All processing takes place on the server, not the user device.

With Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), multiple users are hosted on a single virtual machine, and share the same Windows Server OS and applications. VDI has been around for over two decades, and legacy offerings include Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon View. With non-persistent desktops, users are randomly assigned a VM from an existing pool. Persistent desktops can be personalized for individual users with specific apps and user profile data, and if given administrative rights, users can download their own applications. VDI VMs can be persistent or non-persistent. After all, if users can’t access their virtual desktops quickly, it doesn’t matter how much less it costs to implement and manage.Īt a very high level, with VDI, users access a complete desktop operating system from a dedicated VM hosted on a physical server.

Further, there are legitimate concerns about the cost and complexity of virtual desktop infrastructure environments – not to mention the actual performance over the network. The two approaches have many differences. Wherever you are on your end user computing journey, the VDI vs RDS question is bound to come up-and for good reason.

Remote desktop server vdi