Features
QVD provides a wide range of features that you would expect from any commercial VDI.
High Density VDI Solution
QVD is a container virtualization platform that is able to run multiple virtual machines from one or more operating system images on a single network node. QVD can be setup to use Linux Containers (LXC), an exciting new technology that offers unparalleled virtual machine density, or can offer full scale virtualization using KVM.
By re-using a base operating system image loaded into multiple virtual machines, you can standardize the environment that you provide to your work force, easing management and reducing costs significantly. QVD is designed to run multiple desktops per server node to service many users.
Load balancing and High Availability
In an enterprise environment where QVD is expected to support hundreds of users, it is unfeasible to run each desktop on the same server node. QVD is designed to work with clusters of server nodes, each running the virtual machines to service different sets of users. QVD makes use of its own built-in Layer-7 Routing daemon to broker connections and to ensure that a client that connects to any one server node is directed to the correct node in order to access the appropriate desktop. If a virtual machine for a particular user is not running on an available server node, QVD intelligently determines which server node has the most resources available to start the virtual machine. This helps to ensure High-Availability of all desktop environments, even in the case that a server node fails.
Auto Provisioning
By simply setting a username and password within the QVD environment, and assigning the user with a chosen desktop image, it is possible to provision a desktop within seconds. QVD also integrates with external authentication systems and supports authentication using LDAP. This means that as soon as you have added a user into the QVD platform, you can either make use of the internal authentication mechanism, or integrate with an external provider such as Active Directory. Furthermore, the command-line tools and scriptability built into the product, makes it very easy to batch script an auto-provisioning script so that when a user is added to your environment, a desktop is automatically generated.
Client Platform Support
QVD currently provides client software for Linux and Windows environments. There is also an Android client in development. QVD is designed to be accessible to users from any base operating system. Allowing users the flexibility to access their desktops from any system that they have on hand. By simply running the client, the user can gain access to a desktop within seconds. Due to the client-server model behind QVD, it is possible to see the potential for instant disaster recovery. So that if a user’s desktop system suffers severe hardware failure, any other system can be put in place so that the user has access to all of his or her data and applications instantly.
Web-based Administration Tools
While QVD provides command-line based administration tools to allow flexibility through scripting batch operations, and to allow administrators to work over SSH and other remote access facilities; QVD also provides a fully featured Web-based Administration Environment providing a complete GUI to manage and monitor the entire infrastructure.
The QVD Web Administration Tool makes managing and monitoring your QVD infrastructure simple. This Web-based GUI provides a point-and-click facility for your systems administrators to keep control over users, virtual machines and operating system images. The Web Administration Tool even comes with a java applet that directly connects to the serial port console of any running virtual machine, so that an Administrator can quickly connect to a user’s environment and offer support.
Check out our demonstration video of the QVD Web Administration Tool, to see how easy it is to manage a QVD deployment:
Security
QVD provides a high-level of security within the enterprise environment. By running the operating system image in read-only mode within a virtual machine, any system level compromise to a virtual machine will only affect the desktop for as long as the virtual machine is running. This means that if a desktop is compromised, simply restarting the virtual machine is sufficient to reset it to its original state. By jailing users within their own virtual machines, user level behavior cannot affect other users, ensuring the smooth running of all desktops. Finally, client connections are all encrypted using standard SSL/TLS certificates so that all communications between a workstation and the actual desktop environment are properly secured.
Remote Access
QVD makes use of a modified version of the NX-protocol, which can massively reduce bandwidth overhead when serving an X-Windows environment over the Internet. QVD provides different compression algorithms depending on the user’s selected bandwidth setting, allowing users to connect from extremely low-bandwidth environments. With the appropriate network configuration, users can access their desktops remotely and securely whether based at home or on the road. Instead of setting up a VPN and then serving files across the Internet, a user making use of QVD will be able to access his or her entire desktop as if working locally. That means having access to all of his or her applications, internal network shares and personal data.