Thinking about virtualizing your desktops? Want to run all those sessions in your data center and simply broadcast the screen and UI out to whatever devices your users desire?

There are a lot of vendors out there looking to ease your shift into VDI (virtualized desktop infrastructure) by helping to figure out how much server, storage, and network you need to make your desktop dreams come true.

At the NVIDIA GTC 2014 conference, I spent a few minutes with Tony Paikeday, Cisco’s Global Solutions Lead for desktop virtualization.

While Cisco is synonymous with networking, we mainly talked about their UCS systems and how Cisco is using them to drive their VDI initiative. As Tony pointed out, the UCS product line was designed from the ground up with virtualization in mind, and the addition NVIDIA Grid GPUs makes them a natural choice for a VDI host platform.

In the video, we talked about the challenge of providing enough performance to handle a bunch of task workers (not all that hard), but also keeping the power users happy (not as easy). Figuring out what sort of architecture you need to support various types of users is a complex undertaking.

The company has developed a set of Cisco Validated Designs that show its recommended solutions for small, medium, and large organizations with persistent or non-persistent desktop sessions.

If you’re looking for more information, you can either download or stream Cisco’s GTC 2014 VDI session.

I have to give Tony a lot of credit for sticking around and pushing all the way until the end of the show. As he and I were talking, the show was being taken down around us – so fast that I halfway expected someone to come up and load Tony on a hand truck for transport back to Cisco HQ.