What is the “correct way to open” the university cloud desktop?

Colleges and universities have always been an important place for the first application of cutting-edge technologies, and cloud desktop technology is no exception. Since the 1990s, colleges and universities have been constantly trying and applying solutions similar to cloud desktops, with the original intention of solving the problem of large-scale equipment management and maintenance. From the initial diskless workstation to the protection card + simultaneous interpretation solution, and then to the later desktop virtualization (VDI, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). However, these technologies have never been widely used in colleges and universities. The reason is that they are too far away from the business scenarios of college education and teaching, and cannot meet the differentiated requirements of various business scenarios.

Today we will take a look at the correct way to open the cloud desktop in university application scenarios:

There are many scenarios where colleges and universities can apply cloud desktops, such as office scenarios, multimedia classrooms, libraries/electronic reading rooms, marking papers, language labs, general teaching computer rooms, etc. Moreover, different scenarios have their own characteristics, and have different emphases and requirements on performance, network, concurrency, latency, management and maintenance. Therefore, the construction of cloud desktops in colleges and universities needs to consider the characteristics of multiple scenarios and achieve " unified resources and scenario-based features ". Specifically, it can be seen from the following aspects:

Simplifying management and improving operation and maintenance efficiency are the "stepping stones"

The original intention of many schools to choose cloud desktops is to improve management and maintenance efficiency, mainly because the school has many desktop devices, and traditional computers have brought relatively large troubles in deployment, hardware maintenance, system and software updates and upgrades, system restoration, virus problems, etc., and urgently need a good solution to solve these problems.

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Management and maintenance problems caused by traditional computers

The architecture of the cloud desktop solution itself determines that it can perfectly solve the management and maintenance problems of the above traditional computers. The mainstream cloud desktop solutions on the market can basically do this. The differences mainly lie in the business-related details and user experience.

Centralized configuration management

"Scenario-based" cloud desktop is the most suitable

To use cloud desktops well in colleges and universities, solving management and maintenance issues is only the first step. What is more important is to adapt to various scenarios and meet the requirements of various scenarios. Common typical application scenarios are as follows:

• Accounting scenarios: high concurrency, large data volume reading and writing

Some of the courses undertaken by university computer rooms require high-concurrency writing of large amounts of data, such as database and financial software teaching scenarios. Among them, accounting software account creation has relatively high requirements for cloud desktop IO read and write performance. It takes about 2 minutes and 40 seconds for a traditional computer to complete the construction of an account set of about 1.3GB. The traditional cloud desktop solution is limited by the IO bottleneck of the cloud host. It takes about 4 minutes and 50 seconds to build an account set of about 1.3GB for each desktop concurrently, which cannot support teaching use. Such scenarios require cloud desktop solutions to carry out IO speed-up design, from hardware configuration to virtualization software optimization scheduling algorithm, to improve IO performance, and after optimization and adaptation, it can achieve the same effect as traditional computers.

• Android development scenario: multi-layer virtualization

Some courses in colleges and universities require the use of virtualized environments, such as Android development courses, configuration simulators in network experiments, operating system teaching, etc. A virtualized environment is also required in the cloud desktop. The cloud desktop needs to add nested virtualization features for such scenarios, and be able to restart a third-party virtualization platform in the virtual desktop, deploy an operating system or run a virtualized environment on it to support teaching applications.

• Voice teaching scenario: high requirements for low latency

The characteristics of voice teaching determine that it has very high requirements for latency. However, in traditional VDI cloud desktops, since the teaching environment and voice software are both running on the server side, and the sound is collected on the terminal side, the sound data needs to be transferred and processed on the server side through the network and then transmitted back to the terminal side, which affects the voice teaching experience.

In the voice teaching scenario, an expansion solution is needed to complete the fusion computing method of cloud computing and local computing. For voice teaching services, data processing can be performed locally on the terminal to reduce the latency problem caused by network transmission, and better support voice teaching services. This method can not only solve the voice teaching problem, but also better support similar teaching services that rely on local processing, such as some examination services that require local operation and storage.

• Multimedia scenarios: business security is key

The characteristics of multimedia classrooms are that they are numerous, scattered, and have irregular users and many peripherals. At the beginning of each semester, a large amount of manpower is required to determine the environment and troubleshoot problems in each classroom, which requires high stability and reliability of the environment and prevents teaching accidents.

Based on the characteristics of multimedia classrooms, the Intelligent Desktop Virtualization (IDV) architecture is more suitable in terms of solutions and technology:

• Centralized management and mirror configuration: All multimedia classrooms in the school are managed uniformly, mirror configuration and distribution
• Terminal local computing, available offline: can still be used when the network is disconnected and offline, no switching, teaching business is not interrupted
• Peripheral compatibility: Peripherals adopt transparent transmission, which has better compatibility than traditional VDI solutions.

There are many application scenarios in colleges and universities, and different technologies and solutions also have their own characteristics and adapted scenarios. In the process of cloud desktop construction, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of various scenarios and select corresponding solutions according to different characteristics and requirements. For example, in the scenarios of portable office data and general cultural basic teaching, VDI technology solutions can be used to experience simplified management, flexible resource scheduling, and portable data; while in multimedia classroom scenarios, IDV architecture solutions can be used to ensure stability and reliability while solving management and maintenance problems. The "VDI+IDV dual-engine" model is a good choice for current cloud desktop construction.

Unified planning, in-depth understanding of university education and teaching scenarios, and adaptation solutions according to scenarios, this is the correct way to open the higher education cloud desktop.