Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Virtualized servers can make IT management easier. But, what the heck is this VDI or the Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure! VMWare is a well know name in virtualization and they seem to have coined this term. Usual anticipation about this picture is that it is going to need a large data center, powerful servers, a lot of central storage, complex software and all that complications, must surely cost a bundle.

The following article by Keith Schultz take a look at virualization and finds that it is not necessarily so.The VDI is a way of organizing computing resources. With the data centers as we discussed above, all you need are thin clients at the user end to meet his computing needs. That reminds us, those of us who saw it, of the good old days when one powerful computer was connected to number of terminals. They are indeed similar. Now the central computer is replace by this data center organism of many servers, connected together with the necessary storage and software services.

He reviews three different products and finds that they do not have to cost you an arm and a leg. performance differed somewhat between the three products. read details in the original article.
InfoWorld review: Desktop virtualization made easy

University Syllabus WBUT

I have been teaching Advance OS and Distributed computing for sometime. They have similar content. They talk about distributed computing. Advanced features such as a higher level OS that can co-ordinate the OS of individual yet disparate systems are the topics of discussion. What I cannot help wondering is how many such systems are being built? The computers on networks are able to communicate as peer to any other peer and get the work done without trying to synchronize events in geographically dispersed locations. How many of the computer science engineers we are producing are going to use the techniques being taught!

On the other hand we have virtualization that really manages multiple and different operating systems withing one physical box. Cloud computing is a super hot topic that handles thousands of boxes in a data center. Should not we talk about these topics! Granted the synchronization and communication techniques are going to be useful. But giving the students a touch of reality is important too!