> View this now

Published on: July 2007
Type of content: WHITE PAPER
Format: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) (463 kb)
Price: FREE

Overview:
Many companies have turned to virtualization technologies for their servers and in their data centers to simplify administration and to reduce management chores and operating costs while maintaining reliability and safeguarding against disasters. Seeing the significant benefits virtualization delivers in those environments, companies are now looking to apply the same technology to their desktop computers.

The idea behind what is called a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is to run desktop operating systems and applications inside virtual machines that reside on servers in the data center. Desktop operating systems inside virtual machines are also referred to as virtual desktops. Users access the virtual desktops and applications from a desktop PC client or thin client using a remote display protocol and get almost the full features as if the applications were loaded on their local systems, with the difference being that the applications are centrally managed.