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Geek Week stories on BrianMadden.com

Geek Week: VDI Introduction
Brian and Gabe welcome you to Geek Week, outline our process, describe the lab rig, and kick off VDI week the way only they can.
Posted Monday, March 29, 2010

Geek Week: VDI Day 1 - Citrix XenDesktop
We sit down with Frank Anderson of Citrix to get a hands-on look at XenDesktop. During the day, we'll get a look at the installation and configuration of the Desktop Delivery Controller and Provisioning Server, as well as the user experience when using the HDX protocol over various WAN connections.
Posted Monday, March 29, 2010

Geek Week: VDI Day 2 - VMware
We sit down with Mike Coleman and Todd Dayton of VMware to have a look at VMware View. Among the cool things we'll get to see are PC over IP and a video of Mike Coleman leaving Bill Gates on stage during an earthquake. We also find Bug #1 of Geek Week - an issue with Wyse P20 thin clients and our crappy Acer monitors.
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Geek Week: VDI Day 3 - Virtual Bridges
Virtual Bridges' CTO Leo Reiter comes to visit and show off VERDE, Virtual Bridges' VDI solution. With an elegantly simple setup and config (as long as you don't mind some CLI work), Brian was caught a little off-guard and was, dare I say, "impressed" by the solution in general. Still, the VERDE protocol leaves some to be desired, but only during the WAN tests.
Posted Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Geek Week: VDI Day 4 - Microsoft
Michael Kleef and Eric Schroeder come to show off Microsoft's in-box VDI solution. We thought it would be simple enough that we could move on to the VDI Suite...turns out that's not the case.  While we may not have made it all the way to VDI Suite, we did get a surprisingly good performance out of RDP over a terrible WAN link...with Aero Glass ON! Oh, and we had yet ANOTHER fire drill.
Posted Thursday, April 1, 2010 (no really, it is)

Geek Week: VDI Day 5 - Quest
Rob Mallicoat from Quest stops by to help us take a look at Quest vWorkspace and how it works with Hyper-V.  Not only do we get a look at Quest's EOP protocol enhancements to RDP, but we also find Bug #2 of Geek Week. It's a perfect storm of PowerPoint 2007 on a Windows 7 VM, a Windows 7 client, and Graphics Acceleration.
Posted Friday, April 2, 2010

Geek Week: VDI - Explained

What would you do if your boss came to you and said that he wanted you to take the entire week and spend one day looking at each vendor in the VDI space? You'd think he was crazy. You'd tell him it's impossible.You'd stomp your feet, pull out your hair, and maybe even quit.

Not us.

During Geek Week: VDI Shootout, we're taking exactly that approach. Each day, we're going to take a look at a single vendor's VDI product. Obviously, we can only go so deep in such a short amount of time, so in order to keep the project moving, each vendor is sending along one of their engineers to help us as we check each product out.

The point of Geek Week: VDI Shootout isn't to take deep dives into each of these products.  Instead, it's to give everyone a taste of a product they may not have been exposed to in the past.

Our goals for each vendor, lofty as they might be, are to show you:

  • Product installation
  • Basic product configuration
  • Client installation
  • User experience (both LAN and WAN)
  • Basic management capabilities

We'll augment our writing with video that actually shows the user experience on the LAN and WAN, as well as anything else worthy of film during the week.

The Schedule

Since this is a pretty large project, we're breaking it up into two parts. The first part, where we do all the technical work, took place from March 8 to March 12 at our office in San Francisco. We tweeted the whole thing, so check out the #geekweek hash tag for a glimpse of the fun!

We're currently working on editing the videos we shot each day, which we'll release on BrianMadden.com the week of March 29.

Monday, March 29 - Citrix XenDesktop 4
Tuesday, March 30 - VMware View 4
Wednesday, March 31 - Virtual Bridges VERDE
Thursday, April 1 - Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 VDI
Friday, April 2 - Quest vWorkspace 7

  • A hands-on First Look at Virtual Bridges VERDE 5 (Now they have the Spice protocol!)

    I've been keeping tabs on Virtual Bridges VERDE for a little over a year now, and it's been interesting to watch the product grow over time. The latest release, VERDE 5, includes just about every current VDI technology in some form or another...
    by Gabe Knuth on January 12, 2011 : 3 comments , 8,263 views

  • Geek Week VDI Day 5: Quest vWorkspace 7 summary

    This post, like all five Geek Week: VDI wrap-up posts, was co-written by Brian & Gabe. Day 5 of Geek Week: VDI actually corresponds with Day 5 of our testing week. Sluggish is a kind word for how we felt Friday morning after pulling four 16 hour days...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 02, 2010 : 15 comments , 6,101 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Quest vWorkspace WAN experience testing (Part 3)

    The purpose of this video was to test the user experience of Quest vWorkspace 7 over a variety of user environments, including: 100mbps LAN connection (00:15) A "global" WAN scenario, with 768kbps, variable latency between 250-350ms, and 1%...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 02, 2010 : 2 comments , 3,105 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Quest vWorkspace installation (Part 2)

    In this video, Quest's Rob Mallicoat takes us through the installation and configuration of vWorkspace 7. In this video, you'll see: Initial installation of vWorkspace Configuration of vWorkspace and SCVMM to work together Configuration of vWorkspace's...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 02, 2010 : 0 comments , 2,349 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Quest vWorkspace whiteboard (Part 1)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, Quest's Rob Mallicoat takes us through a whiteboard diagram of the bits and pieces of vWorkspace 7. For a full analysis of the results of this video, read our summary of how Quest vWorkspace 7 did in our Geek Week...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 02, 2010 : 4 comments , 2,632 views

  • Geek Week VDI Day 4: Microsoft "in box" VDI solution summary

    This post, like all five Geek Week: VDI wrap-up posts, was co-written by Brian & Gabe. Geek Week Day 4 brings in Microsoft, and we were looking forward to getting back into the Windows world. Joining us were two "Softies," Eric Schroeder...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 01, 2010 : 3 comments , 19,162 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Microsoft "in box" VDI WAN experience (Part 3)

    The purpose of this video was to test the user experience of RDP when connecting to Windows 7 VMs provided by Microsoft's "in box" VDI solution over a variety of user environments, including: 100mbps LAN connection (5:20) A "global"...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 01, 2010 : 1 comments , 15,434 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Microsoft "in box" VDI installation and configuration (Part 2)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, Microsoft's Eric Schroeder takes us through the installation and configuration of Microsoft's "in box" VDI solution on a vanilla Hyper-V environment. This video includes the installation and configuration...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 01, 2010 : 0 comments , 3,022 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Microsoft "in box" VDI Whiteboard (Part 1)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, Microsoft's Michael Kleef takes us to the whiteboard to outline the pieces of Microsoft's "in box" VDI solution as well as it's big brother, VDI Suite. Also in this video are: Fire alarms CYA-ing...
    by Gabe Knuth on April 01, 2010 : 0 comments , 3,452 views

  • Geek Week VDI Day 3: Virtual Bridges VERDE 3.0 Summary

    This post, like all five Geek Week: VDI wrap-up posts, was co-written by Brian & Gabe. This was actually Day 2 of our testing, and Brian was a little apprehensive because VERDE is a Linux solution that's heavy on command line and conceivably more...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 31, 2010 : 1 comments , 4,872 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Virtual Bridges VERDE 33 minute time lapse install (Part 4)

    In this bonus video from Geek Week: VDI, we show Virtual Bridges' Leo Reiter take a server from bare metal to provisioning desktops in 33 minutes. We've time-lapsed it down into around 100 seconds, though, so enjoy! These videos are delivered...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 31, 2010 : 0 comments , 2,281 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Virtual Bridges VERDE WAN experience testing (Part 3)

    The purpose of this video was to test the user experience of Virtual Bridges VERDE 3.0 over a variety of user environments, including: 100mbps LAN connection (3:45) A "global" WAN scenario, with 768kbps, variable latency between 250-350ms, and...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 31, 2010 : 1 comments , 2,450 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Virtual Bridges VERDE installation and provisioning (Part 2)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, Virtual Bridges' Leo Reiter takes us through the installation, configuration, and provisioning of VERDE 3.0. In this video, you'll see the installation and configuration of: Likewise Open Active Directory Integration...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 31, 2010 : 0 comments , 2,137 views

  • Geek Week VDI: Virtual Bridges VERDE Whiteboard (Part 1)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, Virtual Bridges' Leo Reiter takes us through a whiteboard diagram of the bits and pieces of VERDE 3.0. For a full analysis of the results of this video, read our summary of how Virtual Bridges VERDE did in our Geek...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 31, 2010 : 0 comments , 2,413 views

  • Geek Week VDI Day 2: VMware View 4 Summary

    This post, like all five Geek Week: VDI wrap-up posts, was co-written by Brian & Gabe. Day 2 of Geek Week VDI was actually our first day of filming, and after assembling the room until midnight the night before we were hoping everything worked well...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 30, 2010 : 8 comments , 11,857 views

  • Geek Week VDI: VMware View WAN experience testing (Part 3)

    The purpose of this video was to test the user experience of VMware View 4 over a variety of user environments, including: 100mbps LAN connection (2:00) A "global" WAN scenario, with 768kbps, variable latency between 250-350ms, and 1% packet...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 30, 2010 : 3 comments , 6,602 views

  • Geek Week VDI: VMware View Composer configuration (Part 2)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, VMware's Todd Dayton takes us through the process of using VMware View Composer to deploy a single master Windows XP desktop that can be shared by multiple users. Specific things covered in the video include: De...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 30, 2010 : 0 comments , 4,201 views

  • Geek Week VDI: VMware View component installation (Part 1)

    In this video from Geek Week: VDI, VMware's Todd Dayton takes us through the initial installation and configuration of VMware View 4 on a vanilla ESX environment. This video includes the installation and configuration of: VMware View Composer vSphere...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 30, 2010 : 0 comments , 4,729 views

  • Introducing Geek Week: VDI - A week-long look at the top VDI products in the industry

    We'd like to welcome you to the first of what we hope will be many future Geek Week "specials" on BrianMadden.com. The idea behind Geek Week is simple: Examine, as best we can, one vendor's product per day for a week. For this inaugural...
    by Gabe Knuth on March 29, 2010 : 3 comments , 4,744 views

  • Geek Week VDI Day 1: Citrix XenDesktop 4 summary

    This post, like all five Geek Week: VDI wrap-up posts, was co-written by Brian & Gabe. We'd already done three other vendors by the time Frank Anderson of Citrix rolled in (ten minutes before we did, actually) on Thursday morning, but we were...
    by Brian Madden on March 29, 2010 : 5 comments , 17,285 views
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