Likelihood to Recommend RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.
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 RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon. Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel. OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control. 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 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow. 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features. 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM. 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well. 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested. 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 Alternatives Considered RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!
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 RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances. We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp. There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor. 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