Updated: July 15, 2020 (August 25, 2014)
SidebarWhat's a Server-Based Desktop?
A desktop can be thought of as an OS (such as Windows 7), applications (such as Microsoft Office), and the data a user needs to perform her job. When the desktop runs on a user’s local device, it is a local desktop. However, if the desktop runs on servers in a data center, and the user connects to the desktop across a network, it is a server-based desktop.
There are two generic architectures for creating server-based desktops:
- Session-based desktops (commonly known as Terminal Services), where each desktop runs as an isolated session, using the OS of the server
- Virtual machine (VM)-based desktops, where each desktop has its own OS and runs in a VM hosted on the server.
The term “virtual desktop infrastructure” (VDI) is sometimes used for both server-based desktop architectures and sometimes only for VM-based desktops. This reports uses VDI only for VM-based desktops, which is consistent with the way the term “VDI” is used in Microsoft licensing rules.
There are two types of VM-based desktops:
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