Performance evaluation of virtual desktop operating systems in virtual desktop infrastructure
Pedram Hossein Nakhai, Nor Badrul Anuar · 2017
Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is a desktop virtualization service hosted in the public or private cloud. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the key technology that enables virtual desktops. The virtual desktop that runs in a data center is delivered to the end user's device by using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Currently, resource allocation in the VDI has become one of the key issues and big challenges for the organizations which want to migrate from traditional desktop to the virtual desktop. The main objective of resource allocation in the VDI is to provide resources to the virtual desktop without over-provisioning while reducing resource usage and response time. We believe resource usage and response time can be reduced without over-provisioning by selecting an Operating System (OS) in the VDI which has fewer RAM utilization, CPU response time and application response time before calculating virtual desktop density and deploying VDI in a large scale. The aim of this paper is to evaluate OS 1: Windows 8.1 Enterprise 32-bit and OS 2: Windows 10 Enterprise 32-bit as dedicated virtual desktops in the virtual desktop infrastructure by using different workloads to find which operating system has fewer resource usage and response time in terms of memory usage, CPU and application response time. We used experimental design and quantitative approach. The results indicate that OS 1 has the lowest memory usage and CPU response time than OS 2. In addition, results of application response time comparison between OS 1 and OS 2, show that OS 1 has the lower application response time than OS 2 as well.