This paper reports on a configuration for Virtual Desktops (VDs) which reduces the total hardware cost to approximately $32.41 per desktop, including the storage infrastructure. This number is achieved using a configuration with dual node, cross-mirrored, High Availability storage. In comparison to previously published reports, which tout the storage infrastructure costs alone of VDI at from fifty to several hundred dollars per virtual machine, the significance of the data becomes self evident. In this report, storage hardware costs become inconsequential.

Even more significantly, the reported configuration achieves this result with 220 VDs running on a simple pair of low cost servers. The primary innovation consists in co-locating the redundant storage virtualization systems onto the same hardware platforms as the VDs, thus eliminating the need to amortize high-cost, stand alone storage controllers against many Virtual Server platforms and thousands of VDs. Previous publications have reported on configurations which use thousands of VDs to defray the cost of these controllers. Reading between the lines, it becomes immediately apparent that per VD hardware costs rise very sharply as such configurations are scaled downward. Yet, it is precisely these smaller VDI configurations which are the more important from most practical standpoints....