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?"

Comments

Problems at scale require Solutions at scale!

[ElitistWhiner]

You have a large installed base. Shit's hittin' the fan.

Steve Jobs has this campaign where he wants PC users to switch to Apple hardware. Talk to Steve about a Corporate Sponsored PC switch to his MacOS X on Intel running WINDOWS. Your BusinessCase might cross market with Apple's marketing strategy to provide your shop a soft landing on a solution to the problem. A win-win.

Minimize risk, provide longterm solution