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I work in the IT department of a training center, we still offer XP and Office 2003 trainings but also offer Vista and Win7 and Office 2007. Currently, we use VMs on VMware Server but this is obviously not a superb choice.

We're thinking of implementing something like VDI (brainstorm phase, we hardly have any details) but I decided to check here if people would have some clever alternatives.

Requirements: * Flexible when it comes to deployment * Centralized management would be a big plus * Allow for different software, whether they be compatible or not (all of office except for outlook can be installed simultaneously. for outlook you need to choose between 2003 or 2007) * Allow for different OS

We have a big enough budget to implement a proper SAN environment to accomodate the virtualization of the solution, whatever kind it may be. A support contract will probably be necessary as well, because we need to be able to offer quick solutions to problems and with only 2 sysadmins that is simply impossible to guarantee.

HopelessN00b
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HannesFostie
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1 Answers1

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Hyper-V + VDI + SCVMM is a powerful combination, but requires a lot of setup time, knowledgable administrators, and beefy servers (and a decent SAN). Support can be purchased from MS (or a local company if you have one around). I run a small installation like this, training for a single classroom, and it works very well.

Briefly, our environment is run by an HP MSA2312i SAN, with DL380 G6 Virtual Host servers.

Chris S
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  • Thanks a lot. This is exactly what was suggested while briefly thinking about it, can't even call it brainstorming yet. Was hoping to get some other alternatives as well, I assume there are a couple. Hopefully get some other than the obvious Xen and VMware as well :) – HannesFostie Apr 22 '10 at 20:01