VDI vs. DaaS

A unified cluster of Hosted Desktops is called a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Obviously, it makes sense for businesses to host their Desktops in a VDI because the deployment model’s centralization and organization cause them to be easier to monitor and manage. A Hosted Desktop Infrastructure has numerous advantages over a traditional IT infrastructure of on-site workstations and servers. These advantages include:

-It can be accessed from anywhere in the world via the Internet

-Hosted Desktop Infrastructure users can access multiple applications from a single web-based platform

-The centralization and flexibility of VDIs make them easier to protect, manage, and back up

-Hosted Desktop Infrastructures don’t require any new hardware purchases

DaaS (Desktop as a Service) differs from other Desktop Virtualization service in how its costs are calculated. Businesses pay for DaaS on a per-use basis (the exact amount of processing power and data storage used, for example) while they purchase Hosted Desktops on a long-term (monthly, yearly, or lifetime) basis. It’s possible to pay for a VDI on a DaaS model, but usually this defeats the purpose of DaaS as a quickly-deployable, temporary Hosted Solution.

Hosted Virtual Desktops

Traditional desktop computers have a single operating system. Users interact with a traditional desktop OS by plugging a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into their PC. They input commands into the operating system with the keyboard and mouse, and the OS reciprocates by sending images of the results of their commands to their monitor. Users can install and launch applications from within their operating system, but the single desktop OS always remains the primary interface of their PC. The desktop operating system usually has root access to the machine’s hardware, giving the OS the maximum amount of administrative control and direct access to all of the computer’s resources.

Virtual Desktops, on the other hand, normally do not have privileged access to their underlying hardware. Instead, they are created by hypervisors (virtualization platforms) or other operating systems, themselves with root administrative access. Advanced users will employ these contained “operating systems within an operating system” to test newly-developed software or to open potentially dangerous files. In most cases, however, They are not utilized by the same person directly managing or operating their underlying hardware and virtualization platform. Instead, the hardware and hypervisor or operating system merely “host” the Virtual Desktop for a user on a separate device. As with a traditional desktop operating system, a Hosted Desktop user forwards commands to the OS using a keyboard and mouse and receives the results back as images on a monitor. With a Cloud Hosted Desktop, however, the user communicates to the Hosted Desktop via a network instead of USB/DVI cables connected directly to the hardware, and the “hardware” usually isn’t a PC but a high-performance server in a datacenter on the other side of the country.

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