Presented for InnoTech Oklahoma on October 4, 2012. All rights reserved

1. Oklahoma InnoTech 2012
How the University of
Oklahoma is offering VDI today
and how we are preparing for
the future
Presented by:
Joey Ware, Infrastructure Engineer
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
October 4, 2012

2. About the Presenter
• OKC Community College from 2001-2009
– 2 years supporting approx. 500 desktops along with 4 other techs
and several departmental lab technicians with their computers
– 5 ½ years supporting multiple physical and virtual servers
– XenApp implentation for KIOSKs across campus
• OU Health Sciences Center from 2009-Present
– Supported vSphere and multiple DCH customers on their virtual
projects (XenApp and XenDesktop)
– POC of VMware View to current production uses

3. Agenda
• About OU and the creation of Shared Services
• Why so many different types of VDI
• Use cases for VDI
• Virtualization Shared Services Team
• Standards Defined for Shared Services
• Q&A

4. About OU Health Sciences Center
• University of Oklahoma Academic Medical Center
• Campuses in OKC and Tulsa
• An anchor of the Oklahoma Health Center with 31 agencies
clustered 1.5 miles from downtown
• Seven colleges co-located
– Allied Health (Terminal Server)
– Dental Sciences (XenDesktop/XenApp)
– Graduate
– Medicine (VMware View/XenApp)
– Nursing
– Pharmacy
– Public Health

5. About OU Health Sciences Center
• Approximately 4,650 students and 3,950 faculty/staff
• Education, Research and Healthcare missions
• Increasingly Mobile and Collaborative workforce
• Hybrid IT Support Model with a centralized campus IT and
departmental IT resources in each college

6. Overview of Why HSC chose View
1. Wanted to move away from Terminal Server farms
2. Ease of management
3. Existing VMware vSphere customer
4. Ease of upgrading
5. Simple delegations of roles
6. Licensing

7. vSphere 5 VDI Cluster
We have 4 Dell PowerEdge M610 with 192GB of RAM each and Intel “Westmere”
2.4GHz dual socket, quad core. This gives us the total of 768GB of RAM and
76GHz CPU resources to provide for our VDI cluster.

8. Different VDI Pools
Infrastructure Pool – used by Operations/Engineering/Field Ops/S2.
Service Desk – used by our Service Desk which gives them access to
sensitive information.
HCA – a small number of VDIs to test from their network.
Patient Handover – used for doctors and nurses to collaborate on
patient care.
Application Services – provides a secured and locked down
environment for our development team.
Data Transfers – used to transfer data to and from other agencies
securely.

9. Pediatrics Migration
Our Pediatrics department had their own 8 node ESXi cluster that was due for
refresh. We worked together on migrating all their VMs and VDIs over onto our
infrastructure and provided them access to their environment.
They currently have 128 VM/VDIs running on the campus infrastructure with no need
to worry about hardware or software upgrades. This gives them the ability to stay
focused on their end users and other projects.

10. How HSC is Using VMware View

11. VDIs assigned to Department/Folder

12. Delegation of Admin Users/View

13. Delegation of Admin User/vSphere Client

14. Future of VDI
Citrix Project Avalon has stated that Phase 1 would simplify their
management across their XenApp and XenDesktop platforms. Phase 2
will build a way to promote both private and public cloud offerings.
http://www.citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=2324087
This year at VMworld it was announced that the Horizon Suite was on the
verge of being released. This was in direct response to VMware moving
to be more of a Service Provider for it’s customers. The roadmap
supports SaaS (software as a service), ThinApp, and XenApp.
http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/08/vmworld2012_vmware_horizon_su
ite_details.html

15. About OU Norman Campus
• Approximately 30,300 students and 2,950 faculty/staff
• Increasingly Mobile and Collaborative workforce
• Each college has their own IT as well as a central
IT environment that supports the enterprise solutions
• Currently 397 virtual apps using App-V and using Altiris to
image lab PCs across campus.
• 30+ classroom labs across the Norman campus
– Anywhere from 5 to 50 desktops per lab
technology for all.

16. What is Shared Services?
Goals
Agile
Business Speed
Flexible
Baked-in Security
Resilient
Enhanced DR
Standardized
Purpose-built
University-wide

17. Defined Standards for Shared Services
VMware vSphere for the Hypervisor
Redundant servers at OKC and Norman campuses
vDistributed Switch for ease of management
DellCompellent for SAN block storage
100TB usuable at each location
CommVault for Backups
OUHSCOU Tulsa were already customers
OUHSC has successful implementation of Virtual
Server Agents (VSA)

18. Virtualization Shared Services Team
15 IT Professionals from different OU Campuses
All ranging from different environments
Windows
Linux
Research
Security
Labs

19. Virtualization Shared Services Team
Ten active projects
Security Requirements (Firewall/Anti-virus)
Capacity Planning
License Pooling
Hardware Standardizing
Lifecycle Management
Most importantly
VDI/Application Virtualization

20. Why so many different VDI solutions?
Each campus has their own IT department
Each college also has their own IT departments
OUHSC/OU Tulsa have EMR solutions that are only supported with
Citrix XenApp
• OUHSC EMR solution is provided with XenApp by OU Physicians
and VMware View desktops by Pediatrics to their local and remote
clinics on Wyse ThinOS clients.
• OU Tulsa chose to use a combination of XenApp and XenDesktop.
• OUHSC campus IT chose VMware View for their virtual desktop
needs.
OU Norman has been able to curb their virtual workload with a Terminal
Server farm.

21. Use Cases of VDI
Local and remote access for IT
“Eating our own dog food”
Local and Remote Clinics
Easier manageability for departmental needs
Third Party Access (Data Center Hosting customers)
Locked down environments for those that work remotely for installs and
configurations.
Security Concerns (future case planning)
Provide a VDI that is locked down to only necessary applications
that process sensitive data.
Labs and classrooms (future planning)
Provide anytime and anywhere access for students.

22. So what does Shared Services do now?
Active in a proof of concept with VMware View 5.1 and Citrix
XenDesktop 6.5 platforms.
• Testing with a variety of clients
• Multiple user base pools
• Labs
• Staff
• Clinical

23. Proof of Concept
Our success criteria for the proof of concept
1. Community Experience
2. Simplified Administration
3. Capacity Management
4. Lifecycle Management
5. Simplified Support

24. Q&A
Ask away or feel free to email me at joey-ware@ouhsc.edu