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So, what is VDI? Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, is a technology that hosts desktop operating systems on a central server and delivers them to end users over a network. Instead of running Windows® or Linux locally on a laptop’s hardware, the operating system runs as a virtual machine in a data center. The user’s device just displays the screen and sends back keyboard and mouse input.
This setup separates the desktop environment from the physical machine sitting on someone’s desk. The desktop itself becomes a resource that lives somewhere else, and any device with a screen and a network connection can reach it.
VDI has been around since the mid-2000s, originally built around products like Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon. It started in large enterprises with big IT teams and big budgets. Today it shows up everywhere from hospitals to call centers to small accounting firms, though the way it gets deployed has changed a lot.
Now that we’ve explained “What is VDI" we can analyze how it works.
VDI environment has a few core pieces, and understanding them makes the rest of this page much easier to follow.
The hypervisor sits at the bottom of the stack. This is software that runs on physical servers and creates virtual machines, splitting one physical server into many isolated desktop environments. VMware ESXi and Microsoft® Hyper-V® are common examples.
The connection broker decides which virtual desktop a user gets connected to when they log in. If a company has 200 employees and 200 virtual desktops, the broker matches the right person to the right machine (or pulls one from a shared pool, depending on the setup).
The display protocol carries the actual screen, keyboard, and mouse data between the server and the user’s device. Citrix uses HDX. VMware uses Blast Extreme. Microsoft uses RDP. These protocols are built to stay usable even on so-so internet connections, compressing video and audio so a desktop running in a data center 500 miles away still feels responsive.
What this means: when someone says “I logged into my VDI," they’re really logging into a connection broker, which hands them off to a virtual machine running on a hypervisor, which they then control through a display protocol streamed to their screen.
It’s worth separating VDI from a related but different technology: session-based virtualization (sometimes called RDSH, for Remote Desktop Session Host).
In session-based virtualization, many users share a single Windows Server® operating system. Each person gets their own session, but everyone is running on top of the same OS instance. This is lighter on hardware but less isolated. One user’s runaway process can affect everyone else on that server.
In true VDI, each user gets their own dedicated virtual machine with its own OS instance. This costs more in compute resources but gives each user a fully isolated, customizable environment. Some platforms blend both approaches depending on the use case.
This distinction trips up a lot of people new to VDI, and it’s one of the first decisions any deployment has to make.
Persistent VDI assigns each user their own dedicated virtual desktop image. Their files, installed applications, desktop wallpaper, and settings stay exactly as they left them, session after session. It feels like a personal computer because, functionally, it is one. The tradeoff is storage. Every user’s image takes up its own disk space, and that adds up fast across hundreds of users.
Non-persistent VDI uses a pool of identical desktop images built from a single master template. When a user logs off, that desktop resets back to its clean starting state. The next person who logs in (or the same person, next time) gets a fresh copy. This is far more storage-efficient and easier to patch, since updating the master image updates every desktop in the pool at once.
What this means: choose persistent VDI for power users, developers, or anyone who needs a customized environment. Choose non-persistent for task workers, call center staff, or training labs where everyone does the same job on the same tools.
The reasons companies adopt VDI usually fall into a handful of recurring categories, and most organizations care about more than one.
Security and data control top the list for regulated industries. When the desktop and all its data live in a data center rather than on a laptop, a lost or stolen device doesn’t mean a data breach. The screen the thief sees is just a display. Nothing sensitive was ever stored locally.
Centralized management matters for IT teams supporting remote or distributed staff. Patching, software updates, and security configurations happen once, centrally, instead of across hundreds of individual machines scattered across home offices.
Hardware flexibility lets companies extend the life of older devices. A five-year-old laptop that struggles to run modern applications locally can run those same applications fine when it’s just streaming a remote desktop. Some organizations even use low-cost thin clients instead of full computers.
Consistent environments help with compliance and onboarding. Every user gets the same configuration, the same approved software, and the same security baseline, which simplifies audits considerably.
A 2023 industry survey found that security and compliance requirements were the top driver of VDI adoption among mid-size and enterprise organizations, ahead of remote work flexibility.
VDI isn’t free, and it isn’t simple. Anyone evaluating it should go in with eyes open about three things in particular.
Cost. Traditional on-premises VDI requires servers, storage arrays, networking gear, software licenses for the hypervisor and connection broker, and the staff to run all of it. Initial deployments often run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before a single user logs in.
Complexity. Sizing a VDI environment correctly is genuinely hard. Underprovision compute or storage and users complain about lag. Overprovision and a company is paying for capacity that sits idle most of the time. Getting this balance right typically requires specialized expertise, often from consultants who do nothing else.
Maintenance. Hypervisors need patching. Connection brokers need updates. Master images need regular rebuilding. None of this goes away once the system is running. It becomes a permanent line item on the IT team’s workload.
This is where the picture has shifted a lot over the past several years. Instead of buying and running the hardware themselves, companies can rent VDI capacity from a provider who already owns and maintains the infrastructure.
This model is usually called Desktop as a Service, or DaaS. The underlying technology is still virtual desktop infrastructure. What changes is who owns and operates the servers, storage, and hypervisors underneath it.
For a small accounting firm or a 30-person engineering team, this difference is enormous. The same security benefits and centralized management that used to require an enterprise IT budget become available on a flat monthly subscription. No server room. No hypervisor licensing. No capacity planning spreadsheet.
Because these terms get used loosely, here’s a clean breakdown of how they actually relate to each other.
We’ve built our own platform around this second model. Deploying cloud VDI through us takes under 20 minutes from signup to a working desktop, and there’s no certification or specialized training required to manage it.
Curious what a modern cloud desktop deployment actually looks like in practice?
See how our cloud desktops work
A few scenarios come up again and again when companies explain why they moved to VDI.
Remote and hybrid teams. Employees working from home need access to the same applications and files as their in-office counterparts, without IT shipping company laptops to every address.
Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. Letting staff use personal laptops or tablets becomes far less risky when the actual work happens inside a managed virtual desktop rather than on the device itself. Our BYOD and remote workapproach is built around exactly this.
Seasonal and contract workers. A tax firm that needs 15 extra desktops for three months during filing season can spin them up and shut them down without buying hardware that sits unused the rest of the year.
Specialized software access. Industries running expensive, license-restricted software (CAD, accounting platforms, EHR systems) often centralize that software on virtual desktops rather than installing it on every individual machine. AutoCAD cloud hosting is a common example.
Call centers and shift-based work. High employee turnover and shared workstations make non-persistent VDI pools a natural fit, since every new hire gets an identical, pre-configured desktop on day one.
For most small and mid-size organizations today, the practical question isn’t “should we build VDI infrastructure?" It’s “which provider’s cloud VDI fits our setup?"
A few things worth checking before choosing:
We offer a 7-day demo for exactly this reason. It’s hard to evaluate how a virtual desktop feels until your team is actually clicking around in one.
Ready to see what a cloud desktop feels like for your own team?
Talk to one of our cloud experts
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