Brian sticks the knife in…
Brian Madden has written a very unforgiving slant on VMware View. It’s quite a short little missive, and it won’t take you long to read.
Please do remember to come back here once you’ve read it.:-)
It pretty much slates View and VMware VDI strategy. It’s quite a brutal assessment – the trouble is I find myself aggreing with it. In fact its quite difficult to think of any counter argument. The especially biting line was this one:
“VMware is not a desktop company. They tout that “user data disk” crap when they talk about personalization, and their current customers (the server people) are impressed. (And they should be, because they’re server people. The last time they even thought about user profiles was for their NT 4 Workstation exam back in ‘97.)”
I went ouch when I read that bit because I thought – heck, by a couple of years – that pretty much describes me! In fairness to myself I was still in the thick of Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation Server up until 2004 – but once VMware came onto my radar I left it behind…
So what kind I say that would counter Brians view of things. Not much, but I will try – because I think debate is good – and I rather enjoy being a devils adovocate. Firstly, I don’t think VMware was every stupid enough to think its could justify it VDI offering on the basis of the quality of its hypervisor. I’ve never EVER heard a VMware person say the reason you need VDI from VMware is because of ESX. Sure perhaps some dumb-ass sales reps have, who have swallowed their own marketing bull****, but beyond the those folks – No. BUT, I do suspect that VMware hoped its ownership of the “Virtual Infrastructure” (a now passe phrase) would mean that customers would “natural” gravitate towards VMware as opposed to other vendors.
Secondly, Brain talks of Citrix and others as being the masters of delivering a remote desktop/compute environment. Don’t get my wrong – I love Citrix WinFrame/MetaFrame/Presentation/XenApp/WTF! server – but I’ve met many people who ****ing hate it too – both system admins and end-users. The complain about licensing cost and the fact that not every application can run. So these are the very same people who are going to deliver your virtual desktop.
Thirdly, View. Sigh. It really isn’t a very nice product is it? Its web-pages for administration seems a bit crummy – and doesn’t directly integrate with VMware’s flagship management platform vCenter. If find the complexity of linked clones (without all that stuff surrounding parentVM, replica and source) too much. In terms of controlling what users can and cannot do, its “policy” system reminds me something that’s pre-NT4 config.pol. So its quite hard to counter Brian’s negativity. Heck, I’m even adding to it. I’ve felt for sometime that VDM/View has been the elephant in the room – it really doesn’t come across a quality product.
Redeming qualities? Well, I’ve seen VMware customers select View over other products – not because its is technically better. In fact I’ve seen customers who already have a very good broker, ditch that broker in favour of View. Why? Well, its the corporate politics of reducing the number of companies involved in suppport. In short I think View may well be VMware’s “good enough” product. That will certainly get better in time, and eclipse the smaller brokers out there. Does that sound like someone company to you. First couple of release it the software isn’t really that great, but “good enough” wins out in the end – and because it ends up being bundled as part of bigger purchase – it eventually comes to win out all of the others?
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July 17th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Nice article, but I disagree with point 2:
Secondly, Brain talks of Citrix and others as being the masters of delivering a remote desktop/compute environment. Don’t get my wrong – I love Citrix WinFrame/MetaFrame/Presentation/XenApp/WTF! server – but I’ve met many people who ****ing hate it too – both system admins and end-users. The complain about licensing cost and the fact that not every application can run. So these are the very same people who are going to deliver your virtual desktop.
I agree on the license part, but you’re comparing Terminal Services to VDI. Yes not every app runs on Terminal Services, both MS Terminal Services, and Citrix XenApp on top of MSTS. However that’s an app that doesn’t work well in a multi-user environment. They work on VDI because it’s not multi-user.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Yep, I agree on what you saying – I understand the difference between multiwin and singlewin (remember I’m a former CCI
) Clear VDI and Server-based computing are TOTAL different models. You equally say that server-based computing is superior because an application is installed once – for many users. But generally, people do compare them – and having started out with a shared desktop model – people quickly find not everything runs in that platform. Rightly or wrongly that’s a disappointment to them – so they start to think that maybe shared desktop isn’t the way forward… My point was actually a general one – which is when customers get disgruntled about an existing solution from a vendor (Citrix XenApp for example) and annoyed/irratated by the licensing model – this tends to affect their WHOLE opinon of the company… In short rightly or wrongly people seem to have fallen out of love with Citrix and in love with VMware
July 17th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
[...] om zijn soms provocerende uitspraken – wint daarbij wat mij betreft de meeste sympathie. Hij geeft Brian namelijk gelijk! Levert toch weer aardig leesvoer [...]
July 29th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
VMware has a pedigree based in reducing physical servers in a data centre – you might argue they owned the monopoly on this business for while back there (maybe still do?). Citrix has a pedigree around remote client and application provisioning.
Now I dont’ want to argue the pro’s and con’s of VMware versus Citrix – but understand where the market see’s these companies tour de force. WMware will have a hard time convincing the market that they now know how to do “desktops” – just as Citrix will struggle to convince the market that they know “server consolidation”. I’m not even calling the outcome but it’s fascinating to watch the struggle. In fact as time moves on I suspect they will both be able to match each other fucntionally in both areas – but in the meantime I rather suspect the market will approach them for the seperate animals they currently are – respecting what each brings to the table.
This answer thread is also part of that debate and struggle so I thought I’d better throw my two pennies worth in.