VDI Vs Cloud VDI: Differences, Benefits, & Use Cases

The primary difference between VDI and cloud VDI services is that one is hosted on the cloud. At the backend of cloud VDI, you will find the same VDI infrastructure that we implemented on-premise. 

We have used Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for decades. It centralizes the entire workload of the office, virtualizing our desktops, operating systems, software, storage, and other resources. 

Once you have centrally hosted your VDI service, you can use it from a central location. The IT team can manage access, licensing, software, deployments, upgrade, patching, etc., on the cloud. Your team has complete control over configuration, hypervisor, virtual machine, etc. This means you are responsible for failover, security, and other issues. 

Cloud VDI solutions are VDI on the cloud. This is essentially not your problem. The VDI service provider offers cloud VDI as a managed service. Therefore, while the back-end infrastructure is the same, your team is not responsible for managing it. 

You still get control over your configurations, but the VDI service provider sets up cloud VDI. They look after OS patching, hardware, security, upgrades, maintenance, load balancer, and other aspects.

The benefit of the cloud VDI is scalability, mobility, agility, and security. In VDI, if you need remote access, you need to set up a VPN on every remote desktop. Initially, employees can access VDI desktops in the range of the server only. On the cloud, you get remote access by default. There's no additional infrastructural requirement to set up the remote workplace. 

From security to desktop sessions, there are many minutes but important differences in both. Let’s map some key differences in VDI and cloud VDI solutions. 

VDI service offers advanced security, such as Intrusion Detection and Prevention, encryption, OS patching, upgrading, access control, firewalls, etc. However, your IT team needs to set up the security of the VDI service.

In cloud VDI solutions, your VDI service provider takes care of these things. It includes:

Your VDI service provider creates virtual copies of your desktops offered over a network. So, when your employees open cloud VDI solutions on end devices, they are only opening a virtual copy. This desktop image is not storing data and apps on the end device. Hence, it is isolated from the personal desktop environment. Unless your employees decide to take a screenshot, your data is safe. Your IT team can even remotely refresh virtual desktops to remove the infection.

On-premise VDI service offers excellent disaster recovery through data backups, but you need to create that infrastructure. It would help if you had a remote backup server to recover your data in case of a disaster.

On the cloud, the VDI service provider already has many remote servers along with backup units. The provider automatically backs up your data to multiple remote servers. It allows easy recovery at the time of a disaster. 

Your team manages the On-prem VDI service, and you are responsible for the hardware setup. As a result, VDI is cost-intensive. 

However, cloud VDI solutions are not.

Whenever you scale your resources, storage, RAM, performance, etc., this increase takes up some physical form somewhere. With on-prem VDI service, this scaling adds to your hardware, and you need to spend money on it. Once added, you can't roll back the expenses and minimize costs the next month or after a few days.

However, cloud VDI solutions add this physical space to the cloud server. The VDI service provider has many servers with huge capacities. When you scale, you get more resources at a nominal charge. When you don’t need these resources, you can descale as well and optimize your budget. 

The on-prem VDI service runs your desktops through one host OS. However, cloud VDI solutions are not the same in this case. They offer various virtual sessions as virtual machines. This means you are able better to isolate your virtual desktops in the cloud environment. 

The on-premise VDI service is single-tenant and operates for one single organization. You have complete control over your resources and virtual machines.

The cloud VDI solutions offer multi-tenant architecture with various organizations working with the same cloud provider. However, you still get complete control over the configurations and virtual machines of your organization. 

VDI service is hectic, and it needs a considerable amount of time for setup and implementation. But, cloud solutions are more agile, they can be deployed quickly, and you can make configuration changes in hours rather than days. 

Choosing between VDI and cloud VDI completely depends on your organization. If you require full control of your VDI service and have the budget and bandwidth to manage it, you can select the VDI service. However, if you need a hassle-free, more agile, and flexible solution, cloud VDI solutions help you eliminate the challenges of on-prem infrastructure. You only need to pay attention to finding the right VDI service provider. 

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