VDS is not a cost saving measure. I worked for a Government office that purchased VDS because an inexperienced Administrator pitched it as a cost savings measure over Desktop upgrades that took place every 5 yrs. Each machine cost us $300 a year to rent with 2 gigs of ram. Windows 7 64bit requires a minimum of 4 gigs of ram. At 2 gigs of ram we were using 80% of our resources, with no apps running. To get to 4gigs of ram, each gig would cost $100 more annually, so our price would have went up to $500 a year per VDM, just to meet recommended specs. This particualr office was currently deploying 300 vdms' at $300 a pop in annual rentals, spending $90,000 a year. Explain to me how this measure saves money. Our newest Desktop at the office was about 7 yrs old. So in other words they purchased a machine 7 yrs ago for $1000 and spending $300 over 7 yrs is cheaper !!!!
What desktop requires a $500 annual maintenance ??? You can maintain a gaming rig for far less.
We eventually got rid of those VDM and went back to conventional desktop. VDM are good for banks who don't want confidential information residing on local workstations, that it. Its a security measure, it can never measure up in performance to conventional desktops.
As it relates to volume licensing, the cost is still the same. On conventional desktops with a Government license you can deploy that OS to as many workstations as your want. We had employees with that license residing on their home computers, who claimed it was for work related purposes. By the way these employees earned any where from >$60,000 annual and were too cheap to purchase a $150 software.
