LVD: A Lightweight Virtual Desktop Management Architecture

Rapid improvements in network bandwidth, ubiquitous security hazards and high total cost of ownership of personal computers have created a growing market for desktop virtualization. We present the LVD, a system that combines the virtualization technology and inexpensive personal computers (PCs) to realize a lightweight virtual desktop system. Compared with the previous thin client systems, LVD supports the backup, mobility, suspending and resuming of per-user’s working environment; it supports the customization of operating system and applications for each user; it supports synchronous using of incompatible applications on different platforms; it achieves great saving in power consumption. LVD consists of five modules— the template-based VM repository, the data center, the application cluster, the VM central manager, and the client terminal, in which we have proposed wRFB protocol, magnet algorithm and the like to perform the above functions. We have implemented LVD in a cluster with VMs and compared its performance against widely used commercial approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that LVD is effective in performing the functions while imposing little overhead.