Dynamic Virtual Client

Type 1 Hypervisors = Game Changers

bob.ludwig@intel.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:37:30 GMT

What is a type 1 hypervisor you ask? According to Wikipedia it is a software system that runs directly on the host's hardware to control the hardware and to monitor guest operating-systems. A guest operating system thus runs on another level above the hypervisor. An example of this is VMware’s ESX server which has been available now for some time. So why do I think type 1 hypervisors will be “game changers”? Because in the not too distant future, they will be available on desktops and laptops rather than just servers. This will allow us to “unhook” the OS from desktop and laptop hardware much like what ESX did for servers.

Image management for desktops and laptops will change. It will be possible to file transfer a virtual container (with your OS and Apps) to your desktop on top of the type 1 hypervisor. It will be possible to patch an OS or application just once and resend that patched virtual container to all desktops and laptops. The compute cycles for the OS and applications will occur on the desktops and not on the server(s). So unlike a Terminal Services server or a VDI server we will not need lots and lots of memory in the servers containing the virtual containers. After all, the virtual container server is not doing any computing, but rather it is just transferring the files (virtual containers). And we will probably not need near as many servers in the data center as we need for Terminal Services/VDI. A server with a lot less memory than for Terminal Services/VDI will be able to file transfer hundreds of virtual containers.

Currently, most desktops and laptops are configured today like the left side of below diagram, with the OS installed directly on the hardware. The right side of the diagram depicts what the desktops and laptops will look like after type 1 hypervisors are released.

So how does one future proof their purchases for this upcoming “game changer”? That’s really easy. By buying vPro desktops and laptops! vPro systems have the necessary firmware to run this type 1 hypervisor today! What about security you ask? Well we have thought of that too. It’s called TXT and we will get into that in my next blog.

Bob

Watch it on-demand! Intro to DVC recording now available

michele.gartner@intel.com — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:53:15 GMT

Webinar Recording

If you missed the live event, you can now watch the recording! You can also download the webinar.

Webinar Slides

Want to download the PowerPoint deck? It's attached to this blog post (scroll to the bottom).

Upcoming webinar - Dynamic Virtual Client and Intel vPro Technology

michele.gartner@intel.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:40:04 GMT

Join us for this free webinar, where Clyde Hedrick and Kerry Johns-Vano provide a 1-hour introduction to Dynamic Virtual Client and Intel vPro Technology.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/200059531

In the evolution of Client Computing model, if you ever wondered whether to go for rich client computing or thin client computing, you definitely want to attend this webinar. Dynamic Virtual Client webinar will go over the spectrum of client computing models and guide you towards the model that accomplishes centralized management, policy-driven data security with client-side computing.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

8:00 AM - 9:00 AM PST

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

OnDemand Webinar: XenClient and Intel vPro Technology

michele.gartner@intel.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:38:06 GMT

The XenClient initiative has developed an architecture and roadmap for the Xen hypervisor to deliver powerful security, performance and manageability benefits to future virtualized client-side systems. The prevalence of Intel virtualization technologies on modern enterprise client devices heralds a sea change in the way that corporations will deliver desktops and applications to end systems, as well as opening up new use cases for centrally managed, secured and backed-up client devices that offer a rich, local computing environment to users.

In this session you will learn:

About the XenClient architecture
How you can provide a virtualized, high-performance environment for corporate applications without compromising security
About the XenClient roadmap

Click to view webinar.

Feet on the Street - vPro Series - Meet Dr Chuck Brown

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:50:23 GMT

Dr. Chuck Brown is the director of the Emerging Compute labs in Intel. I was able to spend a few minutes with him today and talk about what he's working on.

Managed IT with netBoot/i from Double-Take software

priya.m.abani@intel.com — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:26:32 GMT

Intel has been working with multiple ISVs to implement Dynamic Virtual Clients. Implementing netBoot/i™ solutions from Double-Take software simplifies desktop management, and provides IT providers and end-users with the right mix of management capabilities (centralized storage, recoverability) without compromising user-experience even for the most demanding applications. Central management of operating system and applications reduces management complexity of patching multiple desktops and offers cost reduction and security by eliminating hard drives from desktops.

Building and maintaining computer systems is no easy task and information technology managers are constantly looking for better tools to reduce the total cost of managing their data centers and infrastructure. Storing both operating system state and data within the computer can cause management challenges such as storage over provisioning, data duplication as well as expensive and ineffective backup solutions. Shifting data storage to Storage Area Networks (SAN) provided numerous advantages in both hard and soft dollar cost savings. The final evolution of storage management is to separate the boot disks from systems and turn them into stateless compute devices. The netBoot/i™ technology separates state from compute devices and allows them to run from iSCSI SAN.

Check this technology out in the attached case study.

Case Study - OS Streaming and Application Virtualization at Providence Health & Services, Oreg

priya.m.abani@intel.com — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:03:16 GMT

Hi all,

Intel has been working with various companies on implementing the concept of Dynamic Virtual Clients. Driven by the need to control costs of desktop management, Providence Health & Services – Oregon (PH&S – Oregon) recently undertook an initiative to gain greater control and standardization of desktop configurations, while providing performance and flexibility to meet business unit needs. Goals for this initiative included maximizing system availability, reducing operating costs, increasing security, and better using IT time and resources to support business strategies rather than day-to-day maintenance.

After evaluating various computing models, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), blade computing, and terminal services, PH&S – Oregon deployed a pilot solution with streamed delivery of a centralized OS image using Citrix Provisioning Server* (Citrix PVS) along with application streaming and virtualization using Microsoft SoftGrid,* now called Microsoft Application Virtualization* (Microsoft App-V).

For PH&S – Oregon, this solution offered the lowest cost of ownership for both conversion and operation, met management and security requirements, and met or exceeded user expectations for boot time, application launch times, and performance.

Check it out in the attached case study.

Citrix Collaborating with Intel to Deliver Xen-based Client Virtualization Solutions

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:59:52 GMT

http://joshprostar.blip.tv/#1696918

Case Study - OS Streaming and Application Virtualization at Financial Services Firm

priya.m.abani@intel.com — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:31:01 GMT

Hi all,

Intel has been working with various companies on implementing the concept of Dynamic Virtual Clients. Driven by the need to stay competitive under brutally challenging market conditions, a global financial services firm has mounted an innovative “stateless” desktop virtualization initiative, using streaming OS and application technology to make IT more agile and cost-effective. (The firm wishes to remain anonymous.)

In a previous effort to control desktop management costs for over 100,000 workstations, the firm implemented a solution based on VDI, which did not work well for certain segments – the power users and some knowledge workers. VDI also did not solve the underlying complexity issue of managing at least one desktop image for each user. To service the power users and provide a solution for centralized desktop image management, the firm implemented a “stateless client” architecture that centralized management and distribution of desktop images through real-time streaming technology, deployed on economical, scalable PCs or “virtual thin desktops.”

The firm’s stateless solution assembles desktop images on the fly from a set of master OS images combined with virtualized, streamed applications. This solution combines the security and control of server-based models with the high performance and multimedia user experience offered by rich client workstations.

Check it out in the attached case study.

Case Study - Scientific Application Streaming at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

priya.m.abani@intel.com — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:44:18 GMT

Hi all,

Intel has been working with various companies on implementing the concept of Dynamic Virtual Clients. As innovators among Harvard University’s IT community, the School of Engineering and Applies Sciences (SEAS) is an ideal environment for implementation of Application Streaming technology. Within SEAS, the office of Computing and Information Technology’s (CIT) CyberInfrastructure Labs (CI Labs) supports faculty, researchers, students, and staff by deploying and maintaining up-to-date, effective computing technologies.

With application streaming, applications are streamed on demand from the data center to the client, where they are executed locally. The goal of the scientific application streaming project, as outlined in the attached white paper, is to simplify the deployment of large, complex engineering and scientific applications to a highly diverse user population of around 1,000 students and faculty.

Initial results show install times decreasing from hours to minutes, as well as fewer problems caused by human error during complex installation and licensing procedures. As innovators among Harvard’s IT community, the CI Labs anticipates wider implementation of application streaming, both within its user base and across Harvard.

Check out the details in the attached case study.

Dynamic Virtual Client Seminar – How To Be Rich and Thin

scott1.e.smith@intel.com — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:40:07 GMT

Professionals running IT shops these days are facing a number of mandates regarding the relationship of PCs and servers: The CEO demands that data be secure. The government requires compliance to a plethora of laws governing data retention. The CIO says cut costs. The IT technician would love to have them manageable within an eight-hour day and without a trip in the rain. The end-user is amenable to anything as long as its mobile and he can get what he wants in nanoseconds. Until not too long ago, IT professionals wrestling with this dilemma could pick rich clients or thin clients, and be assured that a number of these mandates would go unfulfilled while good part of his constituency would be letting him know exactly where he’d gone wrong. Lately, however, a number of new client-server models have been emerging. Taking advantage of such technologies as streaming and virtualization, these "dynamic virtual client" technologies provide options for getting the benefits of both rich and thin clients. If you’re interested in knowing more, Intel’s expert is this area is Mike Ferron-Jones, director of Dynamic Virtual Client Technology. He’ll be giving a seminar on dynamic virtual clients, including some that have emerged in just the past few months, in a , on Wednesday, December 10 from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PST. You can find the webcast here or on the viewer below. Log on a few minutes early as there’s a short registration. Best yet in these financially troubling times, the price is right – it’s free.

PC Models Fit For a Duchess

scott1.e.smith@intel.com — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:03:07 GMT

The Duchess of Windsor once famously quipped, “You can never be too rich or too thin.” If she was a modern day IT director, however, she might be lamenting that neither is satisfactory. End-users want their PCs rich, powerful and mobile, and most IT managers would like to give them what they want. However, given budget constraints, nightmares of lost laptops brimming with customer records and the job of keeping applications uniform across an entire fleet of PCs, many IT managers might, albeit with regret, conclude, “Make mine thin, manageable and secure.” To many IT professionals, this may seem the best answer: equip as many end-users as possible with thin clients, and store the images and data on a central server where they can be maintained and guarded. As we know, that works fine in some instances, but today’s end-users are too mobile, too performance oriented and too stubborn to part with their high-powered, go-anywhere-anytime PCs. My Aunt Ruth, a duchess to me, used to tell me, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” As Intel’s PR guy for business PCs, that’s what I’ve also been learning from Mike Ferron-Jones about client computing. Mike heads up Intel’s research into a number of different models for client computing or what he calls “dynamic virtual clients.” The idea is to give IT managers what they want – the efficiency and security of managing client applications, data and even OSs on a server, but without a large datacenter buildout – while at the same time offering in-kind benefits to end-users – the performance and mobility they’re accustomed to. Simply put, the best of rich and thin. Mike accomplishes this with various combinations of virtualization, streaming and storage, all with a financial objective commensurate with IT’s dwindling budgets. If you’re interested in learning more, Mike has been asked to talk about “Dynamic Virtual Clients – How To Be Rich and Thin” at BrightTALK’s Virtualization Webcast, which airs here at 3:45 p.m. PST, Tue. Nov. 4.

If you can’t make that, there’s plenty to be learned on the Intel Emerging Compute Model Forum. Check them both out. As Mike likes to say (yeah, there’s one more) about dynamic virtual clients, “You can have your cake and eat it too.”

Dynamic Duo: Intel® vPro™ Technology & Microsoft Application Virtualization Enable “Wake and Update” Capability for Virtual Applications

rde@intel.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:56:10 GMT

Blog moved to...

http://communities.intel.com/openport/blogs/proexpert/2008/10/24/dynamic-duo-intel-vpro-technology-microsoft-application-virtualization-enable-wake-and-update-capability-for-virtual-applications

Better Together - vPro & Microsoft Application Virtualization

josh.hilliker@intel.com — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:50:15 GMT

In this video Mike Ferron-Jones & Edwin C. Yuen discuss the following:

#1. Manage the applications with Microsoft Application Virtualization

#2. Manage the clients with Intel vPro Technology

#3. Manage the Enterprise with Microsoft System Center

Citrix Software with Intel vPro Technology

jason.a.davidson@intel.com — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:21:28 GMT

Citrix and Intel have been working together to deliver a solution that builds on both companies expertise. The end-to-end solutions, application delivery, and virtualization software that Citrix provides combined with the manageability, performance, and security from vPro deliver a novel solution. The solution allow the IT OS build to go through a secure or trusted boot, where the hardware and software used to launch the OS is measured for integrity before the program executes. The OS can be streamed off a remote server, and the end-user gets the rich client side local execution experience.

In this video, Citrix Software's Paul Hahn, Director of Business Development / Virtualization & Management Division, and Matt Edwards, Product Manager, talk about how Citrix Systems is developing products for OS/App Streaming on top of Intel vPro technology. You will see that the virtualized, measured, and streamed OS is able to still render and rotate a rich CAD drawing.