Arthur Cole spoke with Kevin Brown, former CEO, Kidaro.

Cole: Virtualization and disaster recovery seem like a natural fit for server and storage infrastructures. How does it benefit the desktop users?
Brown: What happens in an emergency scenario if your data center recovers smoothly, but your employees lose access to their PCs? You’re still out of business. Many enterprises have implemented disaster recovery plans for their mission-critical storage and server systems, but many of these programs fail to plan for rapid recovery of end user desktops. Desktop virtualization can provide a cost-effective disaster recovery plan for end-user PCs. The virtual images are hardware-independent, so they can run on a wide range of hardware configurations. Instead of stockpiling hardware in multiple locations and watching it depreciate, corporations can buy replacement machines just in time at local retailers.

This is also a service opportunity for resellers and hardware vendors. Images can be distributed before or after a disaster, using simple and inexpensive methods such as DVD and efficient Web delivery. DR images can run locally even if the network is down, and receive any critical updates over the wire when connectivity is available. Client-hosted solutions can be fielded without the need for building server farms – only the management servers are centrally located.

Cole: Kidaro's Desktop DR solution features virtual desktops distributed by DVD, USB drive or over the Web, but this has to be coordinated with a central DR program, right?
Brown: The Kidaro — now Microsoft — solution runs locally on the endpoint machine, with centralized management servers. The solution is optimized for partially connected scenarios, like laptops, which could come in handy in disasters where the telecommunications infrastructure is under strain. For customers that prefer a centralized virtual desktop service delivered over the network, Microsoft has multiple solutions for that approach as well.

Cole: But how will new desktops for employees help business continuity if centralized server and storage resources are still down?
Brown: It’s true that users need both a working desktop and functioning servers/storage to access centralized applications. The practical observation is that many organizations already have failover capabilities for the data center systems, but end users only have one corporate PC. Providing a DR solution to quickly provision virtual desktops, with all of the required applications and VPN credentials, insures that workers can actually access the data center systems when they recover. Depending on the business requirements, it’s also possible to pre-load emergency materials, plans and applications onto the virtual image for offline access at a future date.