Last updated on May 13, 2024
How Do DaaS and VDI Differ? A Complete Guide
Both Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) enable businesses to deliver virtualized desktops and applications to end users anytime, anywhere, and on any endpoint device. That makes both of them suitable for today’s hybrid work environments, where employees work onsite and remotely. But which one is better?
In this DaaS vs VDI post, we’ll be discussing the similarities and differences between the two, their advantages and disadvantages, and last but not the least, the use cases that each type of solution is best suited for.
What Is Desktop as a Service (DaaS)?
DaaS is a service that delivers virtualized desktops and applications from a remote hosted location—usually, a public cloud. As with all cloud-based services, DaaS follows a subscription and/or usage-based payment model. For example, to use a shared virtual desktop with 2 vCPU and 8 GB of RAM, a customer might have to pay $75 per user per month.
As with other cloud-based services, in DaaS, the customer doesn’t have to build the underlying infrastructure. All infrastructure components are acquired, deployed, built, and maintained by the service provider itself.
Although some DaaS providers are focused purely on delivering DaaS, the current field of DaaS providers includes large cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), virtualization companies, and even smaller third parties like managed service providers (MSPs) who have added DaaS to their line of services. Gartner’s Market Guide for Desktop as a Service, groups the DaaS market into three segments: client-defined, vendor-defined, and managed DaaS.
Client-defined DaaS offers more flexibility but also requires more technical know-how from the customer. Managed DaaS is more like a fully hosted offering wherein most of the components behind the service are managed by the provider. Usually, client-defined DaaS is offered by the large cloud providers, while managed DaaS is usually offered by MSPs, independent software vendors (ISVs), value-added resellers (VARs), and system integrators (SIs). Vendor-defined DaaS is somewhere in the middle.
Read our recommended white paper: Growth Opportunities for MSPs, ISPs, VARs, and SIs in the Post-Pandemic Era.
What Is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)?
While DaaS is a service, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, is a product. Usually, it’s deployed in an on-premises datacenter and, like DaaS, delivers virtualized desktops and applications from a remote hosted location. A VDI solution is acquired typically through an upfront purchase and installed, deployed, configured, and maintained by the customer.
VDI can be thought of as the do-it-yourself version of DaaS. In fact, under the hood of most DaaS offerings is actually a VDI solution. Because VDI retains most of the underlying components that are abstracted in DaaS, VDI is often considered more difficult to own from a technical standpoint. There are, however, a few VDI solutions that have managed to simplify the processes associated with deployment and administration, and we’ll be featuring one of those solutions later in this post.
Although traditionally deployed in on-premises datacenters, some VDI solutions can be deployed on public clouds as well. Those that have this capability are easier to own and manage, as this deployment option eliminates the need to build and manage certain components of the underlying infrastructure (e.g., physical servers, storage systems, networking, and cooling systems, as well as hypervisors, to mention a few).
What Are the Key Differences between DaaS and VDI?
From the point of view of the end user, there are no noticeable differences between applications and desktops delivered by DaaS and those delivered by VDI. However, for the organization paying for the service/product and for the people in charge of managing these environments, it’s a different story.
Multi-tenant vs Single Tenant
Every DaaS environment follows a multi-tenant model. Meaning, its resources are shared among multiple customers/organizations. On the other hand, VDI environments usually follow a single-tenant model, wherein all resources in a VDI environment are consumed by a single organization. Although some VDI solutions do have multi-tenant capabilities, the feature is used (by MSPs, for instance) to deliver DaaS to customers.
Infrastructure Construction and Management
DaaS customers don’t need to build, deploy, and manage the underlying infrastructure, which may consist of an on-premises datacenter, networking apparatus, physical servers, storage devices, cooling systems, hypervisors, the VDI control plane, etc. These responsibilities are all absorbed by the DaaS provider. It’s the exact opposite for VDI customers, who must take charge of all these responsibilities.
As noted earlier, there are VDI solutions that can be deployed in the cloud. For these deployments, a substantial portion of the infrastructure-related responsibilities (e.g., construction and management of datacenter, networking apparatus, physical servers, storage devices, cooling systems, and hypervisors) are offloaded to the cloud provider. However, deployment, administration, and maintenance of the VDI control plane is retained by the customer.
OPEX vs CAPEX
As with all cloud-based services, DaaS costs are based mostly on operating expenditures (OPEX). By contrast, VDI costs are based mostly on capital expenditures (CAPEX). This means that DaaS customers are more concerned with ongoing costs, while VDI customers are more concerned with upfront costs.
Digital Asset Control
Since DaaS environments are managed by third parties, you, as a customer, don’t have complete control of your digital assets. It’s different in a VDI environment deployed on-premises where, for example, your IT administrator may know exactly which rack your VDI solution is running on or which storage device holds your most confidential files.
Scalability
DaaS environments are just like any cloud environment—they’re highly scalable. You can expand and contract your fleet of virtual desktops on-demand with ease. VDI environments? Unless they’re deployed in the cloud, not so much. Although the VDI solution itself might be scalable, that scalability can be limited by the underlying physical infrastructure (i.e., physical servers, storage systems).
DaaS: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Use Cases
Now that you know the key differences between DaaS and VDI, let’s talk about their advantages, disadvantages, and the use cases they’re each best suited for. Let’s start with DaaS.
Advantages
DaaS has many advantages. It provides:
High scalability. DaaS inherits all the benefits of cloud computing. That includes having a high degree of scalability. DaaS environments can be rapidly expanded and contracted depending on demand. You don’t have that scalability with VDI. That’s why, before building your VDI environment, you need to forecast potential peak demand in order to build the right capacity. You just can’t add physical servers in VDI as easily as you could add virtual servers in DaaS.
Lower administrative overhead. Because your DaaS provider absorbs a substantial portion of the administrative responsibilities already, your IT team can take on more strategic endeavors that add value to your core business.
CAPEX savings. With DaaS, there’s almost zero upfront cost. Due to this low barrier to entry, businesses can reap the agility and productivity benefits of using remote applications and desktops quickly. It also means, because you no longer must drain your wallets to meet a huge capital outlay for infrastructure, you can enjoy a healthier cash flow.
Predictable costs. Although the bulk of your expenses are concentrated in the building phase of your VDI infrastructure, it doesn’t mean you can’t incur additional costs later on. Some costs, such as those for hardware replacements or repairs, can come when you least expect them. In DaaS’s subscription-based billing model, costs are more predictable. As long as you know how many users you have, you can estimate how much you need to spend every month. This can make budgeting easier.
Disadvantages
Daas also has some disadvantages such as:
- Risk of data leaks. Although DaaS providers have network segmentation and data isolation measures in place, the multi-tenant architecture of DaaS environments (where multiple organizations share the underlying infrastructure) still makes them somewhat susceptible to data leaks. This can be caused by accidental and intentional malpractices such as an overallocation of privileges by a cloud engineer, a misconfiguration by an organization’s cloud administrator, or a malicious lateral movement by a threat actor.
- Ongoing costs. CAPEX savings and a healthier cash flow are certainly great economic benefits. But there’s a tradeoff. A DaaS environment’s OPEX-based costs mean you must deal with ongoing expenditures that, in the long run, can become more expensive than the upfront costs plus the operational costs of a VDI environment.
- Lack of control. Because DaaS environments are operated and administered by the service provider, you don’t have as much control over your digital assets (e.g., the physical location of your data and applications) as you would have with a VDI environment hosted on-premises.
- Regulatory or corporate policy impediments. DaaS providers, especially the large cloud providers, implement several enterprise-grade security measures that can help guarantee the security of your digital assets. However, there may just be certain policies (perhaps your internal corporate policies or industry-specific regulations) that simply don’t allow certain types of data to be stored in third-party managed environments such as public clouds.
Use Cases
Due to the characteristics mentioned above, DaaS is best suited for the following use cases:
- Small to medium-sized businesses. Businesses that can’t afford to come up with a large capital outlay may take advantage of the zero-upfront, OPEX-based cost model of DaaS.
- Temporary workforces. When a sudden surge in demand calls for mass hiring of temporary workers, it’s easier to accommodate those temporary hires with DaaS because if a VDI environment’s underlying infrastructure is already at maximum capacity, you’ll be forced to add more physical servers. What will you do with those servers when the demand subsides? For DaaS, it’s just a matter of temporarily adding more subscriptions while the need exists.
- Disaster recovery. With VDI, a disaster recovery (DR) strategy would entail building a DR site that hosts your backup VDI environment. That can be very costly. DaaS is the more cost-effective choice for this use case because your service provider will likely have a DR strategy in place, and it could be included in your subscription already. Double-check whether yours is.
- Graphics-heavy workloads (temporary need). To support graphics-heavy applications (e.g., 2D/3D modeling, computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality (VR), video production), you need to employ a graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated virtualization. Considering the added cost and complexity of integrating GPU-accelerated virtual machines (VMs), it might be more cost-effective if you just subscribe to a GPU-accelerated DaaS, especially for one-off projects.
VDI: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Use Cases
Let’s now move on to VDI and talk about what it brings to the table.
Advantages
VDI has several advantages. They are as follows:
- Long-term savings. Ongoing subscription fees can be quite expensive in the long run. If your intention is to accumulate long-term savings, VDI is the better choice. Once you complete payment for the infrastructure (or pay off the loan you took out to acquire it), all you need to worry about from a financial perspective are operational costs, which are going to be significantly less than the ongoing costs of DaaS.
- Dedicated resources. Since VDI environments are usually single-tenant, the organizations that use them are less susceptible to data leaks. VDI customers are also spared of disruptions and performance issues that DaaS customers may experience when another tenant suffers a resource-hogging incident, e.g., a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
- Streamlined user experience. Because all resources are dedicated to an organization’s group of users, those users are bound to experience faster response times and a streamlined user experience overall.
- Complete control. In an on-premises VDI environment, the organization has complete control over all digital assets in that environment—servers, operating systems, applications, VMs, data, etc. For certain organizations (see use cases below), this is a non-negotiable requirement.
Disadvantages
Of course, there are a few disadvantages to VDI. It can require:
- Steep upfront costs. Building the underlying infrastructure for a VDI environment normally requires a substantial amount of capital, especially if you still lack the necessary hardware (or worse, lack a datacenter).
- High technical skills. VDI also requires technical expertise. If you don’t have in-house talent for this kind of technology, you may be forced to hire certified experts who usually command astronomical professional rates.
- Costs that prohibit business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) initiatives. As explained earlier in one of the use cases of DaaS, setting up a BC/DR site for your VDI environment can be very costly.
Use cases
VDI lends itself to these use cases:
- Regulated industries and organizations with stringent data-privacy policies. For some organizations that have stringent security policies or are mandated by certain regulatory requirements, having absolute control over their data and underlying infrastructure might be non-negotiable. In such cases, VDI is the only option.
- Graphics-heavy workloads (main line of business). We included graphics-heavy workloads among the use cases for DaaS. VDI can be more suited for this use case, provided it’s integral to your main line of business. For instance, if you’re a video production company, you’ll be using GPU-accelerated virtual desktops all the time. In that case, it would be more practical to run GPU-accelerated VMs in a VDI environment.
- Organizations with steady growth. The scalability of DaaS is great for organizations that experience seasonal or unpredictable spikes in their workforce population. But for those whose workforce population doesn’t change much or those that experience steady growth, VDI should be the more cost-effective option.
- Businesses that have the resources to support VDI. As explained earlier, VDI can offer greater savings in the long run. As long as the organization has the financial resources and technical know-how to build and manage a VDI environment, it can be a better option.
Enhanced DaaS Capabilities and VDI Solutions with Parallels RAS
Parallels® Remote Application Server (RAS) is an all-in-one VDI solution that integrates with Azure Virtual Desktop and supports both on-premises and cloud-based deployments. For cloud deployments, Parallels RAS supports all major cloud providers with ease, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This hybrid deployment capability (which combines on-premises and cloud-based deployments) plus the integration with Azure Virtual Desktop allows businesses to reap the benefits of both VDI and DaaS.
Virtual desktops and applications that need to take advantage of cloud characteristics such as scalability, global reach, and minimal administrative overhead can be sourced from Azure Virtual Desktop DaaS. On the other hand, those that need to be kept on-premises to, for instance, meet regulatory requirements, minimize ongoing costs, or enable greater control can be sourced from an on-premises VDI deployment.
IT administrators can provision, deploy, monitor, and manage Azure Virtual Desktop workloads and components, including workspaces, host pools, templates, and application groups, from within Parallels RAS. Similarly, end users can view and launch both Parallels RAS-based and Azure Virtual Desktop-based desktops and applications from Parallels Client, which integrates with the Azure Virtual Desktop client.
Azure Virtual Desktop desktops and applications acquire Parallels RAS features such as Universal Printing and Scanning, AI-based session prelaunch, accelerated file redirection, auto-scaling, FSLogix Profile Container configuration, and automated VM image optimization, among many others.
Built with a simplified architecture, Parallels RAS does not require the same level of administrative overhead and technical expertise needed in most VDI solutions. Thus, even if your organization has to manage it, your current IT team can take on that responsibility easily.
Parallels RAS has a remarkably low barrier to entry and total cost of ownership (TCO), VDI capabilities, and Azure Virtual Desktop integration making it suitable for any type of business, regardless of size and industry.
Experience the benefits of VDI and DaaS in one solution.
