Virtual desktop service overview

Hello, dear habr inhabitants! It so happened that I needed a remote desktop for 5 employees of my small project and since this project practically does not bring us money at the current stage, the choice of a virtual desktop service provider was extremely important in terms of an adequate price / quality ratio. I came across an interesting review of cloud providers, but the virtual desktop service was not available in the review, so I decided to conduct my research with a summary.

As a result of my searches, 10 companies responded to the request. Each company prices varied greatly, so it took to understand why so cheap or why so expensive. The results of my analysis, tasks, requirements and evaluation methodology, see under the cut.

+ bonus: during the selection of candidates, I discovered that 2 different providers have the same calculator and billing, which suggested that it is the same company ...

Task

For our company, it is necessary to organize access to a remote desktop (DaaS - Desktop as a Service, desktop as a service) via RDP for 5 users with monthly charges.

Requirements

1. It is important that all users have admin rights, as it is required to periodically install their software.
2. Company candidate must be located in the data centers of the Russian Federation. I did not want to bother with compliance with the requirements of the law on personal data FZ-242.
3. SSD Drives
4. Disk read / write speed of at least 500 MB / s
5. Each user has at least 10GB of space, not counting the system.
6. Windows server of any version.
7. Office applications Word, Excel. We plan to use Office Libre or Open Office, but optionally considered MS Office.
8. SLA 99.95 availability guarantee. I perfectly understood that such a guarantee would not save us from possible financial losses if the service was dropped, but still left this item for the sake of possible financial compensation from the provider in case of unavailability. This is better than nothing;)
9. 24-hour free support. This item, I hope you can not comment.
10. Backup. At the moment, I was interested in the opportunity and cost, since at the start in the first 1-2 months this is not critical, but in the future it will matter.
11. Any virtualization.
12. Cpu intel. This is because of the particular software that we use. It requires Intel, not AMD.
13. Download / download speed of at least 300Mbps, respectively.
14. Lack of brakes when working with a virtual desktop
15. Price up to 1500 rubles / user
16. Free test for at least 5 days

Testing Methodology

If the provider satisfies the requirements, then put a +1 point. If they do not meet the requirements, then put a negative score of -1. If information is not provided, points are not awarded.

Start

Appeals to the company were made from my legal entity. After I sent a request to the candidates, I wondered how quickly I could get an answer. As a result, not everyone answered me, despite calls and calls to online chat rooms. Some candidates do not provide a virtual desktop with a number of users less than 20. These indicators are not included in the assessment, but it is possible that the speed of response to a request may be important for someone.

Bold highlighted the slowest and fastest companies.

The company Deac dropped out of the list, as they turned out to be an incredibly difficult process of obtaining a free test. First they asked to sign a contract, then they decided to simplify the procedure and asked to send a letter with a statement addressed to the chairman of the board. None of the companies from the review had such requirements. It was enough for everyone that I have corporate email and a company website. Some provided a mobile phone number.

ActiveCloud and IT-Grad also dropped out at the start, as they don’t provide a desktop with users less than 20 and less than 100, respectively.

Where the symbol “?” Is indicated, it means that they either refused to answer or ignored the question.

Performance

We conducted peformance tests of disks, CPU and RAM. In testing used CrystalDiskMark 5.2.1 and PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0, as well as speedtest.net
Surely someone will say that the results of these tests are a spherical horse in a vacuum, since measurements may differ at different times, for example, when transferring a virtual machine to another node, performance may drop and so on. However, some such tests give an idea of ​​performance in general.
Only CrystalDiskMark test participated in the assessment. Let me remind you that we are interested in the read / write speed of disks of at least 500 MB / s, in particular, 1 line - Seq Q32T1 - the recording and reading of a 1 GB file is checked, with a depth of 32 using 1 stream:

The summary table with the results looks like this:

Individual performance results

The results of speedtest, as well as CPU, RAM and HDD performance for each company, see below.

Cloud4Y
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6398137154

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Cloud Office
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6397902121

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Encility
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6397310386

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Invs (Parking)
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6415199966

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Itcloud
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6392409440

It is impossible to install PassMark because they do not provide admin rights.

Itis
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6392537565

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

IT-Lite
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6392401677

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Maxiplace
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6409331382

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

MyVDI / VMLab
http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/6395537360

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Stockwell
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6397970441

It is impossible to install PassMark because they do not provide admin rights.

Helent
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6412194498

Results PerformaneTest 9.0 for CPU, RAM, HDD

Cost of the “Virtual Desktop” service

Let me remind you that we have 5 users, each user has at least 10GB of space, not counting the system. We do not want to spend more than 1500 rubles per user of the remote desktop. We need Office Libre or Open Office, but optionally considered MS Office. And the lack of brakes when working with a virtual desktop, since brakes are a subjective assessment, so I left my comments and did not participate in the assessment.

Total points

Top 3 Review Providers:

Encility http://encility.ru/ 10 points
IT-Lite http://www.it-lite.ru/ 10 points
Xelent https://www.xelent.ru/ 6 points

And now the promised bonus is my mini investigation.
There is a feeling that 1cloud and IT-Grad are one and the same company, which is also somehow related to Xelent (in the past, Xelent was called SDN). I can not unequivocally assert this, but there are serious prerequisites.

It all started with the fact that when I did this review, I accidentally drew attention to the favicon on the site xelent.cloud:

Seeing this icon, she immediately reminded me of another company 1cloud. Having visited the site 1cloud.ru it immediately became clear that this is the same logo:

Further in the section “About the Company” we see a scan of the certificate for IT Grad:

Comparing the personal accounts of Xelent and 1cloud, we see an identical login panel and calculator, only the logo and color differ. Find 3 differences :)

https://xelent.cloud/Account/Login	https://panel.1cloud.ru/

https://1cloud.ru/services/vps-vds

https://www.xelent.ru/services/vds-vps/

Let's sum up

1. The maximum number of points scored only 2 companies: Encility and IT-Lite
   There is a difference in price: Encility - 6850 rubles / month, and IT-Lite 5172 rubles / month
   If we compare for the future, then in addition to Moscow, Encility has 3 more data centers: 2 in the USA and 1 in the Netherlands, while IT-Lite only in Moscow. It remains only to find out whether there are any discounts, for example, when paying for the year ahead, let's see who offers what.
2. The most expensive solution is offered by Invs, also known as Inoventica, it’s Parking - 14,700 rubles / month + one-time payment of 30,000 rubles for setting up virtual machines, installing software.
3. All companies that offer a virtual desktop below 1500 rubles have no SLA availability level of 99.95%. It is in the range of 99.8% - 99.9%. The exception is IT-Lite and Encility with 99.98% and 99.95% SLA respectively.
4. Cloud4Y has the highest SLA - 99.982%.
5. They did not respond to my requests from DAAS.ME and Smart Office.
6. ActiveCloud provides a desktop only if you have 20 or more users.
7. IT-Grad company provides a desktop only if you have 100 or more users.
8. The most difficult process to get a free test from the company Deac.
9. The largest free trial period (30 days) from Encility.

I hope my review will help someone save time and money. I will be glad to your comments. Thanks for attention.

UPD:
I wrote a representative of the company Smart Office, who noted that his company is not in the list, or rather the status is no answer. Together we found out that the answer to my request was, but got into spam. Therefore, I will add this company to the review after testing, which will be reported later. So it will be more honest.