Towards virtualized desktop environment

Virtualization is being widely used now as an emerging trend. Rapid improvements in network bandwidth, ubiquitous security hazards and high total cost of ownership of personal computers have created a growing market for desktop virtualization. Much like server virtualization, virtualizing desktops involves separating the physical location of a client device from its logical interface. But, the performance and usability of some traditional desktop frameworks do not satisfy end‐users. Other solutions, including WebOS, which needs to rebuild all daily‐used applications into Client/Server mode, cannot be easily accepted by people in a short time. We present LVD, a system that combines the virtualization technology and inexpensive personal computers (PCs) to realize a lightweight virtual desktop system. Comparing to the previous desktop systems, LVD builds an integrated novel desktop environment, which can support the backup, mobility, suspending and resuming of per‐user's working environment, and support synchronous using of incompatible applications on different platforms and achieves great saving in power consumption. We have implemented LVD in a cluster with Xen and compared its performance against widely used commercial approaches, including Microsoft RDP, Citrix MetaFrameXP and Sun Ray. Experimental results demonstrate that LVD is effective in performing the functions while imposing little overhead. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.