By
Steve Vanderwerff, Naval Education and Training Command Public Affairs
GULFPORT,
Miss. (NNS) -- Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) announced Dec. 28
that the commander of NETC visited the Center for Naval Aviation Technical
Training Unit (CNATTU) Keesler Air Force Base to see firsthand how the learning
site has successfully implemented a Virtual Desktop Initiative (VDI).
Rear
Adm. Don Quinn, NETC commander, was briefed by Cmdr. Jonathan Vorrath, CNATTU
Keesler's commanding officer, about the learning site implementation of VDI and
how they use it to train students.
VDI
is a five year plan to deploy the VDI to more than 36,000 daily users and will
replace 80 percent of the more than 23,000 desktop computers in more than 2,500
classrooms at 68 learning sites around the world.
Desktop
virtualization provides multiple student and instructor workstations from a
centralized server environment, which eliminates physical workstations residing
in an electronic classroom.
"CNATTU
Keesler is the first learning site to implement the virtual desktop initiative
(VDI), which will expand throughout the NETC domain," said Quinn. "We
have thousands of computers. To keep pace with current technology, security
risks and software, each computer currently has to be updated. When you
virtualize a classroom, you shift from multiple updates to an update of a
single server. In this case, we went from 152 computers to three servers. Now
when we update, we only have to do it three times instead of 152. It's a huge
time and money saver."
Besides
being a money saving venture, Quinn says he is also pleased by how VDI saves
electrical power and time, and benefits the students.
"There's
also a power issue - instead of running 152 desktops we now have only 152
monitors and three servers. So we save on electricity, manpower, and
time," Quinn said. "In terms of mission effectiveness, the most
important thing is speed. It's so much better for the students. It's reliable,
it's faster, and instructors now spend less time fighting technology and more
time teaching. It is clear that once we incorporate this change in more than
2,500 electronic classrooms containing more than 23,000 computers, that this is
a huge deal for NETC and the Navy."
Spearheaded
by NETC's Information Technology Services Department, the initiative stemmed
from a mission imperative requiring cost effective delivery of training
content.
During
the planning process, the integrated project team determined VDI should be
phased in throughout the domain because of diverse training environments and
multiple stakeholders with varying requirements. For example, the Center for
Surface Combat Systems Detachment West's mission is to provide surface ship
combat systems training, which varies significantly from the Center for Service
Support Learning Site San Diego, whose mission is to provide training to the
Navy's administrative, logistics, and media communities.
Because
several training applications are learning site specific, the team needed to
consider each site and decided which workstations, programs and applications
could be delivered as a service to the student. The virtual system requires no desktop
operating system or disk drives, and no virus or spyware monitoring
requirement.
It
would also need to have full Universal Serial Bus (USB) capability to support
thumb drives, and dual monitor capability but no refresh requirements due to
software updates or new applications, and no media, graphics or memory
restrictions.
Desktop
virtualization separates the different computing layers and executes all of
them on a secure server, which allows end users to access all of the data and
applications without being tied down to a specific hardware device.
According
to Cmdr. Sean O'Brien, NETC's deputy chief Information Officer, it reduces
desk-side support costs by up to 40 percent through centralized desktop and
application deployment and management, and improved desktop reliability.
"Productivity
and flexibility is boosted by providing users with anywhere and soon any-device
access to their work," O'Brien said. "Security of the user's data is
also bolstered, and it simplifies disaster recovery by separating processing
and storage from desktop hardware and lowers operational expenses by extending
the life of peripheral desktop hardware. The benefits of virtualization are
that it's engineered to meet current requirement, it's expandable for future
demand and provides a standardized solution for student application
loads."
O'Brien
said the successful implementation of VDI is the result of outstanding
cooperation and teamwork.
"The
success of this project is the result of close collaboration of the dedicated
VDI integrated project team and CNATT's commitment and willingness to work
closely with the team to ensure that all training delivery requirements were
incorporated into the solution design," he said. "Traditionally,
Information Assurance (IA) is done on the backside when a project is completed
and then needs to be made IA compliant, which generally delays deployment and
requires rework because of IA requirements that don't work. We brought IA in
from the beginning to ensure that compliancy was designed and built into the
system."
Using
the lessons learned from the initial roll out at the Keesler training unit,
NETC can template the process across the domain.
"An
important part of the process was ensuring that the documentation was written
conversationally so non IT technicians could read the instructions and
understand how to set up the system," said Angie Chase, Electronic
Classroom program manager. "This is truly the first step toward being a
cloud computing environment. When you talk about cloud computing you're talking
about accessing information from anywhere at any time, but it's more than that,
it's delivering software, the desktop, data and computing power as a
service."
The
team also considered security.
"VDI
creates a much more secure environment. In a VDI environment, when a student
logs in and then logs off, any changes to the operating system disappear,"
said David Thomas, project IA compliance lead. "In a secure VDI
environment, if a student generates or downloads a virus or malware from the
Internet to the desktop, when they log out it's gone for good. What do viruses
and malware do? They effect changes to your operating system. With the VDI
environment you get a fresh pristine operating system every time you log
in."
Cmdr.
Vorrath said students and instructors benefit by desktop virtualization, and it
could benefit other commands as well.
"VDI
creates ease for students to log in to the programs and the ease for our
administrators that maintain those systems. It benefits the students because
the technicians we have that to do the trouble shooting will be able to focus
more on customer issues instead of having to worry about security updates on
each individual desktop or individual system program updates," Vorrath
said. "When you think about all of the desktops across the Navy and all of
those systems that have to be deployed as a result of NMCI, it would be an
incredible cost saving.
"Our
first step in VDI is a huge success. I knew that before I visited here, but I
wanted to look the people who made it happen in the eye and thank them. It took
multiple players from multiple organizations to make this happen and I am proud
of them," Vorrath said.
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