Virtual Desktop at My House?

As a typical geeky network engineer, I enjoy those times when the awesome technology I work with makes its way home. I remember in the late 90's introducing my wife to the joys of a dial up modem and the Internet. Years later I brought home a Linksys Wireless Router and Comcast Broadband Internet Connection. She wasn't that impressed when I said the cable Internet connection was faster than the T1 I used at work.

I need to preface this with, we have five girls, 10 months to 9yrs. They are very technologically advanced. For Christmas, the four oldest got Apple iPod iTouchs.

The girls like to use our laptops to go to nickjr.com and starfall.com. Ok, we can handle it, we have two laptops, we can all share. Oh No!!! It was World War III in our living room. Four girls, two laptops, "Daaadddd she has been playing for a long time!!"

By the time you read this, we are the proud owners of a 1/4 acre of land with a hole in it. We are building a house. My wife is doing a wonderful job designing the kitchen, selecting flooring, and picking paint colors.

I am working on the technology for the house. Fresh off the girls fighting for laptops, I wondered what could be done. Then the light bulb went off, Virtual Desktop! Why can't we have four Virtual Desktop terminals? I wouldn't have to worry about the kids deleting programs or documents, messing up configurations, and the static nature of having terminals, monitors, keyboard, and mice physically located in their own space.

So I am exploring my home based VDI initiative. I am not sure what I am getting into financially. I can piece together some physical servers with VMware. I need to find some terminals, possible Wyse devices.