Cloud Virtual Desktop Environment Server and Storage Management

Cloud based virtual desktop environments offer a great alternative to their on-premise counterparts.  Some of their main advantages are almost unlimited scalability, no upfront hardware purchase costs, and only paying for current consumption.  Another big advantage is having an isolated environment from campus networks for specific types of research or compliance work.

Both supported cloud providers have a couple options for virtual desktop environments and pricing varies by option/number of users.  From pre-built images with fast startup times to the ability to upload your own custom images and connect it to an existing cloud VPC.  They also offer 'pooled' machines where data permanence is less important or machines where each user is tied to a specific desktop and data is permanent.

Due to the nature of these types of environments we will likely need to have a meeting to discuss requirements and how users will be accessing the machines.  To pay for the ongoing cost of the environment a Cost Center Object will be tied to the machines.  Submit a ticket to the ITS Help Desk to arrange a meeting and get the process started.