This is really a blog post that is one long question…

Why are there no peer-to-peer VDI solutions? (or are there, and I haven’t found them)?

There are some big issues with large-scale Virtual Desktop Infrastructures. The biggest of which I know is the so-called “boot storm”, where everyone is requesting their images at once. This causes stress to the link from the desktops to the server and on the server’s IO channels.

There are a few workarounds that people use, such as staggering boot times or throwing more spindles/SSDs at the problem, but I’ve never heard of a solution where hosts in the same classroom could disseminate the image to their peers.

It wouldn’t be hard to verify security — it could be verified by a centrally-distributed hash. I/O at the central server wouldn’t suffer NEARLY as much, since it would only need to fullfill the request once per logical grouping of clients, which could then seed themselves similar to torrents.

Am I missing something big, or is there just nothing like this? If it’s a good idea and no one has implemented it, feel free to give me full credit ;-)