October 18th, 2012
We had so many fantastic questions following our recent Microsoft Licensing & Delivering DaaS webinar, that we've decided to follow up with a multi-part blog series. Check back with our blog all this week as we answer your questions addressing everything from licensing, to hardware, to documentation and cost.
Part II - Hardware
Q: You didn't explain how Desktone makes the offering license compliant through the dedicated hardware requirement.
A: The purpose of this webinar was not to provide a detailed overview of the Desktone DaaS platform. Should you want to know more about our software platform, please contact us at sales@desktone.com.
Q: Does dedicated hardware requirement also include Shared Storage?
A: Any hardware running an instance of Microsoft software (OS or application) must be dedicated to a single customer. For example, a SAN device that is not running any Microsoft software may be shared by more than one customer; whereas, a server or SAN device that runs Microsoft software may only be used by one customer. Please see http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/1/4/114A45DD-A1F7-4910-81FD-6CAF401077D0/Microsoft%20VDI%20and%20VDA%20FAQ%20v3%200.pdf .
Q: So, basically if I am a SMB customer with let's say 8 Hosted-VDI desktops, I would need at least two servers (one for redudancy).
A: Not entirely true, while most servers run in clustered and fully redundant mode, desktops tend to run on a single server with the storage of the actual virtual machines in a RAID storage location. If the server were to fail for any reason, the desktops would automatically be recovered on a failover server. The SLA of the Service Provider is able to cover both of these models as required.
Q: The connection broker must also run on dedicated hardware, right?
A: See the response above. Any hardware running an instance of Microsoft software must be dedicated to a single customer. There is a dependency upon the operating system and software of the connection broker.
Q: Is a VLAN considered "dedicated hardware"?
A: I’m not sure that I understand this question. A VLAN itself is a virtual network assignment and not a Microsoft OS or application. Thus you would not need to assign a physical router or switch to a single customer.
Q: Can you do Win 7 and SPLA Windows server VDI on the same hardware?
A: Any hardware running an instance of Microsoft Windows 7 must be dedicated to a single customer. You would not be able to run Windows Server under SPLA for another customer on this same hardware.
If you have additional questions, ask them here and our CTO Danny Allan will answer them.
