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VDI Best Practices
Is Windows 10 the biggest
threat to VDI user experience?
by Blair Parkhill
Published on July 25, 2016
Lets start with a statement that I love
Windows 10, its a great OS and our
recent #VDILIKEAPRO test results
clearly illustrates this. Currently,
Windows 7 is still the dominant OS in
the world but in February, Windows
10 already bypassed Windows 8 /
8.1 and continues to grow (source).
Participating in early releases
Blair Parkhill (@SANspyder) since the days of Windows XP, Ive Major upgrades
joined Login VSI in the become pretty accustomed to this Previous operating systems like
summer of 2015 as the trend thoughyou know the one Windows XP, Windows 7 and 8.1
director of products. Blair where every other release has been
has been a marketing offered a clear upgrade path. Every
leader, avid architect and
pretty lackluster compared to its n-1 couple of years, a major version of the
supporter of customer- predecessor. Windows OS was made available, and
focused technology IT departments had enough time to
solutions and technical respond to this update and prepare
marketing since the late End of regular support of Windows
7 has ended in January 2015 and all of their applications. Especially for
1990s. Residing in
Colorado Springs, he extended support will end in January big enterprises with many business
spends much of his time 2020 (source). Sooner or later, any IT critical applications, an upgrade from
playing music, doing yoga,
enterprise will be forced to upgrade to one version of Windows to another was
hiking in the mountains a massive undertaking and required
and geeking out with the Windows 10. This new OS offers many
new features but it also introduces a lot of work. But because of the low
latest tech.
a dramatic change in the way that frequency of major updates, most
enterprise IT is confronted with companies were able to do this in a
updates for their virtualized desktop controlled way every couple of years.
environments. How will this impact
enterprise IT and what is the best way for
IT departments to deal with this change?
Citrix XenApp VMware Horizon View Microsoft RDS Citrix XenDesktop
VDI Best Practices
Windows 10: a major game changer
The world of enterprise IT has fundamentally changed
since the introduction of Windows 10. The major game
changer of this version in comparison to the previous
ones is the fact that Windows 10, like most cloud-
based SaaS offerings, will follow more of a continuous
development release and development stream and
now feels more like Windows as a Service. Instead of
major upgrades every 5 to 6 years, Microsoft is planning
Windows 10 Release Cycles (click for a larger image)
to continue to build and expand on Windows 10 by
offering updates every six to nine months! Could this be
the last major version of Windows for a very long time? Even in the business branch, system administrators can
stage new versions to a select audience within their own
organization before they deploy the update to everyone.
This is great because it allows Microsoft to become This allows you to test the latest version of Windows 10 on
much more agile and introduce new innovations (e.g. a small scale and scale it up from there. Sounds great right?
Cortana) and big updates in a much faster way. But
based on the updates of Windows 10 so far, we can
clearly see that these upgrades are not small. Typically But whats the catch?
these updates consist of 20,000 to 40,000 file changes. But there is a catch Microsoft releases a new CBB
That sounds like a major upgrade to me and this means every 6 to 9 months, but Microsoft doesnt want to
that it can have a dramatic impact on the performance continue to support all of these CBBs, so they made a
of your VDI environment. Keep in mind that even if very clear statement that they will only support the last
the performance impact is relatively small, it will be two CBBs. This means that they basically force you to
compounded to a greater impact when you are talking update your version of Windows every 12 to 18 months
about 100 200 desktops per server.
In the past, IT departments could decide to just use
Feedback the current version of Windows and no longer upgrade
As with any continuous development practice, feedback until they are ready, but this is no longer the case with
is a great way to arrive at brilliant software and super Windows 10. Microsoft only allows you to postpone
important to Microsoftthats why they use several one update. In the image below you can see the current
test cycles before the final version with all the new branch for business (CBB) upgrade path of Windows 10.
features becomes available. If you are wondering what
this all means to enterprises, Windows 10 will move
through at least three branches before the update
becomes available to businesses:
Internal testing audience
External: Windows Insider
preview branch
External: Current branch
(millions of consumers)
Windows Release Management System for Current Branch for
Current Branch for Businesses (CBB) Business (CBB) (click for a larger image)
VDI Best Practices
For example, say your organization is currently using Is your organization planning to move to Windows
CBB version 4. Six months from now, Microsoft will 10, or have you already done so? Wed love to get
release version 5. Since you are running version 4, your feedback about the challenges you face in this
you are allowed to skip this one. But when Microsoft endeavor, and you plan to address them. Visit the
releases version 6 in a year from now, you are forced to original post for this article and let us know your
upgrade to 5 or 6 because only the two latest versions comments!
are supported. I know what youre thinking its hard
enough to keep up with Windows Updates because they
potentially carry an impact to my line of business apps,
which means more testing Ugh. Dont worry keep
Do you need to manage the impact of Windows 10 in
reading
your virtualized desktop environment? Click here to
visit our webinar library and learn more about how a
#VDIops approach can help you manage your virtual
How to manage EUX with desktop environment foe the best end user
Windows 10? #VDIops experience!
You can also contact us to schedule a personal demo
Previous test results already showed that upgrading of any of our solutions for #VDIops.
from one version of Windows to another can have a
big positive or negative impact on the performance
and end user experience of your VDI environment. The
only way to know the impact of these changes in your
own environment is to test, so it will be mandatory
for enterprise IT to test every application every year
instead of every four years to deal with these forced
Windows 10 updates. For a big enterprise with many
(customized) applications, this is not an easy task and I
guess that many companies will probably hope for the
best when applying updates Whoops.
In my opinion, this fundamentally new way of
releasing Windows updates also requires a
fundamentally different approach to the way
we manage change. We call this VDI Operations
Management or #VDIops. This concept is based on the
many principles of DevOps such as minimum viable
product and continuous delivery but its specifically
focused at VDI.
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