MokaFive does VDI for Windows 7 MokaFive is offering an alternative to the pain and expense of migrating corporate desktops to Windows 7 with with release 3.0 of its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) MokaFive Suite. Companies with aging PCs have to do something to bring their machines up to date, and MokaFive, a relative newcomer to the VDI space, is …
... and that something is to put VM on top of existing OS and then Windows 7 in that VM?
For this to work while providing user experience (other than "miserable"), said "aging" PCs would better have plenty of memory and fast CPU. Preferably with support for nested memory tables. Oh, but this leaves out any PC which is actually old.
Cloud computing would be if the instance was running on a VM at a remote server. This is running a VM locally in order to... make an already slow machine slower.... I suppose you could then upgrade the machine to a resonable spec, but at that point why not just pick hardware which is supported on the OS you like?
Seriously, this is a really awful idea. have they managed to actually sell this crap to anyone?
Firstly the article implies that MokaFive Player runs on Linux or Windows hosts. This is incorrect. The "player" runs on Mac OS and Windows hosts and enables Linux or Windows guests to run on these hosts.
Secondly the article does not provide enough detail around the security features of this solution to VDI. The "player" and LivePC (MokaFive's name for the vitual image) can both be encrypted, effectively providing full volume encryption to the virtual machine. The image can be run from either a local installtion on the host or from a USB key/drive which means that as we move more towards a bring your own PC (BYOPC) world of employee/contractor owned machines, corporations can still provide a secure, managed desktop environment to these users. This means that companies no longer need to provide a corporate machine to contractors and other 3rd parties and don't have to worry about the security of those self-provisioned devices. The LivePC provides the secure corporate environment. Additional security features include the ability to prevent copying data between the guest and host (including preventing cut-and-paste) and the ability to disable (revoke) access or kill the remote image. With v3.x the inclusion of AVG allows the "player" to scan the host before it loads the image.
The administration console provide a great deal of control over the image and the player. You can even control the minimum specification of the host to ensure optimum performance by the user.
I do not work for MokaFive nor do I have a commercial interest in the solution. I have been using it in test and pilot environments since v1 (beta) and believe it provides a better way of delivering a secure, managed desktop environment than standard hosted VDI and will open up the ability for users to "bring there own PC" in the future.
I work on the MokaFive PR team. VDI seems to have become a bit of a catch-all acronym for desktop virtualization solutions. Just wanted to point out that this is a client-side solution that can be deployed very quickly and offers significant cost saving from an IT infrastructure perspective, especially compared to traditional hosted VDI offerings. We refer to the centrally managed and locally executed approach as virtual desktop management to avoid any confusion with the "typical" VDI approach.
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