Weighing the pros/cons of desktop virtualization

by server teams deploying virtualization, says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates. For that reason, desktop groups should depend upon the experience of their peers when considering storage. For instance, 5,000 desktops each with a 60-gigabit drive built-in could prove to be cost exorbitant. But by bringing those storage requirements back to the data center, Mann says, via thin provisioning and data deduplication, desktop teams will lessen their costs and optimize resources.

"Storage management is one of the biggest concerns about desktop virtualization. A lot of resources can be wasted if not managed properly," Mann says.

He adds that the network is another area of concern, thought it's not typically on desktop managers' minds. While Gigabit Ethernet is a standard for data centers, it has yet to be widely deployed to the desktop.

Determining network capacity and understanding if an upgrade is in order could help IT managers decide on virtual desktops, Seitz says. "The network needs to be able to handle aggregate traffic from many desktops to one location in the data center, so an upgrade from 100MB Ethernet to Gigabit might be necessary," he says.

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