Brian Madden - All Comments

re: Two reasons why User Installed Apps don't matter anymore

Jason E. Smith — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:48 GMT

@Icelus the UIA features in ProfileUnity that Trex mentions do not require admin rights. ProfileUnity provide user rights management over UIA for standard users. It also features whitelists, blacklists, etc. It is an integrated part of our User Management and can be applied to select users as well.

re: Announcing the second edition of The VDI Delusion: "The New VDI Reality"

Brian Madden — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:21:09 GMT

Oh.. so you have a cool environment all set up and ready to go? Justin our video guy would probably like Montana? He's trying to visit all the National Parks in the US.. don't know if he's been up that way yet. :)

Seriously the Geek Week (yeah that's the right name) was awesome, but expensive. We got it sponsored last time. So as soon as another vendor wants to step up, we're ready. Maybe we can pass a hat for bitcoins from the OSS community?

For others who don't know what Geek Week is, check out www.brianmadden.com/geekweek. But yeah, I'd love to do that again.

re: Announcing the second edition of The VDI Delusion: "The New VDI Reality"

Scott Dowdle — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:02:32 GMT

That's nice and all... in a blah, blah, blah, text, text, text kind of way... and yeah, I got my free copy... thank you very much... but the real question here... is when are you guys going to do another hands on GEEK WEEK (or whatever it was called) where you install 5 different products in 5 days and put them through their paces? Huh?!?

I've basically engineered my own, low performing / low budget VDI setup using a single VM host, KVM virtual machines, and disk files as images... using the SPICE protocol... to access Linux desktop machines. Yeah, I know. I'm a freak.

re: VDI is still about trade-offs. The difference is that in 2013, you can pick which ones.

Brian McGee — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:45:44 GMT

"In 2013, if you want to use VDI to deliver an inferior desktop, that's just another option, not a requirement."

Great line...I wonder if this will get quoted/taken out of context?

re: Two reasons why User Installed Apps don't matter anymore

Icelus — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:50:04 GMT

I guess one could say that UIA never mattered because everyone just cops out...

UIA was a problem a long time ago on physical PCs that was easily cured with granting admin rights. This happened because an organization and/or IT department preferred productivity over security.

The introduction of non-persistant desktops re-introduced the problem, then a solution was given for personalization with layering tools while persistant desktops could also be used.

Sure, price and complexity are going down to make these as possible alternatives, but what you are seeing is another cop out with using admin rights to allow UIA.

StrataApps is a unique tool that can be used in conjunction with layering or persistant desktops but doesn't require admin rights and it has been dissapointing to hear the non-progress since August 2012 as well as this "rumor".

I hope to continue to see current or new tools that eliminate the need for admin rights to allow UIA, because anything less is a cop out and failure to the industry.

re: VDI is still about trade-offs. The difference is that in 2013, you can pick which ones.

Kata Tank — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:06:44 GMT

I will get back on previous topic... Don't need to do trade of !

Users will accept to get a locked environment for production as they will get their personnal things on their devices.

Problem will be to be sure that the things that require security will stay in the locked down system (either in locked down desktop, VDI, container, ...).

re: VDI is still about trade-offs. The difference is that in 2013, you can pick which ones.

Ron Oglesby — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:19:19 GMT

Not sure brian...

this:

"we had to have the trade-offs of shared images (which themselves meant no user installed apps or that we could only use apps that were compatible with app virtualization)."

you and I always disagree on. Even ignoring for a second the apps that capture other apps at install (think LWL or the never released AppSense) stuff) you still have layers.

Either in the Unidesk model (Shameless plug as I work there) or in something like the Personal vDisk (Ringcube) model with a layer snapped on-top of a shared image.

in our world a persistent desktop acts just like any other full clone persistent desktop. SID remains, domain SID, app UUIDs (like from symantec enterprise) and of course if you allow user installed apps, they are sustained also.

People dont want to trade off, you are right on that.

But the reason they move to shared disk model is because their physical mgmt blows and they are looking for an easier/better way to do it. Is VDI that answer? that is only a question for the customer.

But, to say you have to trade off between persistence and shared image is not true.

Persistence is about what is sustained, shared image is just how its created/updated. Assuming that shared image means no user installed apps or no persistence etc ignores technology already out there (and even owned/sold by big players).

re: Two reasons why User Installed Apps don't matter anymore

appdetective — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:04:58 GMT

This is a real shame, as I hoped to have a less complex than layers solution to enable the removal of admin rights on client side machines which was also supported. I think that is what the real issue is here. An unwillingness to support the product even for a fee. My experience has been that lack of conviction has caused most to not want to highlight the need to customers.

I think all this is very short sighted in a user management tool kit, especially when combined with privilege management features or products that could provide granular management within the UIA layer which is much more useful that what TREX and the folks at LWL provide.

I think the storage techs make 1-1 VDI easier, but this still means bad management practices for a new form factor. As people mature, to reduce costs and risks you need better management and also retain some flexibility.

As to Brian's second point about do the personal stuff elsewhere. That's a terrible end result for IT, as that is now all completely our of governance.

So another case of short sighted vendors lacking vision coupled with lazy IT practices ultimately does nothing useful for end users...

TREX I hope you keep going with a single user layer that is simple, but partner with some privilege management solutions to enable more granular control.

re: Two reasons why User Installed Apps don't matter anymore

t.rex — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:01:37 GMT

I actually think that the issue is going to gain momentum vs. loose steam - and dont think that looking at what Appsense does is any indication of which direction the wind is blowing in the customer corridors - not a slam - an opinion.

My thoughts are we are entering a phase where getting the entirety of user STATE (data, settings, apps, policies) under management, and into the data center is primary - delivery device, method, OS, etc is the jump ball.

I also believe that too many of us gravitate to the hyper mobile use case. We forget the 80% of the "iceberg" below the water line that is lan attached task workers on windows (all 600mil of them).

An OS is a collection of debugged device drivers - why would i want to add applications to it? Keep it pure. Apps come from all over: clouds, TS, virtualized, or virtually delivered - as in the case of FlexApp™ UIA - delivered one year ago today and gaining seats daily - so hard for me to agree UIA is anything but taking off.

We should think about "personal windows apps" not as the widgets we all need only, but also - what does IT not want to manage (package, sequence, virtualize, transform) ? Provide whitelists, blacklists, appstores of allowed apps, etc and you find that you can manage even the unmanaged apps and provide users access to what they believe makes them more productive.

We think about taking the user STATE out of Windows - all of it - and then delivering it at login. VDI, Physical, TS, etc are JUST DELIVERY TYPES. With great power comes great responsibility - and we see customers willing to engage in UIA strategies daily - so long as the operational expectations are there.

Companies want less complex images....not more ....and while the storage advancements are cool - state is not, and should not be STATIC to a device or an image.

Did steve jobs have it right in 1997?

www.youtube.com/watch

re: Nvidia moves "GRID" products to the mainstream, introduces server appliances with GPUs, sets standard for VDI graphics performance

Totie Bash — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:37:07 GMT

Randy, "the client must be capable of high performance H.264" does this means the PCOIP zero client won't work? Are you implying MMR?

Also, you said it uses more bandwidth? I am using VMware View and the only reason I am interested in the product is I want to fix 5% of my users who use high quality video and Google earth. I know this VGX would fix it but if it at the cost of bandwidth and depending on your answer the Zero client can't take advantage of it then that is huge. Let us make sure that is highlighted and in bold letters, not just in the fine print.

re: Is it too late for Terminal Server live session migration?

Shawn Bass — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:50:43 GMT

Funny I recall a BriForum a few years ago when Chetan (Atlantis) had discussed a similar idea to Drawbridge (only not as lightweight) and everyone dismissed it as lunacy. I recall sitting in the audience saying that it made perfect sense to me given Moore's law and such, but that it was incredibly difficult to pull off.

Regarding the idea of session mobility, as we've discussed this many times before it's doable but very difficult and it depends on the application architecture. The issue is that while you can live migrate a VM around because you are preserving the memory contents and IP addressing as you suspend/resume the entire OS, it is much more difficult to do at the user session layer with individual processes. Some applications would be unaffected by being resumed on a new IP on a different host. Other apps would implode. You would almost need to create a load balancing style VIP to route your client/server communications through in order to maintain session state with back end systems. Again, very tough thing to do. For apps that didn't have any back end communications this is easier, but still not simple.

Shawn

re: Is it too late for Terminal Server live session migration?

Harry Labana — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:36:38 GMT

Abstracted apps that can auto scale and leverage hardware as needed sounds good to me. This is much more than a XA/VDI conversation. It's about what future role an OS plays with future apps that can adapt and call resources as needed.

re: Is it too late for Terminal Server live session migration?

Neil Spellings — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:47:23 GMT

@help4ctx Great minds...etc :)

re: Is it too late for Terminal Server live session migration?

help4ctx — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:27:21 GMT

Doh, just saw that Neil Spellings posted something similar !!

re: Is it too late for Terminal Server live session migration?

help4ctx — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:25:40 GMT

I think some smart people have already been working on some underlying tech which may allow 'apps' to be migrated,

As Tim says, smart people have already looked at this and deemd it 'too hard', but newer hardware technologies and initiatives from Microsoft like this one....

research.microsoft.com/.../drawbridge

....could make it possible.

"As far as we know, Drawbridge is the first in this class to provide not just isolation, but also persistent compatibility and execution continuity. When packaged with its library OS, a Drawbridge application can run across many different host OS versions. And, a running Drawbridge application can move from one host machine to another (without losing its state)."

That's a comment from one of the dev's on this team.