XenApp-Desktop or VMware View
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We are digging into the whole VDI options because of some specialty apps one of our business are deploying. We are also consolidating our data centers so offering VDI in the datacenter will make access to the data more secure and quicker.
We?ve had people in to talk about both products. We already using ESX for our server virtualization and have a Citrix presentation server 4.0 farm (with current support)
Citrix seems to have more options and a better overall package, but there?s also a higher price for those options. One thing we were told today is even if we plan on using XP for the virtual desktops we have to purchase a special ?virtual license?. I don?t remember the name of the license (it included the the word vista in it) but we where told we?d still need it for XP desktops. That?s an extra cost we were not expecting.
Anyone have experience with Epicor Clientele in a VDI or XenApp environment?
later,jb
Licensing:
MS are currently a mess with VDI licensing, if you are doing VDI on anything except Hyper-v you need a Vista Enterprise Centralised Desktop License (VECD) which gives you the option to either deploy Vista or downgrade to XP. Unfortunately MS will currently only sell VECD to Software Assurance (SA) customers. Not everyone who wants VDI wants SA. I’d expect this to change in the future, though who knows when.
A useful site for licensing is: http://tiny.cc/ladylicensing
As for the View vs Xendesktop argument, it seems to be about 50/50 implementations in production currently.
If you need VDI over a WAN I’d go for Citrix due to ICA. As you already have a ESX environment, I’d put your VDI solution on there. (XenDesktop will live happily on ESX).