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Experiences with Replacing Desktops w/ VMs?
E1ven asks: "After years of dealing with broken machines, HAL incompatibility, and other Windows frustrations, I'd like to investigate moving to an entirely VM-based solution. Essentially, when an employee comes in in the morning, have them log-in, and automatically download their VM from the server. This gives the benefits of network computing, in that they can sit anywhere, if their machine breaks, we can instantly replace it, etc, and the hope is that the VM will run at near-native speeds. We have gigabit to all of the desktops, so I'm not too worried about network bandwidth, if we keep the images small. Has anyone ever tried this on a large scale? How did it work out for you? What complications did you run of that I probably haven't thought of?"
Exactly!
This is brought to you from a SunRay at home, talking to the server in the garage...
Combined with Tarantella, you can have every Windows application you want. The latest revision of the SunRay server also works on Linux (RedHat I think)!
I run my Windows apps in QEMU, but that is because only my wife and I share the SunRay server...(2.4GHz P4, 3GB RAM). From a users perspective its just perfect! Power-on in the morning, insert your card, login and last nights session is still there. Just upgraded to the latest Open Solaris build so I had to reboot the machine, but before that my machine had reached 317 days of uptime!
In an office environment your mileage will vary, but I have always appreciated the silence of my office working on a SunRay.
Regarding the GP, downloading VM images just doesn't make sense compared to a SunRay, especially if you already have GB ethernet. Make sure the servers have enough RAM and don't let them play Quake!
(and yes, I work for Sun...)