Why you should be looking at Windows 7 XP Mode

So, the latest buzz is desktop virtualisation. And it's all about how to run your thousands of desktops on a few virtualised servers located in your data centre and how much you are going to save. Really?  Are you?

Is replacing your cheap desktop disk by a hugely expensive SAN datastore really going to save anything?  Then, of course, there's the performance hit your poor datastore is going to suffer when hit by thousands of desktops rather than the few servers it was designed for! Which probably means that it had better be divorced from the SAN datastore you use for your servers, so now you need two SANs. Is it still going to save you?

Maybe desktop virtualisation needs to be looked at from a totally different point of view.

Maybe retaining your desktops and running Win7 is a better way to go? Maybe we can make a really good business case out of using the XP virtual machine which is built in to Win7 pro.

The big problem with the thousands of desktops is that of management. In particular it's a real pain maintaining those specialised apps needed by the business. It's of no consequence bemoaning the fact that they are badly designed and written; nobody is interested in your carping. What you've have is what you live with.

But wait, if you only needed maintaining a few desktops would life still be so bad? You can easily cope with the weird requirements needed by the apps if you only have maintain a single desktop. And with Win7 that wish is easily implemented!

The answer is to build an XP virtual machine which answers the business's requirements and then to run a copy of that virtual machine at each desktop. By so doing, you need only maintain a single desktop no matter how many times it is used. 

And it just gets better!  Because your users are living in a virtual machine rather than a native one, the implementation is completely divorced from hardware dependence.  The solution is a virtual machine, which means that all users run on the same hardware platform; irrespective of chipset, make and model of workstation upon which is actually deployed - you have achieved total hardware independence! It's even exactly the same platform for your developers and your QA site.  No more surprises!  NOW we are talking REAL savings!!!

And then there's even more! By starting with the same basic virtual machine, you can build the special variations which are required by specific departments.  OK, so now there's more than one version to maintain, but it definitely isn't the thousands you had before moving to this paradigm.

And roll out is simply a matter of copying a few files.  No installation.  Rollback?  Yup, just copy the old files back or rename a folder or two.  Like the man says:  'Easy peasy'.  And inexpensive!

Now isn't this a better way to go?