SQA Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Pilot
Download: SQA Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Pilot
PROJECT HEADLINE
SQA Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Pilot
PROJECT SPEC AND RESULT IN A SENETENCE
Deployment of VMware VDI as a technology pilot, for remote and internal users.
INDUSTRY
Public Body - Education
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Providing support, applications and updates to remote users, running a variety of different platforms and operating systems.
SOLUTION
Secure access over the internet to Windows XP Virtual Desktops. Easy to provision, support and manage.
RESULTS
- Reduced desktop deployment time from hours to minutes.
- Secure and highly available remote access solution using Virtual Desktop Management security servers.
- Desktop environment that benefits from VMware High Availability.
- Centralised managements of all desktops.
- Desktop data stored securely in the data centre.
INTEREST AREAS
- Secure remote access for general user staff.
- Provide dedicated Virtual Desktops for support staff to monitor, repair and support systems remotely.
- Fast provisioning of desktops for remote users to access systems from temporary locations (e.g. working from home)
- Large scale deployment of virtual desktops for internal users.
CORE TECHNOLOGIES
- VMware ESX 3.5
- VMware Virtual Centre
- VMware Virtual Desktop Manager
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows 2003 Server
"Very Impressed with VDI technology, it's very easy to use and understand and the fact that it takes advantage of VMware High Availability provided by ESX3 is a real advantage"
Stuart Paterson, Senior Network Systems Engineer
Customer overview
SQA is an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB) sponsored by the Scottish Government Education Department. It is the national body in Scotland responsible for the development, accreditation, assessment and certification of qualifications other than degrees.
Business need
SQA are piloting VDI technology with a goal to providing a secure, consistent and centrally managed full Windows XP desktop environment to internal and external users.
As an example, this would provide the ability for home based users, with a variety of uncontrolled platforms and operating systems, to access a consistent Windows XP platform securely over the internet.
How Captio helped
Utilising SQA’s existing VMware Virtual Infrastructure (previously designed and installed by Capito to facilitate server virtualization), two Windows 2003 virtual servers were deployed in a network load balanced configuration. VMware’s ‘Virtual Desktop Manager’ was installed on both servers. This provided a load balanced and fault tolerant web portal for management and user access to pooled or individually assigned virtual desktops.
To facilitate secure external access to Virtual Desktops, two VDM security servers were deployed to the existing DMZ. This allows remote users to securely tunnel through the internet to the internal desktop brokers, from where a Virtual Desktop can be chosen or auto-assigned from a pool.
Capito also assisted with the creation of a Windows XP template. To reduce the operating system footprint as much as possible, any unnecessary applications or services were removed, resulting in a very lightweight Windows XP template that can be used to provision as many Virtual Desktops as required.
Results
SQA have been very impressed with the technology of VMware VDI. The ease of use, and fact that it takes advantage of the high availability and enterprise robustness provided by the underlying ESX platform, is a real advantage.
Once the infrastructure is in place, support staff has the ability to provision one or many virtual desktops within a few minutes.
With centralised management of all virtual desktops from the data centre, SQA are able to monitor, manage and relocate these resources as necessary.