Virtualization - VDI vs DaaS

It has been sometime now hearing words like VDI and DAAS. VDI stands for virtual desktop infrastructure, you host virtual desktops in your Data Centre and provide them to your users over remote access using Microsoft RDP, Citrix XenDesktop, VMware horizon view etc. With the cloud technologies evolving and customer moving their Server infrastructure to cloud rather than having them hosted in their Data Centre.

You would definitely want to move your VDIs in a similar fashion to Cloud using a cloud services provider to ease management, scalability and flexibility. Virtual desktops hosted on a cloud is often referred as "Desktop as a Service" or "DAAS".

There is not a big difference in these two terminologies. Both shared a more or less similar benefits of providing virtual desktops in an efficient, less complex, scalable and robust virtual infrastructure that is a key to virtualization platform.

However, there are some limitations of using DAAS platform such as security, licensing and data control. Below is the list of Pros and cons of choosing DAAS for delivering virtual desktops.

PROS:

• Keep VDI technology out of IT hands - Organization IT team need not to worry about the VDI technology being used. Further, its Cloud services provider responsibility to take care of resources required for VDI; be it memory, CPU or storage disks. Even, you don't have to worry about the network issues.
• You save cost on VDI Infrastructure and if your organization relies on enterprise web apps, DAAS is the solution for you.
• Ease complexity and you need not to hire VDI skilled staff for troubleshooting issues. They just need to take care of Operating System and applications.
•  Easy to build, patch, backup and restore the VDIs on Cloud. Service provider can spin the desktops for your users in just 5-10 mins.

CONS:

• Regardless of the benefits we explained, still there are some worry areas that keep organization away from going with DAAS. IT admins won't have similar control over the data which seems to be a major concern for some organisations.
• Other major pain is managing licensing - Many cloud providers ask organisations to bring their own windows licenses for Windows Desktop Operating System. Maybe, as Microsoft has not yet offered DAAS providers an Enterprise licensing agreement where they can offer bundled license benefits to its customers.
• DAAS provider SLA agreements for Network outages. Before signing a contract, make sure that your DAAS provider is ready to sign SLA agreement in case of network connectivity outages.
• Another area of concern is that you cannot personalize desktops to a level that you can do it with your on-premises VDI solution that puts DAAS off for some customers.

Please see my new post as some of the above mentioned information is now outdated and may not be relevant:

https://gurpinders.blogspot.com/2023/05/virtualization-vdi-vs-daas-2023-whats.html