New project: VDI Design Guide

As you may have read on twitter a couple of weeks ago, I started a new project. One of my ambitions in the past 3 years, is to become an author. But due to a lot of reasons, I didn’t start.

In the last 3 months I attended a personal leadership training and that’s where I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything holding me back in starting.

To become an author, it is quite essential to find a proper topic to write about. And since I am pretty focussed on VDI, it had to be something in that area. But what? There are tons of books in that area. After some brainstorming and questions I got during both VMworlds on designing a VDI solution, I decided it had to be specific in that area. The project is called: VDI Design Guide. And it is what you think it is. A book that will guide you through the whole process of designing a VDI, based on VMware technology. The main focus area’s will be:

  • What is VDI? And why do you need one? This topic will focus on TCO, ROI, Business cases and more boring but really important stuff that need to be clear before you start.
  • The design process. How to gather requirements? How do you identity and mitigate risks. How do you cope with constraints? How to decide what availability level to implement?
  • Designing the VDI. From top to bottom. So from the user all the way down to the infrastructure.
  • Desktop OS. How to prepare the desktop OS for the proper application set and use cases.
  • GPU’s. To a lot of customers, this is undiscovered territory. When should you use GPU’s and why? What kind of GPU’s and how?
  • Protocol choices and tuning. VMware is heavily investing in Blast Extreme, and is this the protocol to focus on? Or are there still use cases for PCoIP?

Based on my experience in projects and at customers, I will do my best to share as much information as possible.

The main goal for the book is to create more insights in VMware-based VDI solutions and the design process that is absolutely necessary for a VDI project to succeed. A secondary goal is to help people that pursue the VCDX-DTM certification in improve their design skills.

If you want to follow the progress or have any feedback, check out https://twitter.com/vdidesignguide

 

Johan van Amersfoort
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Johan van Amersfoort

Johan van Amersfoort is a VCDX-DTM, VMware EUC Champion, vExpert, and NVIDIA NGCA member, working as a Technical Marketing Architect and EUC Geek at ITQ Consultancy. He is the author of the VDI Design Guide. More about Johan can be found on the about page.