VDI: The End of the Data Centralization Use-Case for Replication?

Admittedly, VDI is in the early days of adoption. As evidence, I cite TheInfoPro data shared at the recent Virtualization Summit at the Spring SNW event in Orlando: adoption of VDI will still be below 50% among the organizations surveyed by the end of 2010. As things VMware go, this is a slow growth area.

But, I have to wonder why. Organizations continue to struggle with remote data, both in terms of the cost of its management and the practicality of corralling it for protection. All kinds of fancy data replication schemes are in the market — some of which I have helped to promote over the years — for replacing backup systems in remote branches with replication to pull the data closer to the central management team. Replication products range from host-based to disk-embedded, and even fabric-embedded which is theoretically the most efficient placement for the replication engine.

In fact, centralizing data from remote sites with replication has become the second most prevalent use-case for replication. The first and most prevalent is disaster recovery, which I would actually argue is a combination of disaster recovery and making data available for offline backup. But centralizing data with replication from remote sites for backup purposes has gone mainstream in the last few years, having been integrated into backup applications themselves including Microsoft DPM.

With all of this momentum, then, why do I predict the end of this use of replication? Because VDI technologies solve the root problem better. VDI avoids the need to manage all of these in-bound streams of replicated data from remote sites, because with VDI the data never leaves the central site.

The beauty of the VDI model is that the technology has improved so much over the last couple of years, in particular with the VMware 6.5 version, that end-users don’t have to realize that their data is remote. With VDI, end-users have the same access and control of their files and information; but, the data is central and not remote which solves an entire range of management problems while lowering costs and risks. Think about these benefits:

• Data is easier to store, backup, archive, restore and retain
• Data is easier to produce for compliance and legal discovery
• Data is not exposed to theft of loss due to equipment theft and loss, such as when a laptop is left on a taxi
• Data is managed with the same more-robust infrastructure established for data centers
• Data is managed by better experienced IT teams
• Data can be stored on the same cost-efficient tiered storage established for data centers

Rather than having to replicate the data to the central point, with VDI the data serving remote end-users is already central and available for simple, low-cost management.

In the literature describing the benefits of VDI, I haven’t seen a lot of emphasis placed on the improvement that VDI offers in data management. Instead, I see much made of the benefits that VDI brings to simplifying the management and provisioning of desktop systems. A good benefit, certainly, but not one which tends to drive spending. Perhaps this explains why VDI is not catching the world on fire with deployments.Yet.

I think it’s just a matter of time, however, before IT teams catch on to the fact that VDI solves the remote data management problem better than do nothing, better than remote backup, and better than replication used to centralize the data for management. When that happens, replication vendors will need to be ready with new ways to add value to the data management problem.