Director's Blog
windows

We received $100K this year in Campus Technology Council funding for a pilot program to investigate Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).  VDI is both a new technology, and something of a throwback; the idea is that you can install what is essentially a dumb terminal at the desktop, do all your processing on servers in the data center, and save yourself money and time managing hardware and software on a whole bunch of distributed desktops.  The thing that makes VDI different than a dumb terminal solution, or existing technologies like Microsoft Terminal Server, is that VDI allows you to customize and virtualize individual desktop environments.

What that means is that you can give each person a computing environment that’s specific to his or her needs; you can get the advantages of thin clients while still being able to install customized software on an individual basis.  Or, if your business needs dictate uniformity (such as in a computing lab), you can create a single image to be used by multiple devices, which always reverts to the default state when the user logs out.

If the technology works, it would mean that we could shift from replacing relatively expensive desktop machines every 3-4 years, to replacing cheap thin clients every 5-6 years.  We would save money on hardware, but more importantly, we would save a lot of time and effort in setting up computers, and users would have less downtime.  If something were to go wrong with a client, a replacement with identical functionality, and access to all the same files and applications could be installed within minutes.

VDI can also be accessed from a normal PC (or Mac or Linux box) using Microsoft’s RDC protocol.  That means you can have access to the same session from multiple computers; for example, a lecturer could work on his presentation on a thin client in his office, continue working on it on his laptop in a cafe, and then display it on a classroom computer, all without having to log out or re-open the document.  VDI can also be used as a lightweight replacement for Parallels or VMWare Fusion on Macs for folks who need access to a Windows environment.

In L&S, we are looking at testing several use cases:

• Lecturers–folks who often have the worst computers, shared office space, and a high degree of mobility.
• Labs (and drop-in machines)–places where we want to maintain a clean, standard desktop environment.
• Administrative task workers–front desk staff, or others whose work is fairly routine.
• Mac users needing access to Windows.

We just rolled out our first thin client (in the French library), and will be rolling out more over the next few weeks.  We have also begun setting up Mac users to access our infrastructure.  There have been a few glitches–the technology is definitely not yet fully mature.  But it basically seem to work for most use, and it has a lot of promise.  We’re using VMWare’s View product, which is undergoing rapid development, and the vendor has been pretty responsive to our needs.

We have funding to run the program through the summer, and we’re looking for funding to extend it through the fall.  As long as we have funding, there will be no cost for participating in the pilot.  We’ll ask users to fill out an evaluation survey at the end of the pilot.

If you are interested in seeing whether this would work for you, contact Seth Novogrodsky, who’s our lead on the project.

Side note about Macs: We would love to be able to provide Mac OS X over VDI, as well, but Apple’s licensing doesn’t allow it.  It would not be technically difficult; VMWare already provides Mac server virtualization.

Per Kathleen Valerio’s message, CalPACT and LearnIT are offering free 90-minute demos of Microsoft Office 2007, on March 24, 25 and 26.  (Sign up through the UCB Learning Center on blu).

Office 2007 for Windows, and Office 2008 for the Mac, have interface changes which most users will find disconcerting.  I recently moved to Office 2008 myself, and it took me a bit of poking around to figure out how to return the environment to something I could reasonably work in.  (For a start, close the toolbox, enable the Formatting toolbar, and view in Normal or Draft mode).

The new Office also has a completely revised file format–you’ve probably already received “docx” or “xlsx” files which need to be converted to be read on older versions of Office.  The new file formats are actually a lot better–they are XML-based, which means they’re simpler, more extensible, and should be less prone to corruption.  But, the change will definitely cause problems for collaborators.

Those who use Word or Excel regularly will probably find it useful to attend one of these sessions.

Today, a number of departments received messages from CDW-G about needing to renew Software Assurance for one or more of their licenses. The messages look like this:

Dear HENRIETTA TWITTLEWHEEZE

The Software Assurance (SA) portion of the current three year UC Microsoft Select license agreement will expire on January 31, 2008.

Select SA coverage provides you with the right to upgrade to newer versions released during the term in which you own SA. SA is valid for the term of the agreement, purchased in one, two or three year increments depending on when during the three year agreement period you purchase the license with SA. Renewals are all for the full three year period. SA also provides you with certain learning tools and trainings that Microsoft makes available to customers who own SA.

If you purchased or renewed Select SA coverage at any time from January 2005 through December 2007 and wish to renew that coverage, *you will need to submit your renewal order to CDWG by February 26, 2008* to ensure process time before the deadline with Microsoft.

Your order(s) that need to be renewed are:
Q5877392

Items ordered were
ACAD MS SEL VIRTUAL PC MAC LIC/SA 1Y

I think I can speak for the majority of our departments when I say: Huh?

What happened here is that the department (often unwittingly) purchased a license for Microsoft software that includes Software Assurance (SA) for one year. (That’s what “SA 1Y” means at the end of the license). Usually this was unintentional and caused by the confusing CDW-G price lists. What it means is that you purchased the right to upgrade your software to the latest version, for a period of up to one year. (Actually, it’s not really a full year; it’s whatever portion of the year was left until January 31, and it’s not pro-rated). If you renew your SA (by paying an additional license fee), you’ll continue to have the right to upgrade to the latest version; if you don’t renew, you’ll have to buy a new license when you want to upgrade.

Our general recommendation on SA is, don’t buy it unless there’s a specific reason to. The way the pricing works is that you pay almost double the stand-alone license cost for the right to upgrade to a future version you don’t even know you’ll want. Better just to buy the stand-alone license, and buy another one when you know you want to upgrade. (Back in the old days, you could buy a cheaper upgrade, but Microsoft and most other software companies have done away with upgrade pricing.)

But, if you got one of these messages, you already bought SA, so what should you do? First of all, you should make sure you have the most recent version of the software; you’ve purchased the rights to it, so grab it before your rights expire. If you already have the latest version, you probably don’t need to renew SA; you can just buy a new license when the time comes.

Licensing is one of the issues we’re examining as we develop a strategic plan; this situation highlights the high cost of managing and keeping track of software licenses the way we currently do. I would like to move to a model where a standard suite of software licenses is paid for centrally or included in our yearly rates, so that departments don’t have to spend so much energy on these kinds of issues. It will take a fairly significant reworking of how computing in L&S is funded, but I think we can do it.