personalization or requiring a painful data restore.

What do you think? Is it time to re-define desktop virtualization?

You see, the challenge that many desktop vendors face (and customers experience first-hand) is they approach the problem from a server or client perspective and they treat the network as an afterthought. That misses the point. With desktop virtualization, the network is the PC bus. And unlike the PC bus running on your laptop or desktop today – which always works – the network introduces all kinds of complexity to the mix, including latency, bandwidth constraints, and even occasional availability issues. When I made this point during our presentation in Montreal, there were a lot of heads nodding around the room. Customers get it. It’s an easy problem to identify but a hard one to solve, and even harder if you treat the network as an afterthought.

Several attendees also mentioned that what was interesting to them was not the hypervisor, but improving PC lifecycle management. People are thinking about how they ease OS migrations given the release of Windows 7. But OS migration is just one aspect of PC lifecycle management that includes desktop provisioning, desktop management, desktop continuity – to name a few.

In retrospect, I’m glad attendees weren’t interested in the hypervisor since Wanova doesn’t require a hypervisor. That would have been a much tougher crowd for us.

The survey asked exactly the right questions and identifies key pain points that are preventing desktop virtualization from really taking off. While interest in Desktop Virtualization is growing, the biggest obstacles for adoption are the required hardware and software costs including datacenter upgrades — all areas that our technology “Distributed Desktop Virtualization” addresses quite handily.

Let’s look at cost, which the survey called out as a major barrier to desktop virtualization adoption. Twenty-nine percent of the respondents said that desktop virtualization is too expensive. Also, about 1/4 of the respondents said that the cost of hardware, including the need to upgrade datacenter servers to support a widespread virtual desktop deployment, was a problem.

In addition, nearly a quarter of those asked said that current desktop virtualization products are not mature enough for widespread use. This can be interpreted in any number of ways from “it’s not robust enough for mission-critical, enterprise use” to “the end-user experience is so bad, employees are less productive when forced to use it.”

So, where does Wanova fit in?

Our technology fits squarely in a couple of sweet spots: First, managers get the control they need without the up-front costs since Wanova scales to 1,000 virtual desktop per server. Also, as I mentioned in my previous post, Wanova works with what you already have – servers, network and endpoints. End-users continue to work productively with their existing laptops, desktops and netbooks, as though nothing has changed.

Anyone thinking about desktop virtualization should consider the TechTarget survey results. It raises questions about costs, management, and end-user support. Wanova’s Distributed Desktop Virtualization provides new answers to these important questions.