Likelihood to Recommend Considering Oracle VDI is not supported by Oracle anymore, and will not receive any future updates, I wouldn't recommend Oracle VDI for most scenarios. Unless your organization is under some strict contractual agreement or there is a feature in Oracle VDI that isn't supported in its modern successors/competitors (haven't come across a feature like that based on my experience), I would recommend using something like
VMware Horizon .
Read full review Right now, I would advise it to anybody who has 1,500 or fewer users they wish to provide desktops for. I would advise to go with persistent desktops or use a UEM solution like AppSense or RES Workspace Manager when trying the non-persistent desktops. I would suggest that using an AppVirt product like App-V with Unidesk still makes a lot of sense as you can use Shared Content Store Mode and sequence once for many. AppVirt solutions still have value with isolation. I would suggest looking at Turbo browsers for their redirect feature to an sandboxed browser running legacy IE or a browser with Java or Flash (to eliminate security threats related to these running locally on the system). Also, I would suggest looking at Atlantis for deduplicating those desktops and allow them to perform quicker with less storage required. Unidesk by itself is awesome. It really simplifies things. Throw it together with other products and each compliments the other well. Also, Unidesk makes some of those other products more valuable as you're not completely reliant on them like you would be without Unidesk.
Read full review Pros Providing desktop operating system virtualization is way more manageable using this Oracle suite. It has a robust security infrastructure and provides great audit trails. Read full review Creating application layers is easy to do. It's just a matter of installing the applications as you would normally do on a computer. Unidesk's technology isn't sandbox like VMware's ThinApp technology so it works much better and is more compatible with other software. The admin console and technology in general is easy to learn for the administrator while it's transparent to the end users. Read full review Cons Frequent disconnects causing me to have to reboot my server. Can be laggy at times. Freezes regularly. Read full review Disaster recovery options for the Unidesk solution are not easily accessible or require personalized attention from support. Issues when creating software layers do not always have a obvious fix. Make sure to look for and follow Unidesk's published "recipes." The software/OS layering introduced by Unidesk is not "sanctioned" behavior by Microsoft, and thus you're at the mercy of Unidesk's ability to keep up with widespread changes to operating systems. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Unidesk has been a solid product for us. We continue to rely on its simplicity and scalability.
Read full review Usability From the end user's perspective the usability is not impacted at all.
Read full review Performance The easiest way to describe the performance is like this - when it is working, it works almost flawlessly. When it starts freezing, your day is going to get very interesting very quickly. As I have stated earlier, I used it for one purpose, and it did what I needed it to most of the time, but I did have issues with it.
Read full review Alternatives Considered VMware Horizon does everything that Oracle VDI is capable of doing and offers many more features, and unlike Oracle VDI, it is still receiving constant updates. Oracle VDI was a great solution for enterprise-level management of virtualized desktop when it was getting updates, but now that it won't be getting any, I would put it in the "outdated technology" category.
Read full review AppVolumes seems to be a lot less mature as a product. It does have some benefits over Unidesk e.g. the fact it doesn't include the OS Layer (image management) side means I can just use it for the app layering piece if I like. I can also deploy my application layers to physical desktops BUT I have had less success compatibility wise with my applications as AppVolumes 'AppStacks'. I believe Unidesk has a better handle on the do's and don'ts, or at least may be a little more honest about them. I also don't enjoy the Console with AppVolumes and while I can use it without the image management or tied into the stack the way Unidesk is...you also lose that image management and need to couple it with another product in some scenarios. FlexApp to me is stronger than AppVolumes. FlexApp is coupled with a profile management solution called ProfileUnity which makes it a more attractive alternative (at least at the time of me posting this). However, I prefer other UEM products at this moment in time. I also value the image management and ease of a single console for all of Virt Desktop management that Unidesk provides.
Read full review Return on Investment Pricing Models were harsh to begin with, so we invested more money on the license than we needed to. Due to all of the laggy, buggy, and crashing interfaces, our administrators spent considerable additional time working on simple operations. We missed out on many advanced features that Oracle VDI's competitors were rolling out, so we couldn't benefit from them. Read full review Storage density with Unidesk (via the use of OS/application layering) is 60-70% improved over standard persistent one-to-one virtual desktops. Unidesk virtual machines can be deployed in under 10 minutes by a lower tier of technician without the need to "touch" the vCenter hypervisor. Reliable performance across Unidesk virtual workstations. Added desktops/layers does not adversely effect performance nearly as bad as older persistent desktops. Read full review ScreenShots