What are the 10 Most Important Metrics to capture during a VDI Assessment that go into Design ?

Applications Present, Applications Used, Geography of Users, Network Limits, "what are your operating system migration plans", Graphics Objects, Storage IO and Footprint (is that 10??)

T-Rex- a SIMILAR question was also asked last week on a linked-in group called DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION- here's a cut and paste of the sting for anyone who is not on that linked-in group-

What are the top 5-10 things that must be addressed / taken into consideration for a desktop virtualization project to succeed:
AD / Profile Mangement / Folder Redirection / App Delivery etc???
This is not intended as an invite for vendors to hawk their product, rather I am hoping to stimulate genuine conversation that we may all learn from.

Posted 6 days ago | Reply Privately

Matt Darlington
IT Solutions Consultant / Storage and Virtualization

See all Matt’s discussions »

Comments (2)
Michelle Pappas  
Desktop Virtualization Business Development at Superior Solutions
1) App delivery and packaging
2)  
3) AD integration
4) users needs, ie multimedia, remote connections, etc..
5) what percentage is being considered for VDI vs TS, fat clients and how do you manage and monitor all of them in a unified way.
6) predictable CAPEX
7) FBI- how do you ensure scalability can happen without compromise
8) connection brokers- which ones are required/ desired
9) A compelling ROI and an ongoing improvement on the bottom line that does not fall apart when you begin to scale.
10) A way to determine which users to start with. Check out a new VDI assessment tool by Liquidware Labs. A successful pilot to get things kicked off. LWL Stratasphere tool helps to take some of the guess work out!


Posted 4 days ago | Delete comment
Bill Schirf
Distinguished IT project manager with consistent record of championing initiatives and reducing costs.
I have three more to add to Michelle's list:
...call them #2, #11, and #12 :-)

(2) Network Architecture. ie: Will these be hosted on site, or at a remote data center. Assuming you've confirmed connectivity and performance there are other things to consider. Namely, what security, policy, and organizational issues might this cause?

(11) Support from user communities

(12) Support from upper management


Just because the desktop engineering team starts to offer a "virtual" option for desktops, and just because that team claims to have done the ROI calculations and it looks extremely favorable, that does NOT mean that the users and your own upper mgmt will back the project when it starts to hit minor snags. Especially if key internal customers have your VP's ear and complain about points which desktop engineering might consider petty!

Many valid cost-savings initiatives have died tragic deaths because of these commonly overlooked "non-technical" points.

User's peak usage times, applications needed and their requirements (disk, cpu, memory), additional devices (flash drives, scanners, pdas), functionality added/removed, storage requirements, bandwidth required for optimal user experience, reliability and uptime, streaming/multimedia needs, ease of use and time to log in, SSO/AD integration.