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As others have mentioned, you have to know what problem you're trying to solve before you start looking at solutions. Crazy, I know... We're looking at a virtual lab environment because we don't have a lot of qualified lab managers in departments that refuse to allow central IT to manage their labs. Long story, politics, etc... But for this scenario we can provide custom images with the right software and better access all the while freeing up a room. Basically the student can access the lab image from their own machine or any other machine without needed to be in a physical lab. This is great if you don't need any special hardware in the lab. Also, as previously mentioned, if you can't cover 100% of the desktops what is the cost going to be to have two ways of managing desktops and will the savings in going virtual cover the added cost of doing the same thing two ways? Exceptions cost money and seem to rarely be factored into the final bill. Server virtualization has been wonderful though. Savings in electricity are real[1]. Physical servers are still called in when needed (Oracle, etc). If you want to start somewhere, this is the place. Pat [1] Sorry, I don't have the numbers but I've been told they're real. On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Karen Schneider <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > Dear C4L community, > > One of the VPs on campus asks me from time to time on trends with > virtualization in academic settings -- specifically, virtualized desktops. > > My own response (qualified with "I am not an IT person, but...") has been > that I believe, based on what I read, that this highly-promising technology > isn't more widespread for several interrelated reasons (that are also > applicable to our campus environment: > > a) ROI is not as clear, especially in smaller environments (startup cost, > network, storage); > b) university WANs are often not be robust enough to support virtualized > desktops (and I'd add, we're on an uphill Sisyphean climb with > bandwidth--there will never be enough of it); > c) outside of the lab/classroom environment (where I think an argument can > be made for virtualization, if other conditions are met, and the campus has > the expertise to deploy/manage this environment), the ROI of a virtualized > desktop may be mooted by the need for individualized desktops; > d) it's a single point of failure. > > My down-home-country-librarian observation that I always tack on (with > plenty of disclaimers) is "If virtualization were the answer, we'd see more > of it by now." I realize that's a humble insight, but given how many talks > I've been to over the past decade about what virtualization *would* be > doing, versus what it *has* done, I think it's not entirely invalid. > > I also pointed the Veep toward this article: > > http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/061809-desktop-virtualization.html > > So... any thoughts? Resources? POVs? Etc.? (If you want more context for > this inquiry, write me off-list.) > > Thanks, dear old C4L community-- > > Karen G. Schneider > Director for Library Services > Holy Names University > http://library.hnu.edu > [log in to unmask] >