Page 17 - COMPASS, Q2 2017

• Provide disaster recovery (DR) for virtual desktops
• Enable end-user needs such as roaming desktops and a home desktop, irrespective of end-user location and desktop location
• Incrementally scale existing View desktop deployments
PRESENT DAY:
YOUR DESKTOP IN THE CLOUD Today, it’s all about moving your workload to the cloud. It doesn’t just include your vSphere environment; it also includes your VDI environment and Desktop as a Service (DaaS). Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform have a solid founda- tion, and are growing day by day.
The ability to have VDI, storage, compute and backups all hosted in the cloud provides companies increased flexibility and frees up datacenter space and cooling on-premises. However, for the administrator it can create more anxiety, due to having less control and an inability to see into the data. Many an administrator has complained about the lack of flexibility in managing the infrastructure, and at times, even a lack of complete visibil- ity into the infrastructure.
For example, an admin might not have root-level access to vCenter, like he would for an on-premises installation. Cloud provid- ers often strip access to vCenter and instead
New York Datacenter
provide access only through a proprietary Web management inter- face. That makes alarm bells go off for an administrator.
SECURITY RISKS
With the increase in workloads moving to the cloud comes an equal increase in the need for security of your cloud architecture. With threats such as data loss, theft, data breach and man-in-the-middle attacks, it’s important for the administrator to ensure there are security best practices in place. Passwords can’t be weak, two-factor authen- tication has become the norm and least privilege must be put in place to avoid an inside threat from becoming a reality.
When working in the federal space with VDI in the cloud, gaining approval from the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is required. It’s important to ensure that your cloud provider meets federal regulations as they pertain to the cloud hosting federal data.
Getting a FedRAMP approval can be a long, drawn-out process if it’s not already in place with your provider of choice. As of this writing, AWS GovCloud, Azure Government and Google Services are all FedRAMP Authorized. For a complete list of FedRAMP Authorized cloud providers, see the FedRAMP Marketplace Web site.
INTO THE FUTURE:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
What does the future hold for VDI? Will desktop virtualization remain relevant? With mobility becoming a huge part of our lives—both personally and professionally—it’s important to understand where things are headed. An administrator needs stay relevant by getting ahead of the curve.
Will that mean continuing to maintain an expertise in VDI? It’s unclear at present. Maybe VDI belongs to the past and will slowly become phased out. What we are seeing today is the ever-growing need for mobility and less of a reliance on desktops, either physical or virtual. We’re
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User
New York Pod
London Pod
Security Server
Security Server
View Connection Server
Security Server
View Connection Server
Security Server
View Connection Server
View Connection Server
Remote Desktop or Application
Global Data Layer
Interpod Communication
Figure 2. An example of basic Cloud Pod architecture topology.
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