This blog starts a series of blogs we will post regarding Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure or VDI. To directly quote wikipedia "VDI is a
desktop-centric service that hosts user's desktop environments on remote
servers and/or blade PCs, which are accessed over a network using a remote
display protocol." Basically, VDI means a user can access their desktop
from any terminal device capable of running the remote display protocol.
Further, VDI runs a complete implementation of a typical desktop OS (e.g.,
Windows XP, Windows 7, etc.) as a virtual machine on the host server. There
is no sharing of OS resources between individual VDI clients as with other
remote desktop implementations.
VDI History
VDI history traces back to 2002, before it was even called VDI. An
excellent timeline of the evolution of VDI can be found on Vittorio
Viarengo's mobilityjourney blog. VMwar... (more)
Hey there; the IT Dog back with some color commentary on our VDI experience.
When I first heard the name, I thought VDI was the latest model Volkswagen
diesel, but as the guy with the suit explained in the last blog, VDI is
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Now that you know what VDI means, I am sure
you know all there is to know about it, right? Well, I wish it was that
easy for me.
Where Do I Begin?
I guess I’ll start from the beginning. At my company, my IT guys were at
their wits end trying to manage the 1000 or so desktops, spread out over four
different locations, with va... (more)
What To Expect When Flash Stops Flashing
We all know that SSDs are made up of NAND-Flash memory chips and that flash
memory eventually will wear out. So, to prepare for the inevitable, we
offer you a little up front advice on what to expect when your flash stops
flashing.
What’s In The Box?
We have posted several blogs in the past about NAND-Flash memory and SSDs so
I am not going to get into it too deep here. Basically, SSDs are made up of
NAND-technology flash memory chips. It is a well known and widely discussed
fact that flash memory wears out. There is a limit to the numb... (more)
Well, we may have recently avoided the ‘fiscal cliff’ in Washington DC,
but some cliffs cannot be avoided. Just ask Norm of the TV show
“Cheers” how many times he wished he could avoid Cliff Clavin. In the
world of SSDs, the cliff that we want to avoid is the SSD “write cliff.”
Why the Write Cliff Matters
The SSD write cliff is the effect where SSD write performance drops off after
all the free flash memory pages in an SSD have been initially written to and
the device cannot provide enough free pages to keep up with subsequent write
requests. Each new write request then require... (more)
File System Alignment for SSDs
There are many techniques and methods that can be used to tune an IT system
to improve overall system performance. SSD caching is widely being used as
a low cost, easy to implement method to quickly increase performance with
little or no impact on existing operations. One thing that needs to be
considered when choosing SSD caching is how to configure a file system to
maximize the performance increase SSD caching provides.
Operating Systems and Block Size
In the past few years, the sector size of HDDs has increased from 512 bytes
to 4k bytes. Relat... (more)
Peter Velikin has 12 years of experience creating new markets and commercializing products in multiple high tech industries. Prior to VeloBit, he was VP Marketing at Zmags, a SaaS-based digital content platform for e-commerce and mobile devices, where he managed all aspects of marketing, product management, and business development. Prior to that, Peter was Director of Product and Market Strategy at PTC, responsible for PTC’s publishing, content management, and services solutions. Prior to PTC, Peter was at EMC Corporation, where he held roles in product management, business development, and engineering program management. 
Bob Evans
Max B
Alex Henthorn-Iwane
Mark van Rijmenam
Dan Ushman
Randy Roberts
Ross Brouse
Swarup Biswas
