From definition to delivery: a 4,000-desktop VDI platform
Helping define a utility's virtual desktop program on the enterprise architecture team, then joining the implementation partner to co-architect and deliver it.
- Where
- Southern California Edison (via Kforce, then Dyntek)
- When
- 2009-2017
- My role
- Enterprise architecture team; then co-architect for the implementation
Defining it
As a contractor on Southern California Edison’s enterprise architecture team (through Kforce), one of my responsibilities was helping define a virtual desktop solution for about 4,000 desktops, built on Citrix XenDesktop and VMware vSphere. I also validated the XenApp, XenDesktop and Access Gateway architecture before it was rolled out to the enterprise.
Delivering it
When that contract ended, I joined Dyntek, the partner chosen to implement the program. So I got to follow it from the whiteboard into production, which doesn’t happen very often (usually the architect is long gone by the time anyone plugs in a server). With another architect, I co-architected a highly available platform across two data centers:
- Sized for 4,000 desktops, starting with a 2,000-user rollout
- Capacity planning and sizing, including choosing the Cisco UCS server models, and NVIDIA GPU hosts for a power-line application that needed GPUs
- vSphere and NetApp underneath, with App-V application packages on NetApp shares, available across both data centers
- Coordinating the implementation with SCE’s infrastructure teams and a team of Citrix engineers
All of this happened while SCE was outsourcing its entire IT organization, so the scope moved more than once (and so did the people we were coordinating with). Getting it delivered through that took as much coordination as engineering.