How to Become a VDI Engineer

It's common in IT to start your career in a broad role (like system admin, network admin, or support tech) and later specialize. What you learn early in your career often informs the path you take — and many choices exist. You can expand into high-level infrastructure or become a deeply knowledgeable specialist on one software.

Becoming a VDI engineer typically actually means a little bit of both. Due to the nature of the VDI software and how it's used, you'll need to know both the high-level and nitty-gritty of the software. Here’s how you can become a VDI engineer.

What is VDI?

The term itself stands for virtual desktop infrastructure. Although it may sound intimidating at first, it simply means running virtualized desktop software from a virtual server environment. Other terms in this space that often get lumped into the same bucket are desktop virtualization, End-User Computing (EUC), and Desktop as a Service (DaaS).

Similar to how the term Kleenex is used, VDI now covers a sector of solutions from multiple vendors, including Citrix Virtual Desktops (previously XenDesktop), Dell Quest (EOL), Oracle VDI (EOL), VMware Horizon (previously View), and Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD).

Due to the similarity in their underlying technologies, many of these vendors also offer comparable application virtualization solutions to their VDI counterparts.

While there are many iterations of how VDI is implemented, the basic purpose is to provide the following:

• centralized management

• enhanced compliance of updates/patches

• increased perimeter security

To achieve this, base images are built and updated so that downstream resources can be used as reference points when booting. In theory, this means that whenever a VDI is booted, it receives the latest patches, software, and configurations the VDI engineer deems necessary. Sounds like magic, right? Well, a lot goes into it; again, it varies by vendor.

What Does a VDI Engineer Do?

A VDI engineer typically involves building and maintaining the VDI infrastructure and supporting base images. The VDI Infrastructure varies by vendor, but the typical components exist across all vendors:

• a hypervisor for virtualization;

• a brokering service for administrators to make assignments/entitlements of resources;

• a database to store assignments/entitlements and usage history; and

• a web front-end for users to access their resources.

These components have quarterly to semi-annual updates, including necessary security patches, bug fixes, and features that benefit businesses' needs.

So, other than quarterly infrastructure updates, what else does a VDI Engineer do?  Most of a VDI engineer's time is spent configuring, testing, and analyzing base images.  A base image (aka golden image, master image, replica, etc.) includes an operating system, installed applications, and configurations. The base image serves as the template by which other downstream VDIs/servers will be created.

In the example above, a base image is copied to shared storage, where other resources (VDIs or servers) can access a read-only copy of that base image and perform their initial boot. Additional disks are attached that provide the VM with a place to store identifying characteristics (aka computer name, AD account password, etc.) and any changes incurred while booted.

Depending on your vendor selection, these disks go by different names, from identity/internal disk to difference/delta disk (Citrix/VMware, respectively). Regardless of whichever provisioning solution you select, the game's name here is the same: SCALE. These technologies allow an engineer to deploy an application update or configuration change across a cluster of VDIs or Publishing Servers (not just one or two, as in our example) while ensuring consistency for the end-user experience.

While this may initially seem like a typical system administrator task, it quickly becomes apparent that preparing base images involves more than the standard Windows desktop operating system (OS) install.  Think about it: with VDI, the goal is to pack as many Windows desktop OSes on a single server with minimal performance impact. To do this, some sacrifices must be made to trim the bloat out of Windows.

To provide an example of something that would typically be considered "unnecessary," best-practice guides often suggest disabling the Windows Search services.  Why, do you ask?  

Well, the Windows Search service runs an indexing service that, by default, scours certain directories on your machine and itemizes the file's content.  While perhaps trivial on one workstation, the effect of doing this across, say, 50 VDIs creates a significant re-occurring overhead on the hosting server that effectively reduces the number of VDIs that the host can support. But note, every decision has a repercussion.

For instance, disabling the Windows Search service in Windows will slow Windows searches and other searches that depend on it, such as Outlook.

VDIs and application virtualization solutions require a slew of these best-practice configurations. These optimizations require VDI engineers to know their virtual infrastructure, network, storage, and overall environment extremely well to architect the best solution, as these best practices don't always work for every environment. Like the example provided above, some of these decisions have consequences that your business or users may not be willing to accept.

How to Get VDI Experience

As hinted upon in the last section, VDI is a culmination of troubleshooting skills, infrastructure knowledge, and an understanding of your environment. In layman's terms, every organization is different, but a great place to start is the service desk. It provides an opportunity to get to know your users, their experiences, and your company's applications.

Once you've mastered this arena, the natural progression is to become a system administrator, where managing the back-end systems is the key responsibility. Here, you'll learn where everything is, how it all interacts, and the patience to track a problem to its root cause.

Depending on your level of curiosity and how involved you got with tracking issues to their root cause, this step can be merged with the previous one. But do not underestimate the importance of learning the basics of domain services, three-tiered applications, and network security.

The last step before becoming a VDI engineer is to learn the infrastructure. In today's world, infrastructure typically refers to the virtual server environment, data center networking, and shared storage. This is where you will learn how decisions around base image optimizations impact the end-user experience and potentially other systems on the same infrastructure.

A good example of a lesson learned is how boot storms can cause high IOPS, resulting in unavailable machines or the inability of user profiles to load quickly upon login.

Once you have a solid base of experience, there are some great resources online to get you kick-started with hands-on VDI experience. It's great to start with training to help you get your bearings.  

CBT Nuggets has some great courses in this space that will give you a leg up on the chase.

Once you've completed some training, VMware offers free hands-on labs to test its latest features. This is a great place to gauge your aptitude and general interest in what it's like to perform the day-to-day tasks of a VDI engineer. Other alternatives would include vendor documentation, vendor-sponsored hands-on webinars, local user groups, and free/trial licenses for home lab use.

How I Became a VDI Engineer

With all this said, how exactly did I become a VDI engineer? As described in the "How to get VDI Experience" section, I mostly came up those same ranks. The intriguing part of what guided me to VDI, though, isn't the technical skills but rather the subjective nature of what I enjoy.

I'll go out on a limb and say most system engineers and administrators prefer to avoid end users and their issues, work on projects, and build things. There is nothing wrong with that.

It just so happened that I enjoyed those small wins that came with helping the users.  That moment of gratification comes with A) accomplishing something on the same day you start it and B) witnessing the user's appreciation for your assistance.

Final Thoughts

To me, being a VDI engineer comes down to having the right combination of a few traits: curiosity, determination, and customer service.  Collectively, these traits result in an engineer who enjoys determining the root cause of an issue — and implements solutions that improve the end-user experience.

If you fit this mold, I highly recommend the specialty of VDI engineering and encourage you to learn some of the skills that I referenced previously. You might just find yourself on a new career path.