Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Omaha InfoTech 2012 Conference Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 5/18/2018

Who is Black Hills Corporation? A diversified energy company based in Rapid City, SD 201,300 Electric utility customers in South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado 561,500 Natural Gas utility customers in Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska Fleet of power generation facilities in Wyoming, Colorado and South Dakota Black Hills Exploration & Production produces oil and natural gas in New Mexico, Wyoming and South Dakota Wyodak mine in Gillette, WY supports BHC’s mine-mouth generation 5/18/2018

BHC Office Locations Corporate offices in Rapid City, Denver and Papillion Most utility service offices are in rural communities Branch offices are not well connected. T1 MPLS (if available) and VPN connections through local ISP (cable and dsl) Low bandwidth, high latency connections present challenges delivering a good user experience to remote offices 5/18/2018

What is VDI? Often referred to as Hosted Virtual Desktops Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is an alternative desktop delivery model that allows users to run a Windows desktop inside a virtual machine running in the data center. VDI is the evolution of server virtualization taken to the client level, and uses the same underlying principles VDI has the same look and feel of a traditional desktop computer, but all actions are happening remotely in the data center 5/18/2018

Why is BHC Deploying Virtual Desktops? Centralized management Enhanced security and compliance Deliver a managed desktop to unmanaged devices Efficient bandwidth utilization Support for mobile devices – Blackberry, Android, iPad Virtual Desktops offer options for both flexibility and control. Finding the right balance will be our priority Positions us for much simpler future desktop upgrades Hard dollar cost savings may not be attainable 5/18/2018

Terminology Persistent Desktop Provisioned Desktop Each user has full desktop image Individual applications can be installed per desktop Separate storage is required for each individual desktop Managed the same way as traditional desktops Provisioned Desktop Golden image of desktop environment Streamed to users on demand Greatly reduced storage requirement Protected from unintentional changes Requires unique anti-virus configuration 5/18/2018

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Benefits Much greater control for Policy enforcement (users can’t unplug NIC to prevent policies from applying) Centralized patch management and software distribution on fast networks Access to data is much improved as it is happening over fast networks within the datacenter Security and regulatory compliance: data never leaves the datacenter Recoverability:  VMs and data are backed up & snapshots occur in data center so local desktop data can be easily recovered. Mobility: Users can connect from any device anywhere and have same desktop experience. Control over application licensing compliance 5/18/2018

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Benefits, continued Reduce field support travel. Thin clients with no moving parts are less likely to fail. Strong competition in this market means vendors are actively enhancing and improving their products Live migration of VMs for availability and similar High Availability solutions like we use with servers. VDI can offload Flash and Windows Media content to render on local device. This creates a much improved user experience at remote sites. Reduces power consumption by using thin clients on the desktop and energy efficient servers in the Data Center Additional Advantages for Provisioned Desktop Single image to manage Fast deployments with on demand provisioning  Relatively easy upgrades 5/18/2018

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Challenges Requires additional MS licensing through Software Assurance or VDA Virtual Desktop technology is dependent on a highly available and low latency networks User support model changes significantly. May require realignment of IT resources Windows mobile devices create a challenge. Users need the ability to work in an offline mode. This will be Phase 2 for us Must get management buy-in in order to be successful Ensuring we have identified all the user applications that will need to be available as published applications outside of the standard Windows 7 & Office 2010 image 5/18/2018

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Challenges, continued Must be connected Offline capabilities are immature User experience around multimedia can be unpredictable. We are actively working to address this concern. Additional Challenges for Provisioned Desktops Limited control for users. Users cannot install applications Roaming profiles are essential for provisioned desktops Limited personalization of individual settings and appearance Non-standard drivers for printers and USB devices need to be installed by system administrators No immediate image updates. After an image is updated, user needs to logoff for changes to be applied 5/18/2018

Supporting Infrastructure Components HP BL490c Blade servers – Dual 6-core, 144GB – Sized to host 50 desktop sessions per server NetApp v3240 storage, 1TB cache, 600GB 15k drives Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 with Provisioning Server Desktops configured with 2 CPUs and 3GB RAM Citrix XenApp delivers applications to VDI desktops All Citrix servers built on XenServer 6.0 HP t5740e thin clients Citrix Netscalers for external access Silver Peak WAN accelerators at T1 locations QOS implementation to prioritize ICA traffic 5/18/2018

2-factor Authentication 5/18/2018

Virtual Desktop Deployment Part of Windows 7 and Office 2012 Deployment 2200 Users across 7 states VDI will be the preferred desktop delivery method for non-laptop users Base image contain Windows 7 Enterprise, Office 2010 Professional and basic plugins only All other applications are delivered with Citrix XenApp Goal is 40% adoption across entire user population by year end 2 Systems Engineers support Citrix infrastructure full-time, 2 part-time 5/18/2018

VDI Deployment Progress Used for Office 2010 training for all users. Used for Office 2010 compatibility testing. Provisioned BH Desktop assigned to 615 users (so far) for testing Used for application compatibility testing with Windows 7 across enterprise 130 users of Provisioned Desktop daily as primary desktop environment 40 users of Persistent Desktop daily as primary desktop environment Current environment built to support 550 concurrent users Can failover to secondary site for maintenance or DR. This site currently built to support 300 user desktops 5/18/2018

Questions? 5/18/2018