RICHMOND, Va.-If virtual servers are cheaper, faster and more secure than physical servers, why not take the next logical step and rollout virtual desktops, as well?
Credit Union Journal is hearing that rhetorical question again and again from CUs that are already using trendy virtualization software to reduce the need for physical servers - in some cases, by up to 95%.
Virginia Credit Union here decided to take the leap in 2007 by virtualizing a few of its desktop computers, saving about $20,000 per year in employee training costs and learning some important lessons, according to Christopher Saneda, CIO at the $1.7-billion credit union.
The virtual desktops at Virginia CU can run existing desktop hardware, if the hardware is still viable. Alternatively, the virtual desktops can sit on thin-client hardware, which has fewer moving parts to maintain, uses less heat and lasts longer than a standard computer.
The virtual desktop user logs in to a central virtual server to use his or her own personalized operating system and applications, which are stored and managed not on the desktop, but on the central virtual server, along with potentially hundreds of other users' systems and applications.
Indeed, remote branch staff log-in to core system training from a virtual desktop instead of traveling for training, said Saneda. "Staff can train at their leisure and don't have to interrupt member service."
Avoiding Overtime Pay
The virtual training approach, implemented in 2007, helps Virginia CU avoid $20,000 per year in overtime pay and travel and saved $30,000 in training equipment right off the bat, he said. Virginia CU deploys and manages virtual desktops using VMware View, offered by VMware of Palo Alto, Calif. VMware vCenter Server and vCenter Converter help simplify physical to virtual desktop conversions, while vCenter Update Manager automates patching and updates.
The lending department also benefits from virtual desktops, said Saneda. "They were having problems with performance using standard desktops, so we put them on virtual machines." Performance "really" improved because the virtual server started delivering just the right amount of memory to run the virtual desktops smoothly, whereas the standard desktops were running low on memory, he said.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg, continued Saneda. When Virginia CU has the money for additional software licenses and labor - perhaps this year - it would like to see virtual desktops for member services representatives, tellers and call center agents, he said. "They're our biggest population and use our most stable set of applications."
Upgrades Easy To Deploy
That would make software upgrades and patches easy to deploy because all the users' virtual desktops could be centrally managed, said Jason Bane, VP-infrastructure operations at the CU. "You apply the patches to one image, and then replicate that image rapidly" across all the virtual desktops. "If you need to add 20 more people with virtual desktops, it's a handful of keystrokes, and within hours, 20 more images are ready, instead of a week of slapping images on each new standard desktop and carrying each one to the person's desk."
The idea of replicating an image also comes in handy for business continuity, Bane added. A recovery image could simply be copied over to all the desktops at a disaster recovery site, "and it would look seamless to the user's eyes. There'd be no need to train the user twice, once on the disaster recovery environment and once on the normal production environment."
Bane advised credit unions thinking of digging into virtual desktops to establish a "strong foundation. You can continue to use some of your existing desktop hardware, but you'll need solid machines in your datacenter."
The Virginia CU datacenter houses "high-end" Hewlett-Packard server blades with plenty of room to "scale up," said Bane. The blades run VMware ESX virtualization software, which consolidates physical desktop memory, processors, storage and networking.
All that consolidating can create a glut of virtual machine copies on the blades - "we ran the danger of really growing our storage needs when we created the virtual training environments." Virginia CU eliminates unwanted duplicate data created by VMware by running the storage solution from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp, he said.
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Read more about virtualization at cujournal.com and type the following headlines into the search function:
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For info on this story:
* www.vacu.org
* www.vmware.com
* www.netapp.com
