VMware or Microsoft Series - VDI - A Look at Supportability and More!

A little bit of history first.  Virtual Desktop computing has been slowly etching its way into more IT plans year over year.  The advantages can be enormous when isolating the end user into a virtual desktop that looks and acts like their regular everyday PC.  Of course the ROI has been quite difficult to manage especially when looking at large deployments, and when performance must be guaranteed to match or exceed the current computing requirements.

VMware jumped in the VDI ring many years ago mainly through some acquisitions, and for the first few years struggled to gain momentum against Citrix.  After all Citrix owned this market for many years almost solo.   Citrix had the client connectivity piece so well-honed that it was quite difficult for any other vendor to compete in the space.  VMware’s answer to this was to license the PCoIP protocol from Teradici.  And so for the past few years, VMware has continued to take some market share from Citrix on the VDI front.  Which brings us to the present.

Enter Microsoft Server 2012 Remote Desktop Services(RDS).  Read more here