Overview
What is Unidesk (Discontinued)?
Unidesk was a virtual desktop technology from the Massachusetts company of the same name, and acquired by Citrix. It has reached End of Life (EOL).
Unidesk Virtual Desktop Management Product Review
UniDesk-Top player for me in desktop layer technology.
Unidesk - Simplify your VDI
Unidesk at a Midwest College
Unidesk is a win for persistent virtual desktop deployment.
Quick full desktop deployment for new hires !
Pricing
What is Unidesk (Discontinued)?
Unidesk was a virtual desktop technology from the Massachusetts company of the same name, and acquired by Citrix. It has reached End of Life (EOL).
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is VMware Horizon?
A VDI solution used for the secure delivery of virtual desktops and apps from on-premises to the cloud. It is used to deploy, manage, monitor and scale desktops and apps across private, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure using a cloud-based console and SaaS management services.
What is Red Hat Virtualization (RHV)?
Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is Unidesk (Discontinued)?
Unidesk (Discontinued) Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
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Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(13)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-7 of 7)Why UniDesk
- Small Company and great support
- The product is simple to use, extremely user friendly
- Does what it says, truly a great tool for application virtualization.
- Ability to launch an application with no underline OS (Just like XenApp)
Unidesk Virtual Desktop Management Product Review
- Takes the complexity out of the virtual desktop development process.
- Provides responsive, quality product technical support.
- Stays current with competitors in terms of features and standards.
- More hands-on support while bringing Unidesk into a new environment would be useful.
- More formalized training for those new to the product (I actually believe Unidesk has already developed something to address this).
UniDesk-Top player for me in desktop layer technology.
- 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.
- Layering technologies still presents challenges in general. There are certain applications which are stubborn and do not work as intended so Unidesk keeps a library of "recipes" for many applications where it outlines specific ways or methods to install the applications so that it will work smoothly once it's assigned.
- There are limits to the amount of layers that can assigned and the more layers you have, the more complex and more chances of the various layers stepping on each other toes. It may also slow the virtual machines but it's not that noticeable.
- An application layer is tied to the OS that it's built from. So if you have two master OS images, you'll need to create separate app layers, one for each master OS, contrary to their claim.
Unidesk - Simplify your VDI
- Delivers the majority of applications without issue
- Unified console for managing all aspects of Virtual Desktop management
- User layer on a persistent desktop provide an easy profile solution
- Layers provides the ability to reduce down to 1 Gold Image
- No more interacting with Hyper-V, RDS or vCenter
- Speeds up application turn around time
- I would love if the User Layer persisted on non-persistent desktops
- A better experience for the actual assigning of applications and desktops (improvements to the console)
- Partner with a vendor that provides a legacy browser solution
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.
Unidesk at a Midwest College
- I really liked how easy it made it to create application layers.
- Unidesk also allow us to created various combinations of software to suit different types of classrooms.
- It's software version control made it easy to diagnose compatibility issues.
- I would have liked for it to make it easier to work on simultaneous adding software layers.
- Support on license/software authentication handling could be nice.
- I would have liked a sleeker user interface.
Unidesk is a win for persistent virtual desktop deployment.
- Increased efficiency of existing/new SAN infrastructure.
- Prompt and responsive support.
- Ease of deployment.
- Efficiencies in workflow transparent to the end-user.
- 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.
Unidesk is well suited to environments where users are accustomed to using personalized and "unique" desktops where as other solutions cater only to standard or non-persistent desktop experiences. The personalization layer present in Unidesk allows users to feel as though they are using a personalized system without the complexities of managing dozens or hundreds of unique systems for users across your company. Updates to existing desktops/layers are accomplished with ease and can easily be done by lower tier support.
If your deliverable is to provide a persistent desktop experience while maintaining the best density and performance of your infrastructure then Unidesk is a hard solution to beat.
Quick full desktop deployment for new hires !
- The various layers of applications allows me to pick and choose who gets what easily. The best part is these layers can be updated and re-assigned across desktops upon reboot.
- Occasionally if a desktop is left on for too long some weird things happens. For example, the desktop is no longer recognized in AD - it could be AD, removal, etc., but I have checked all these. Refreshing and restoring the VM seems to solve the problem. This happened more than once.
- We have redundancy (two) connection brokers - Unidesk has trouble from time to time knowing which one to use it seems.
- The rebuild takes too long when the VM is larger. Users would reboot their desktop as a normal routine and they call to reboot thinking their VD is down when it was just taking its time to rebuild the layers (anywhere from 5 to 15 mins. Mostly 15mins).