Client Hypervisor Management: Evolution NOT Revolution…

By Chad Jones | Vice President, Product Management

Virtualization has forever changed the server room and it’s about to do the same on the desktop.  Whether it is virtualization in a macro context (servers, storage, networks, desktops (VDI), Server Based Computing (SBC), etc.) or in the microcosm of a single machine (user settings, registry, files, applications (which has a fond place in this author’s heart)), virtualization now plays a first order and indispensible role in providing the necessary flexibility for next generation computing stacks.  In the Enterprise data center today, the question of “will I deploy a physical or virtual server?” is almost non-existent.  How else would a cloud be pragmatically possible except through the coalescing of multiple virtualization technologies?

If we look back just 10 years ago, the data center was an immobile collection of rack mounted servers, each with a specific purpose, chugging along at 10% utilization.  Then along came the hypervisor, forever changing the way IT utilized servers.  Dozens of physical servers could be consolidated to a few boxes, but all was not bliss.  Instead of looking at 25 pizza boxes and knowing you had 25 servers, all of a sudden it was a black box where dozens of inactive servers with a few active servers lived, all with unknown patch levels that required an admin to touch a reduced number of physical boxes but actually touch more servers due to the sprawl.

Yes, consolidated servers held tremendous benefit, however it wasn’t until the central management capabilities and exposed API came to being around the hypervisor that the true management potential of hypervisors could be realized.  Now, with Microsoft pushing the hypervisor to commoditization and Citrix XEN Server being open source, the benefit to IT in the form of downward price pressure, with ever increasing capabilities, continues to be a huge win for the customer. 

When looking at the client PC, the industry is at the same inflection point.  Although PC lifecycle management (PCLM) systems have reached an evolved state, they are limited by the reliance on Windows to be managed from within itself, either through a client or network available API (WSMAN, WMI, PowerShell etc.); and rely on a mini-OS to be deployed before Windows itself can be delivered.  Due to these challenges, the Windows OS is being forced into unnatural architectures, such as VDI, in hopes of alleviating some of the challenges with deployment and management.  However, VDI is falling into niche status since the TCO results in OPEX and CAPEX are not materializing for a broad set of desktop replacement use cases, despite many innovations and improvements.

This means the timing is right to replay the hypervisor movie at the client level.  There is tremendous management and security TCO reduction potential in separating the management environment from the user application environment by applying virtualization directly to the client, and is the next logical progression for PC architectures.  However, client hypervisors alone, just like their server counterparts, will not provide the management capabilities needed to truly transform the desktop.  The benefits in essentially extending VDI principles to distributed clients (simplifying device driver models, “golden image” OS deployment, disaster recovery, out of band management of Windows, etc.) only occurs when the hypervisor is managed by a robust centralized management system.  The good news is that the majority of Enterprises already have these in place in the form of the PCLM system.  Instead of reinventing the wheel, the future of PC management is bringing together the client hypervisor with the existing PCLM system.  This will drive a new level of management capabilities.   Neocleus has built the platform to manifest this vision and we are already seeing adopters embrace it such as BigFix (check out this Podcast with Amrit Williams, CTO of BigFix).

Just as the hypervisor is a standard on the server side and has moved to commoditization, the client side hypervisor will most certainly follow the same path in the future, but it will be the evolution of the existing PCLM that will drive it.  What if the PC came with a client hypervisor built in and ready for subscription to the existing management system?  The possibilities could be endless…