Remote desktop services seems theoretically attractive, but I'm struggling with a practical aspect of deployment: mobile (laptop) users.
I would say about 99% of the time, mobile users would be able to obtain an internet connection – either a hard-line, wifi, 3g, or 4g that would allow them to access RDS outside of the office. Granted, establishing, maintaining, and providing an an acceptable user experience on any of those connections may, more often than not, require an investment of valuable time, and become quite frustrating to the end user versus "just having the damn OS installed on the laptop".
The other 1% of the time, say on an airplane, which is apparently the xen garden of productivity for certain salespeople, they will not have internet access, hence no access to RDS – an unacceptable, non-negotiable situation.
My question is: does the ability exist to "check-out" or "cache" a remote desktop session to a laptop so the user can use the computer offline, but will then resynchronize with the RDS server once the mobile user's internet connection is reestablished?
VMWare View has just come to my attention, which appears to do so. Any experiences with the software?
What, if any alternatives, especially Microsoft native solutions, exist? And how have your experiences been with such?
Finally, should I just dismiss this type of infrastructure configuration as untenable and opt for a more traditional Active Directory roaming profile deployment?
Our desktop infrastructure is rapidly shrinking, being replaced by laptops – what makes the most sense in terms of scalability and long-term manageability?
Best Answer
VMware's View product supports offline virtual machines/desktops.
We run about 2000 View desktops, and love the technology. We are not at the point yet to trial offline desktops.