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Ask HN: Do You Use a VDI?

2 points by speg ↗ HN
Our large company is slowly transitioning us from physical development machines to VDI[0] instances. At first as part of remote working during the pandemic, but possibly on a permanent basis. My gut reaction was to cringe. The latency and lack of options are annoying at best. But it is hard to ignore the security benefits. So I got to thinking, how do the FAANGs of the world handle this?

[0] https://www.vmware.com/topics/glossary/content/virtual-desktop-infrastructure-vdi

3 comments

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MrWiffles
I’m not employed by a FAANG but we do have a similarly sized client that requires use of VDI to access their systems. I strongly dislike it, but I understand their reasons. The good news is that with the horizon client it’s pretty good framerate wise. Not native of course, but surprisingly useable. Still, it’s very limiting for my development environment needs, so I do everything I can to circumvent it.
BobbyOGP
I've been using an in-company hosted VDI for years for development work. Latency is not an issue, everything feels like it's a local machine. Even working from home over a modest 30Mbit VDSL line there is no perceptible lag.
pickle-wizard
At my last job I used to VDI instance for my development work. I liked the setup as I could access it from my personal computer or my work laptop. It kept me from having to buy a KVM and dealing with switching between computers when I was at home.

I didn't notice any latency or frame rate issues.