Virtualization vs. VDI: Is There A Difference?

Almost every business is using virtualization in some manner – 92% to be exact.
In the pre-pandemic world, the entire functioning was in-house. As a result, there was never an immediate need to adopt virtualization, improve resource utilization, and ensure remote working. However, situations changed, and we are now operating remotely more often than ever. This has only increased the adoption of virtualization and VDI managed services
However, there's still a hint of confusion between virtualization and how it is related to VDI managed services. In this article, we have discussed all the associated terms in detail.

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization technology is not new in the market. It first surfaced in the 1960s but didn't become popular till the 2000s. Even the supporting technology of virtualization, such as hypervisors, was developed around the same time to offer better resource utilization and seamless access.
What exactly is virtualization?
Virtualization is the process of creating virtual instances of the same application, Desktop, or server in one machine. This means from the same physical resources; we are using many virtual machines. This helps us use any machine to its full capacity.
Let’s understand this with an important example:
Say your business is currently using the physical network, and it is divided into 3 servers, with each one having a dedicated purpose. The first server is used for mail, the second for web, and the last for internal applications. On every server, the running potential used is just 25%. However, each of these operations is imperative for the business, so we can’t host everything together.
Traditionally, hosting servers in this manner offered efficiency and reliability to the business. This is because it was difficult to offer more than one brain to one server.
However, Desktop virtualization is the technique that helps divide one server and use it for multiple activities. For example, we can also host internal applications, using the server for almost 50%. While it is the same hardware, we are virtualizing and separating two tasks inside the hardware. We can even say that we are creating two virtual servers inside one hardware server for task isolation.
This process helps us use our server to its full potential.

What is VDI?

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or VDI managed services are a type of virtualization only. Here we are specially virtualizing desktop infrastructure.
How does this work?
A business using a VDI environment needs to set up a server hosting desktop resources. Now, we use the hypervisor on this server to create multiple virtual machines or virtual desktops with varying or similar virtual resources. So, from a large server, we are cutting out multiple virtual desktops.
Various technologies contribute to this process, such as a hypervisor, load balancer, network manager, etc.

In VDI, we can use two types:

• Persistent VDI networks that are similar to your office desktops. Your employees can personalize these units and use them as their own. This means that when your employees would make changes, such as changing background and closing the virtual computer, they won't lose these changes. These are for dedicated computing.
• Non-persistent VDI networks are not like your office PCs. These are computing units that reset every time you log out. So, once the user has used the unit and logged it out, it will reset. In this network, there’s no fixed virtual desktop for every user. It is randomly assigned.

Persistent desktops are more dedicated, and employees with personalized environment needs can utilize these units. Non-persistent environments are for light computing, such as data entry work.

What’s The Difference?

If you look at it, then both virtualization and VDI are intertwined very closely. Without virtualization, VDI can’t exist. This is because VDI uses the concept of virtualization. It is a specific field inside virtualization.
So, your VDI works exactly in the manner virtualization does. We add some additional hardware and tech, such as a load balancer, to improve the working of virtual desktops.

What is DaaS?

There's another category of virtualization, which is VDI managed services. These are Desktop as a Service unit offered by a cloud provider on-demand as managed services.

What is Desktop as a Service?

VDI managed service or DaaS is VDI hosted on the cloud. The entire structure of VDI that we discussed is hosted on the server of the cloud provider. From this remote server, your employees receive remote access to their desktops. Therefore, at the backend of DaaS is VDI only. We are just using a network to offer these VDI managed services on the cloud.
So, if we have to compare DaaS vs. VDI, there's a difference in how we host these two solutions. VDI is locally hosted, and DaaS is on the cloud.

Benefits of VDI Managed Services

VDI managed services have a range of benefits:

• You can eliminate the cost of managing a server internally. This eliminates the cost of expensive hardware, maintenance, regular updates, security, and IT team management.
• VDI managed services are secure and hassle-free. Your employees are just accessing a virtual copy of the Desktop, which doesn't save or use data from the end device. This keeps your data secure even in case of a cyberattack on the end device.
• When you use VDI managed services, you don’t need to worry about backup and disaster recovery. The cloud provider regularly backs up your data to redundant servers. In case of a disaster or physical damage to one of the servers, you can easily restore your data from another server.
• With multiple huge servers, VDI managed services also offer the feasibility of scalability. You can scale and descale on demand.

Conclusion

While virtualization, VDI, and DaaS are closely connected, we can clearly distinguish DaaS vs. VDI. These are the same things, but DaaS is hosted on the cloud. It offers you a feasible working environment affordably and flexibly. If you are thinking about using virtualization to improve remote working, evaluate your requirements and find the right VDI managed services provider for high operational efficiency.