What is VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)? How does VDI work?

The working landscape is evolving at a flash-flooding pace. The Hybrid ecosystem is becoming necessary as more organizations are acknowledging importance of mental peace and a healthy working environment. To address these dynamic business needs, IT leaders need an infrastructure to keep their business processes humming.  

Cloud Computing proposes multiple solutions to support and sustain the hybrid ecosystem. Cloud-based communication, Cybersecurity, File Transmission, Lower Latency, and many more.  

VDI environment, or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, is an encapsulation of all these technologies, with extended functionality, that allows companies to expand their horizon beyond supporting the remote workforce.  

What role do Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions play in enabling remote working while maintaining an organization’s data integrity? Let’s check out… 

Introduction to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a technology that creates a desktop-like environment on a centralized server. Simply, it’s an infrastructure that enables you to access corporate virtual desktops and applications via any device (such as a PC, smartphone, or tablet). It eliminates the need to confined to office desks so the user can be productive.  

Moreover, security protocols are implemented to secure the data by allowing only authorized users to access the same company servers, files, apps, and services from any approved device through a secure desktop client or browser via the hypervisor. Generally, Citrix VDI environment can be either persistent or non-persistent. By Persistent VDI, we mean the user gets a personalized experience, whereas non-persistent VDI is a type of desktop that reverts to its initial state after the user logs out.  

How Does VDI Work?

In the hybrid workspace, employees need on-demand access to business resources from any location; VDI provides a platform for secure remote access to ensure business continuity. Also, it’s compatible with multiple devices. 

According to Global Market Insight, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Market is expected to expand at over 20% CAGR from 2022 to 2028.  

Let’s see how VDI works: 

For VDI to work, we first need a virtual machine. To get a virtual machine, we need a hypervisor that logically breaks up bare metal server/host server into small multiple logical units called Virtual machines that host virtual desktops. Users can access the virtual desktop anytime, anywhere, from any device.  

All the processing is done on the host server present in the data center. A connection broker is used to broker/mediate the connection between the user and the virtual desktop. It ensures that each user, upon connection, has a virtual desktop available from the host server resources. It ensures obtaining a virtual desktop every time a user connects from the host server’s available resources.  

Basic Components of VDI 

Here are the components of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): 

Hypervisor  

The Hypervisor is a software that logically segments a bare-metal server/host server into smaller logical units called Virtual Machines. It also manages virtual machines on the host server and enables sharing of resources, such as memory and processing, between virtual machines created on the host server.  

Connection Broker 

Connection broker is a software program that connects users to desktop instances. It is also responsible for the authentication of users and sending them to their desktop instances.  

The connection broker also keeps track of active and inactive desktops. When a user sends a request to connect to a desktop, it provides the user with an idle desktop instance. When a user disconnects the desktop, it updates the status to inactive.  

OS Image  

A VDI needs an OS to run. The most common VDI Operating systems are Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Server 2019, and Windows 10. There are other non-windows operating systems available like Linux & others available. 

Get Instant Demo: Windows Virtual Desktop: Experience Windows the Virtual Way 

Desktop Pools 

Desktop pools are a group of similar desktops that can be configured according to a specific function. For instance, office departments like accounting and IT might use desktops with different applications and configurations. The accounting department may need applications like Sage or QuickBooks, which may not be required for IT.  

You can create a desktop pool for these departments with a similar configuration.  

Internet 

To access a virtual desktop, the users must constantly be connected to the Internet. If the Internet is unavailable, the users’ endpoint will not be able to communicate with the host server, resulting in a connection loss for the end-user.  

Types of Virtual Desktops: Persistent vs. Non-Persistent VDI 

Within virtual desktop infrastructure, you can choose from two environments as per your business needs:  

Persistent VDI 

In persistent VDI, the user logs in to the virtual desktop and has a personalized experience; that configuration is saved even after logging out. In simple words, you can have an experience similar to physical desktops. You can work on the exact configuration and setting even after shutting it down or restarting it. 

Non-Persistent VDI 

In a non-persistent VDI environment, every session is based on factory mode default settings. A user cannot have a personalized experience as all the data, and Windows settings are not saved and are reversed to default when you log out of the virtual desktop. However, you can save data by keeping it on shared or personal drives. They do not require huge storage space. So, it will cost you less than persistent desktops.

A virtual machine forms a computing environment with a specific number of CPUs, storage, RAM, and more. It works just like physical desktops. On the other hand, VDI is an infrastructure that works on a VM to provision applications. Simply, you need a VM to host a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but you don’t need a VDI Workspace to host a VM. 

Read More: Persistent VDI vs. Non-Persistent VDI: Which one to choose for your business? 

VDI vs. VM 

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and Virtual Machines (VM) are similar technologies but have different concepts. A virtual machine (VM) is a soft copy of a physical computer that runs programs, stores data, and performs other computing functions. Moreover, just like a physical computer, it requires regular updates and system monitoring. A single physical machine hosts multiple VMs managed by software. 

A virtual machine forms a computing environment with a specific number of CPUs, storage, RAM, and more. It works just like physical desktops. On the other hand, VDI is an infrastructure that works on a VM to provision applications. Simply, you need a VM to host a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), but you don’t need a VDI Workspace to host a VM.   

 Read More: VDI vs. VM – What Are The Differences Between Both?  

VDI vs VPN 

VDI and VPN, at first, might look similar in terms of functionality. They both are used to create a secure access path to resources over the cloud. Looking closely, one can quickly identify that VDI provides access to a remote desktop virtual environment where a user can work. At the same time, VPN offers a passageway to the organization’s private network.  

In comparison, the VDI workspace is more significant in everything than VPN. Whether in terms of security or pricing, whether it is about latency or performance, VDI ranks much better than VPN. However, it doesn’t mean that VPN is not useful; per the circumstances and requirements, a user can choose between VDI vs VPN.   

Read More: VPN vs. RDS vs. VDI – Choosing the Best Remote Solution 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Use Cases for every Industry 

VDI is becoming a crucial technology for every business across industries. 

Capgemini’s research report states that ‘63% of organizations have observed a productivity surge by adopting virtualization– giving employees the flexibility to work from home. 

As we can see, VDI is the top choice for enterprises looking to implement a healthy hybrid work culture with flexibility and collaboration. Thanks to the versatility of VDI, it delivers a personalized digital workspace across its different deployment types. This way, businesses can give secure access to corporate resources regardless of geographical location. Let’s have a look at some more practical use cases of VDI.  

BPO

BPOs or call centers have a massively competitive landscape with a vast workforce who access similar tools or apps. And they need round-the-clock access to critical apps and data. Hence, managing and installing multiple apps on different systems gets challenging. Thanks to the VDI workspace solution, they get centralized endpoint management by reducing complexity. Moreover, with the amplified security, the concern of losing confidential data remains at rest. 

Suggested Reading: Top 5 Reasons Why BPO Should Use Hosted Desktops 

Healthcare 

Doctors and clinicians are constantly moving from one ward to another. They need remote access to the same apps and patient data within the hospital premises (and sometimes outside for emergency visits). 

Do you know what the most critical concern of hospital management is? — Securing sensitive information for their patients. And this is achieved with the help of VDI for healthcare.   

Virtual desktop technology is a promising approach for the healthcare industry as it enables them to have access wherever they are. Secondly, with strict security standards and access controls, VDI workspace ensures that medicine and prescription data are in safe hands. 

IT 

For an IT/ITeS firm, operating an entire endpoint fleet in the workplace is more critical than ever. The IT firm must also meet dynamic business needs in addition to employees’ security and mobility needs. 

Here, the VDI solution is the solution for the pressure placed on IT managers to enable remote workers to access data to be productive from home networks so that business continuity doesn’t get hampered. 

Manufacturing  

The manufacturing industry involves a vast workforce always on the road, including engineers, technical experts, designers, architects, contractors or builders, and executives. With virtual desktop solutions, you get a secure way to enable your workforce to collaborate and work productively. 

VDI workspace allows you to offer virtual desktops to contractors and partners so that they can work on any device from anywhere and have a consistent experience. 

Finance  

Similar to the problems with the healthcare industry, the financial businesses also firm the flexibility and security problems involved in remote working. When working on auditing and taxation documents, this business requires a secure bank-level platform. As their financial data is highly vulnerable to data breaches and phishing, VDI service providers implement stringent security policies like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, AI data monitoring, and more. Even working from home is feasible for CAs and CPAs to function more efficiently. 

Legal  

In today’s tech-obsessed work circumstances, from BPO to legal, most industries need technology that supports them for efficient remote working conditions. As law firms can’t restrict to offices for work, VDI helps them have top-end secure client information on personal and business devices. Virtual desktops offer the solution— to eliminate a lot of headaches needed to install various applications on every device to secure sensitive client data and communication. Additionally, they are always on the run, sometimes working from courts and other times, client places; a bring-your-own-device policy is the need of the hour. Thus, VDI for law firms enables solicitors and advocates to access it on any compatible device with authorization while making it simple to control the integrity of the client information. 

Education 

How’s the education system today? Flexible yet interactive! So, to ensure that knowledge through e-learning is delivered efficiently to the student globally, you would need a dedicated IT team to work on one or more critical tasks. Firstly, you need to add multiple students to the shared space. Second, you need high-performance desktops to ensure lectures are given via clear audio-video mode. 

Cloud VDI solves this issue for you. With all data in a centralized cloud, anywhere access, and data backups, VDI for education proves to be a priceless asset in the future. Every year new students take admission, and VDI gives you the power to add or remove users from one place. No patching and no specialization are required. Not to mention, its performance is on high-performing servers with 3D graphics for e-learning sessions.  

Suggested Reading: Future Of DaaS In Higher Education 

Benefits of Implementing Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 

Get Strengthened Remote Access 

VDI supports enhanced remote access and user control for a more corporate environment. As the employees are not restricted to the office space to be productive, multiple users can pull up virtual desktops on-demand from anywhere at any hour. Whether in your home or another country, you still have access to various corporate apps and data. 

Access From Multiple Devices 

As the hybrid work environment requires employees to be out in the field, VDI offers a remote environment with a full range of necessary applications and data— to give on-demand access to different devices. With the VDI solution, the desktop is not restricted to the actual PC or laptop; you can access your virtual desktop from multiple devices—mobile, laptops, tablets, or thin clients. 

The Way To Centralize Security 

VDI delivers improved security gains as compared to keeping everything on local systems. Assume you store your business files in the hardware, and it gets stolen; what would you do now? 

A frightening situation, isn’t it? VDI stores all your data on highly secure servers to avoid this situation, so you don’t have to worry about data loss. Even if you lose the device, it can be accessed from other devices as the data is backed up on multiple remotely accessible data centers.  

Download eBook: How Safe is Your Data with ACE Virtual Desktop Infrastructure? 

Save Cost with Extended Device Lifecycle 

VDI solutions are a powerful cost-saving technology for basically every firm. In a VDI-based environment, the data processing is server-based. Therefore, there’s no need to purchase new hardware. 

VDI access can work perfectly from an economical thin client, an old PC, or a laptop. This benefits you by extending the device’s lifecycle for up to 2 years, thereby saving IT teams from making as many new purchases and hampering the budget.  

Hosted VDI Pricing: What is cost of VDI? 

When it comes to VDI pricing, the cloud-based virtual framework, at times, can be more costly than using any of its alternatives. However, in the longer run, VDI will result in one of the most economical and thrifty solutions. One-time investment with the opportunity to scale up or down the system as per requirement makes VDI a more sustainable option than VPN. The cost of investment can be easily balanced within a year of adopting the framework.    

VDI pricing depends on the number of licenses clients are opting for. For light users such as BPOs, Management, and Fintech organizations, the VDI specification can be limited to 4GB RAM and 50GB memory with shared access, bringing the cost down to a bare minimum for a single user.  Typically, the price of VDI infra can be capped to $60/month per user (required minimum 3 users are using VDI).  

This pricing can fluctuate for heavy users such as Developers and Designers as their requirement generally starts from having a minimum system specification of 8GB dedicated RAM, 100GB memory, and an additional vGPU for maintaining computing speed. At Minimum, the price of a single VDI infra in a heavy computing environment can start from $90/month per user (min 3 users) without including extra licensing costs.  

VDI Or DaaS? – Which One Should You Choose 

With every technology comes benefits and limitations. While we have gone through the benefits of VDI, there are certainly a few limitations you might face with its management. Therefore, let’s see which is better for your firm: VDI or DaaS.  

VDI environment demands highly expert internal management 

You will need to hire an IT team to look after implementation, updating, patching, and supporting the infrastructure. Moreover, you need 24-hour employees in shifts to ensure low downtime. So, this makes VDI still workable for enterprise-level businesses, but small-medium enterprises still face challenges. For instance, a small startup with 70 employees can’t afford to hire 20 people of IT experts, isn’t it? That’s cost-intensive! 

VDI needs a monumental server installation 

Traditional VDI demands massive server installation and an IT team to manage and monitor the deployment. Large-scale firms with huge budgets can benefit from setting up on-premises VDI. Still, small-medium enterprises opt for fully managed VDI or DaaS as it gives them a little more flexibility with the oversight of management tasks and costs. 

However, there’s a solution for this limitation too. You can take VDI to the cloud, which means desktop as a service. 

Cloud Virtual desktop infrastructure offers a digital workspace platform to the users and is often known as Desktop-as-a-service (DaaS). Cloud VDI or desktop as a service is simply virtualization powered by cloud infrastructure where a service provider delivers virtual desktops to end-users over the Internet. 

DaaS is fully managed and secure. 

The DaaS technology comes from the traditional VDI. The significant difference between both is that DaaS is a fully managed approach that shifts the extensive management and IT costs associated with the conventional form of VDI.  

These DaaS are optimized for different businesses as per their custom needs. For example, companies can look for a cloud VDI provider with multi-device compatibility instead of limiting their desktop environment to one device. Every Industry has different needs and requires a different set of access controls. 

How ACE- Citrix Strategic Partner Overcomes the Challenges of Traditional VDI?  

Businesses can host their managed virtual desktops on the VDI platform, such as Citrix or VMware, and get them hosted via third-party vendors, such as Ace Cloud Hosting. The Cloud VDI provider would manage the virtual desktop infrastructure and deliver it to you as a fully managed service. It means you get the same benefits without the hassle of deploying and managing the infrastructure at your office premises. Cloud VDI is offered by managed Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) like ACE, where providers handle your VDI infrastructure. They offer you storage space on their cloud data centers, deploy virtual desktops, install desired applications, and manage software licensing.   

In cloud VDI, security is not your concern either; we are responsible, thus giving you a superior working environment. We offer security safeguards like multi-factor authentication, firewalls, OS patching, OS hardening, and regulatory compliance to keep your data secure.  

Moreover, we charge you on a pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay for the resources you utilize. Additionally, you get customized plans and round-the-clock support so that you never have to face downtime issues. That’s a relatively massive saving benefit for your business.  

Get hands-on experience with ACE-managed desktops on the Citrix VDI platform; get a free demo now. 

The Future of VDI 

The VDI market is growing at an exceptional and exponential rate. This is because of several heterogeneous factors, including an increase in the BYOD concept, the remote mobility workforce, and more.  

DaaS offered organizations an easy transition from in-office to enabling remote working setup. It was made possible due to desktop virtualization properties like easy scalability and ease of deployment.  

It is imperative to move your computations over to the cloud, and DaaS is one such stepping stone with which one can easily make the transition over to the cloud. The future of VDI seems bright as it follows a subscription-based model where users pay only for the services they avail and can easily cancel or scale their service. Subscription-based models are also profitable for vendors, creating recurring income. It also allows vendors to offer lucrative offers to their prospects making the services more attractive and flexible.

VDI Frequently Asked Questions

Are VPN and VDI the same?

VDI and VPN both perform different functions. VDI is a setup where users can remotely access a virtual desktop running as a virtual machine on a central server. On the other hand, VPN is a network connection between a device and the corporate network installed on PCs, laptops, and mobile devices.  

Is VDI the same as a remote desktop?  

While these terms may seem similar to some people, there is a vast difference between a virtual desktop infrastructure and a remote desktop connection. 

Both are computing terms that give remote access to the users, but they are not the same. VDI is the technology that offers dedicated resources to the user for high performance from any location. In contrast, RDS is a Windows-based client solution that develops a connection between a host computer, enabling users to control a remote system from different backgrounds. 

Read more: VDI Vs. RDS- Which Desktop Infrastructure Is Best For Your Business. 

Is Citrix a VDI? 

No, Citrix is the platform for offering virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). We, ACE, are the Citrix Strategic Partner and deliver your managed virtual desktops hosted on the Citrix platform. It means we are responsible for every IT task from deployment to security, and you get a high-performance experience. 

Is virtual desktop a subscription-based model? 

When a virtual desktop is hosted on the cloud with the VDI provider, it’s a subscription-based model. This saves you high costs and allows you to opt-out anytime per your business needs. 

What type of virtualization should you deploy to provide a virtual desktop infrastructure?  

There’s no specific type of virtualization per say for deploying VDI over a virtual machine. VDI can be hosted on a secure VM and the users will immediately be able to access the virtual desktop be it Windows 7/10 or Linux remotely.  

Related posts:

What is a Virtual Desktop? How Safe is Your Data with ACE Virtual Desktop Infrastructure? What Is Citrix HDX? Know How To Get Accelerated Virtual Desktop Performance With HDX Amazon Workspaces Vs. Azure Virtual Desktop: Which One To Choose?