Desktops: Merely Containers for Applications

Virtual desktops continue to be all the rage in IT these days.  One can understand why.  The technology for deploying and managing virtual desktops is just fundamentally cool. 

Once all the pieces are laid into place, the process to provision a new ready-to-go desktop to a new user requires maybe a couple of clicks … maybe.

I had the opportunity recently to dig a bit deeper than usual into Citrix’s XenDesktop solution as part of a training series for CBT Nuggets.  Delving deeply into all the technologies that make virtual desktops tick, there’s one video in that series that’s particularly important. 

The video’s Integrating XenApp with XenDesktop title suggests that it’ll be a click-by-click run-down of how Citrix XenApp can deploy applications alongside XenDesktop’s desktops.  Yet, the more I dug into the content, the more I realized that the virtual desktop is in many ways the least-important part of the solution.

Think for a moment about the kinds of things your users need to accomplish their daily tasks.  They need a desktop, obviously, but that desktop is to them little more than a container for the applications and data that helps them do their job.  As an example, if there were no Microsoft Outlook to read email, Word to write and edit documents, or Excel to build spreadsheets, that desktop to its user is valueless.

It’s our job as IT professionals, then, to deliver those applications.  Further, it’s our job to figure out the very best way to deliver them.  Back in the old days, there was really only one way to do this:  Install them, directly, on a computer, manually.  While that process might have worked well back then, these days, the number of ways to deliver an application has grown significantly.

These ways have nothing to do with the application itself, but rather how that application makes its way to our users.  What’s oddly complicated about those ways is that they’ve grown to such a large number, and grown so fast, that it can be difficult to keep all your options straight.

Figure 1:  Options in Delivering Applications

Figure 1 is a picture from that video that attempts to deconstruct all of those options currently available today.  As you can see, there are quite a few.  Let’s think about each one in turn:

• An application can be installed to a user’s physical desktop.
• An application can be streamed to that user’s physical desktop using an application virtualization solution.
• An application can be installed on a XenApp (or, notably, an RDS) server, and then presented to a user via a remote desktop.
• An application can be installed on a XenApp (or, notably, an RDS) server, and then presented to that user as a seamless application on their local desktop.
• An application can be streamed to that XenApp or RDS server using an application virtualization solution, and then presented to the user either within a remote desktop or as a seamless application.
• An application can be installed or streamed to a user’s virtual desktop, and then presented to that user via a remote desktop.
• Finally, in the most extreme of examples, an application can be streamed to a user’s virtual desktop, and then presented to that user as a seamless application.

Add in the just-in-time features now available in today’s application virtualization solutions and the desktop pooling capabilities you’ll find in desktop virtualization solutions, and suddenly the list grows larger still. 

Immediately some very extreme use cases become a reality:  A user who needs a rarely-used application that won’t work atop XenApp or RDS could click a shortcut to launch that application, have it streamed in real-time to a virtual desktop, and then have the application presented in a seamless window back to the user.  When the user finishes using the application, everything returns back to its original pristine state to await the next user.

Everything you’ve read here is fully doable using existing technologies.  So the moral of this story is that a vast and dizzying array of delivery approaches exists today for connecting users with their applications.  Those approaches can involve virtual desktops, but needn’t necessarily focus only on virtual desktops.  Some use cases might work better atop physical desktops, or laptops, or even blade computers that exist physically in the datacenter.

But even those use cases are still nothing without applications to run.  So if you’ve found yourself embroiled in the fundamental coolness of virtual desktops, keep repeating your new mantra: “Desktops are merely a container for applications.”

Greg Shields is a Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert. He is a technology author, speaker and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology, with extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. See here for all of Greg's Tom's IT Pro articles.