Economic efficiency and feasibility of the introduction of VDI
Hello! We continue our series of articles on virtualization and various hp technologies, and this time we will look at the most burning issue that we received the most questions through various channels: at what stage it is advisable to introduce virtualization of workplaces, over what period of time it will start saving your money and how to save on VDI implementation
Computing virtualization is a modern and fairly new service, its capabilities and savings using virtualization are growing every year, and large companies every year try to understand whether it is time or not time for them to switch to VDI. The largest IT companies and digital communication monsters in Russia also consider this technology and most thoroughly analyze all possible information in this field. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to disclose some information, but gave access to interesting statistics and accumulated data, which allowed us to share with you the economic part. So, before you rush to the director with the sentence "And let's virtualize everything here!" You should understand one simple truth. Virtualization by itself does not bring direct income (except in the case when you are a system integrator for virtualization, but this is a separate topic). ;)
What then to save and how? The main economic effect of virtualization is a reduction in capital and operating costs for maintaining the PC fleet in the current state. The conclusion is, in principle, fairly obvious, but it is made up of many factors. One of the mobile operators, who switched to fully virtualized workplaces, gave us interesting statistics that showed exactly how savings are achieved.
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In the first place goes, if not strange, the acquisition of new jobs (and the replacement of old ones). On average, a working PC becomes obsolete in 4-5 years: the power supply units “dry up”, storage drives “spill out”, very often (you don’t know how often) monitors fail. Jobs that have completed a full five-year cycle do not look the best: the system is “littered”, the hard drive regularly crunches the stroke limiters of the read heads, the capacitors in a cheap power supply come to a substandard condition, and there is nothing to say about the amount of dust inside the system unit.
A thin client (that All-in-One solutions, that separate “boxes”) is often deprived of all these problems both constructively and ideologically, and by itself it does not become outdated - the computing power is consolidated in the server rack, the flexibility and scalability of which the very idea of ​​virtualized jobs.
The second expenditure item is electricity. Electricity consumption, even taking into account the consumption of powerful servers and storage, is 30-50% lower, and this ratio is the greater, the older the park of your computers. Affect cheap power supplies with not the highest efficiency, their degradation, inefficient use of power.
The third burner of a hole in the budget of the company - FOT - wage fund. Suppose you have 20 computers and 2-3 servers in your office. One system / network administrator serves both software and hardware issues, and in general the entire office is kept on it. Now imagine that you have several offices throughout the city (or even several branches throughout the country), each of which has several hundred computers. From time to time they need to be repaired, cleaned, maintained, and all these operations require a qualified specialist, and one can not do just one universal uncle in a sweater with deer. In addition, any hardware failure of the PC leads to user downtime. The use of thin clients makes it possible to effectively reduce both the volume of service personnel and the possible costs caused by equipment downtime and the cost of its repair / maintenance.
We have dealt with the advantages more or less, now let's move on to the difficulties that await you if you decide to implement VDI.
The biggest “consumers” of finance in VDI are thin clients, servers and storage. And the cost of buying customers, servers and hard drives are approximately equal, and in total they account for more than half of the costs.
The second largest cost item is the licensing side of the issue: server OS, client OS, hypervisor and specialized software require money, and not small, though for regular workplaces, you also need to buy an operating system, all software and say at once that it is cheaper licenses or licenses for virtualized workstations - difficult.
The third point is staff training. Training costs are considered very conditional, since virtually nothing changes for users, and administrators and support staff are usually very broad-based specialists, and virtualization technology should not create unnecessary problems, so it was designed to make it easier and more profitable to work.
Before bringing Napoleon’s plans to the authorities on the table, one should be convinced of the economic efficiency of the transition, consider the basic models for switching jobs to VDI and assess the scope of work.
Answer for yourself the following questions:
a) Park of computers was updated 1-2 years ago;
b) Park of computers was updated 4-5 years ago;
c) Park of computers was updated o_0?
a) We are full of managers who, apart from the browser, e-mail client, office and 1C base, do not need anything;
b) We have many engineers working together on one project (its different parts);
c) We have a lot of highly specialized specialists who require PCs with different capabilities.
a) Constantly breaks this, this, then “he asks to enter SMS”;
b) There are breakdowns, but, as a rule, everything is treated in a few hours;
c) We have reliable and high-quality computers, if problems occur, it is only with the software / the user's fault (coffee shed).
If the computer park has been updated during the last couple of years, it is not profitable to implement VDI now, but you can start preparing the infrastructure: improve the network, prepare a place for servers, upgrade the storage system, if it exists.
If computers are no longer young, but reliable, they can be used as thin clients after appropriate configuration and / or minor upgrades. After working for a few more years, they will save on the initial purchase of thin clients, and you can change them as they fail or just after a certain period of time when supporting an old PC becomes less profitable than an unattended simple piece of hardware with a long-lasting enterprise guarantee.
If a fleet of computers is worn out, and their reliability is caused by the technical staff to stir their hair in various parts of the body, change such computers immediately (or gradually, as they fail, transferring the entire PC fleet to thin clients mode).
The uniformity of workplaces is also an excellent recommendation for the implementation of VDI: sales managers, call center and many other office employees do not care what pieces of hardware are under their desk, if the usual set of software works. Replacing a PC with virtualized workplaces will save on fleet maintenance (zoo) and on electricity bills. Virtualized workplaces will also suit engineering teams (in some cases, VDI, in some RDS, both technologies have their own characteristics and advantages), and multimonitor thin clients will allow you to work comfortably even with the most complex software.
The introduction of VDI is NOT recommended if you have a lot of different functions and requirements of users, a small office, where there are not so many jobs, you can’t accommodate server equipment or you don’t plan a large number of new jobs.
Payback will directly depend on how and in what quantities you are implementing thin clients instead of regular PCs. Using current workstations as terminals for VDI allows you to save on the “starter pack”, but does not eliminate the operating expenses associated with servicing these computers. In this case, it is required to calculate how much maintenance of jobs will cost, for example, another 2-3 years (3 years - just the time when the economic effect from the introduction of VDI becomes obvious), and how much the costs will decrease in the same 2-3 years , if you replace these computers with thin clients. A detailed analysis of the current situation in your company, an assessment of the proposals of integrator companies VDI and high reliability of virtualized workplaces will allow you to reduce the amount of expenses in a few years, significantly improving both working conditions and quality of services.
ps: Many thanks to the companies that share statistics and calculations. Questions and suggestions are expected from you in the comments.
Economy and savings
Computing virtualization is a modern and fairly new service, its capabilities and savings using virtualization are growing every year, and large companies every year try to understand whether it is time or not time for them to switch to VDI. The largest IT companies and digital communication monsters in Russia also consider this technology and most thoroughly analyze all possible information in this field. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to disclose some information, but gave access to interesting statistics and accumulated data, which allowed us to share with you the economic part. So, before you rush to the director with the sentence "And let's virtualize everything here!" You should understand one simple truth. Virtualization by itself does not bring direct income (except in the case when you are a system integrator for virtualization, but this is a separate topic). ;)
What then to save and how? The main economic effect of virtualization is a reduction in capital and operating costs for maintaining the PC fleet in the current state. The conclusion is, in principle, fairly obvious, but it is made up of many factors. One of the mobile operators, who switched to fully virtualized workplaces, gave us interesting statistics that showed exactly how savings are achieved.
')
We save
In the first place goes, if not strange, the acquisition of new jobs (and the replacement of old ones). On average, a working PC becomes obsolete in 4-5 years: the power supply units “dry up”, storage drives “spill out”, very often (you don’t know how often) monitors fail. Jobs that have completed a full five-year cycle do not look the best: the system is “littered”, the hard drive regularly crunches the stroke limiters of the read heads, the capacitors in a cheap power supply come to a substandard condition, and there is nothing to say about the amount of dust inside the system unit.
A thin client (that All-in-One solutions, that separate “boxes”) is often deprived of all these problems both constructively and ideologically, and by itself it does not become outdated - the computing power is consolidated in the server rack, the flexibility and scalability of which the very idea of ​​virtualized jobs.
The second expenditure item is electricity. Electricity consumption, even taking into account the consumption of powerful servers and storage, is 30-50% lower, and this ratio is the greater, the older the park of your computers. Affect cheap power supplies with not the highest efficiency, their degradation, inefficient use of power.
The third burner of a hole in the budget of the company - FOT - wage fund. Suppose you have 20 computers and 2-3 servers in your office. One system / network administrator serves both software and hardware issues, and in general the entire office is kept on it. Now imagine that you have several offices throughout the city (or even several branches throughout the country), each of which has several hundred computers. From time to time they need to be repaired, cleaned, maintained, and all these operations require a qualified specialist, and one can not do just one universal uncle in a sweater with deer. In addition, any hardware failure of the PC leads to user downtime. The use of thin clients makes it possible to effectively reduce both the volume of service personnel and the possible costs caused by equipment downtime and the cost of its repair / maintenance.
We have dealt with the advantages more or less, now let's move on to the difficulties that await you if you decide to implement VDI.
We spend
The biggest “consumers” of finance in VDI are thin clients, servers and storage. And the cost of buying customers, servers and hard drives are approximately equal, and in total they account for more than half of the costs.
The second largest cost item is the licensing side of the issue: server OS, client OS, hypervisor and specialized software require money, and not small, though for regular workplaces, you also need to buy an operating system, all software and say at once that it is cheaper licenses or licenses for virtualized workstations - difficult.
The third point is staff training. Training costs are considered very conditional, since virtually nothing changes for users, and administrators and support staff are usually very broad-based specialists, and virtualization technology should not create unnecessary problems, so it was designed to make it easier and more profitable to work.
Transition to virtualized workstations
Before bringing Napoleon’s plans to the authorities on the table, one should be convinced of the economic efficiency of the transition, consider the basic models for switching jobs to VDI and assess the scope of work.
Answer for yourself the following questions:
- How long has the PC park been updated?
a) Park of computers was updated 1-2 years ago;
b) Park of computers was updated 4-5 years ago;
c) Park of computers was updated o_0?
- How many jobs are there in the company that can be quickly and painlessly transferred to VDI?
a) We are full of managers who, apart from the browser, e-mail client, office and 1C base, do not need anything;
b) We have many engineers working together on one project (its different parts);
c) We have a lot of highly specialized specialists who require PCs with different capabilities.
- How reliable are current computers and how often do they need attention?
a) Constantly breaks this, this, then “he asks to enter SMS”;
b) There are breakdowns, but, as a rule, everything is treated in a few hours;
c) We have reliable and high-quality computers, if problems occur, it is only with the software / the user's fault (coffee shed).
If the computer park has been updated during the last couple of years, it is not profitable to implement VDI now, but you can start preparing the infrastructure: improve the network, prepare a place for servers, upgrade the storage system, if it exists.
If computers are no longer young, but reliable, they can be used as thin clients after appropriate configuration and / or minor upgrades. After working for a few more years, they will save on the initial purchase of thin clients, and you can change them as they fail or just after a certain period of time when supporting an old PC becomes less profitable than an unattended simple piece of hardware with a long-lasting enterprise guarantee.
If a fleet of computers is worn out, and their reliability is caused by the technical staff to stir their hair in various parts of the body, change such computers immediately (or gradually, as they fail, transferring the entire PC fleet to thin clients mode).
The uniformity of workplaces is also an excellent recommendation for the implementation of VDI: sales managers, call center and many other office employees do not care what pieces of hardware are under their desk, if the usual set of software works. Replacing a PC with virtualized workplaces will save on fleet maintenance (zoo) and on electricity bills. Virtualized workplaces will also suit engineering teams (in some cases, VDI, in some RDS, both technologies have their own characteristics and advantages), and multimonitor thin clients will allow you to work comfortably even with the most complex software.
The introduction of VDI is NOT recommended if you have a lot of different functions and requirements of users, a small office, where there are not so many jobs, you can’t accommodate server equipment or you don’t plan a large number of new jobs.
Payback
Payback will directly depend on how and in what quantities you are implementing thin clients instead of regular PCs. Using current workstations as terminals for VDI allows you to save on the “starter pack”, but does not eliminate the operating expenses associated with servicing these computers. In this case, it is required to calculate how much maintenance of jobs will cost, for example, another 2-3 years (3 years - just the time when the economic effect from the introduction of VDI becomes obvious), and how much the costs will decrease in the same 2-3 years , if you replace these computers with thin clients. A detailed analysis of the current situation in your company, an assessment of the proposals of integrator companies VDI and high reliability of virtualized workplaces will allow you to reduce the amount of expenses in a few years, significantly improving both working conditions and quality of services.
ps: Many thanks to the companies that share statistics and calculations. Questions and suggestions are expected from you in the comments.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/186354/
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