August 15, 2013

What is VMware View?

Virtualizing servers in the data center has been a trend for years, but virtual desktops have been slow to catch on. VMware View is VMware's entry in the virtual desktop space which competes with the other major players, namely Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft Remote Desktop.

Virtual desktops provide several advantages over traditional full workstations including easier management and simpler provisioning. Desktop virtualization takes a user's desktop workstation and stores it on a central server as a virtual machine. The user can then access it from anywhere using a small remote client application, which is referred to as a thin client. Thin clients can be either low-cost dedicated hardware devices that are basically just a monitor, keyboard and mouse, or an application installed on any type of PC. Because the desktop is hosted on a powerful server that handles all the processing for the desktop, the thin client has very small resource requirements and does not need to be that powerful. The only data that is sent back and forth between the thin client and the hosted server are video, keyboard/mouse inputs and peripheral connections (USB drives/printers).

VMware View leverages vSphere as the virtual desktop host platform; in other words, user desktops are virtual machines running on ESX/ESXi hosts. They can take full advantage of all the features built into vSphere like VMotion, snapshots, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and more.

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