{"id":9585,"date":"2009-04-06T13:32:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9585"},"modified":"2009-04-06T13:32:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","slug":"brian-madden-thinking-aloud-about-vdi-and-sbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=9585","title":{"rendered":"Brian Madden Thinking Aloud About VDI and SBS"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Brian Madden wrote <\/a>a post, wondering aloud if Server Based Computing would come to an end with the emergence of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). <\/p>\n

This got my imagination going wild.\u00a0 Regular readers will know I\u2019m working a lot<\/em> with Hyper-V and virtualisation in general over the last 2 years, both Hyper-V and ESX.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also been speaking a lot about what\u2019s coming up in Windows Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 The one thing I love <\/em>is the direction that Native VHD is bringing us and the possibilities it could open up \u2013 not immediately available in W2008 R2 but it\u2019s a starting point for the technology to mature and gain acceptance. <\/p>\n

For those of you unfamiliar with Native VHD: There is a tiny hidden boot partition on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 It controls how the physical machine boots up.\u00a0 You can install a tradition operating system into your C: drive, the second volume or you can drop 1 (or many) VHD\u2019s there.\u00a0 You can edit the boot partition to control whether the server boots up from a normal operating system or from 1 one of the VHD\u2019s.\u00a0 This \u201csurfacing\u201d (mounting to the rest of the world) of a VHD give you a very flexible physical infrastructure and an agile logical machine infrastructure with near raw physical performance.\u00a0 It is not traditional virtualisation because only one operating system will run at one time. <\/p>\n

Note: I\u2019ve been reliably told you can configure a Hyper-V parent partition to use Native VHD.\u00a0 I\u2019ve not tried it but it sounds feasible.<\/em> <\/p>\n

With W2008 R2 Windows Deployment Services, you\u2019ll be able to deploy a pre-canned and sysprepped VHD to machines as an alternative way to deploy operating systems.\u00a0 This is probably only the start of the eventual MS adoption of VHD as their image format of choice. <\/p>\n

This opens up all sorts of possibilities beyond Windows Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 You could have seamless P2V and V2P.\u00a0 What if an application only need physical performance 2 out of every 12 months?\u00a0 Just \u201cLive Migrate\u201d the thing over to dedicated hardware to boot the hardware from VHD.\u00a0 Then reverse it back again.\u00a0 The driver side of things would need to be figured out \u2013 a Hyper-V VM using the VSC-VSP connection via the VM Bus to access the physical hardware drivers in the parent partition.\u00a0 That\u2019s not there with Native VHD. <\/p>\n

I had another brain fart while reading Brian\u2019s article.\u00a0 Why not do something similar with VDI clients that are laptops?\u00a0 It\u2019s be a variant of SoftGrid or App-V.\u00a0 A user logs into a VM running on Hyper-V that is running Windows 7 (or Windows 8) client OS.\u00a0 The user has a laptop and wants a roaming computing environment, event when there\u2019s no Internet access.\u00a0 They could subscribe to the VM and download it to a laptop.\u00a0 At this point there could be some sort of synchronisation between the Hyper-V farm and the laptop. <\/p>\n

The limits of how you can use this technology is really controlled by the imagination of solution developers.\u00a0 MS has given us the start of something very agile and very powerful.\u00a0 We\u2019re sure to see some interesting betas hit the streets in around 2 years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Madden wrote a post, wondering aloud if Server Based Computing would come to an end with the emergence of VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). This got my imagination going wild.\u00a0 Regular readers will know I\u2019m working a lot with Hyper-V and virtualisation in general over the last 2 years, both Hyper-V and ESX.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also … Continue reading “Brian Madden Thinking Aloud About VDI and SBS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t