Another Aspect of Server Virtualization: Virtual DesktopsAnother Aspect of Server Virtualization: Virtual Desktops

Server virtualization has gotten a lot of press recentbut what about virtual desktops?With virtualization, you can cut the number of servers you need by having the hardware pretend to be more than one server: for instance, Sun recently announced that its new x64 servers with new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors can virtualize at a ratio of more than a 110 to 1. But the workstations attached to those servers are major sources of maintenance expenses and security headaches. So why not make them virtual, too?

That's where desktop virtualization comes in. There's still actual hardware on the desktop, but it is either a thin client pretending to be a PC, offering the user a software image provided by the server that it is attached to, or a PC pretending (thanks to specialized software) to be a thin client, etc. Since processing is actually happening on the servers, administration becomes a matter of managing the serversand that's a lot easier than managing scores of desktops.

However, thin clients (real or PC-based) have trouble delivering the complete PC experience that users expect, especially when it comes to multimedia. While they can transfer keystrokes and mouse movements and thus handle bread-and-butter tasks, today's cubicle dweller expects his or her desktop to deliver training videos and webcasts. Newly announced software from HP, however, is supposed to fix that.

News coverage explained that HP's answer involves an enhancement to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol which transfers presentation data between the server and the virtual desktop.

With the enhancement (offered gratis), video data is decoded on the desktop instead of on the server, meaning the video can be streamed to multiple desktops, with no performance degradation.

The enhancement is also supposed to improve support for USB peripherals.

Basically, the recent announcement involved HP rebranding its suite of desktop virtualization software under the name HP Virtual Client Essentials. As well as multimedia and USB support, HP is adding Linux support for it Session Allocation Manager broker software, which currently runs on Windows only.

Yes, it may sound al too reminiscent of the Old Days, when a business system meant a processor and some dumb tubes, used for data entry. But if that if that did the job, why pile on more functions? It's applicability to the SMB field is about the same as it always was: those who value simplicity and security will see it as a welcome option.

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