Great post. I've been looking for people sharing experiences like this for a while now. I must be sure to thank Chris Fraser @CoureurDeNuage for posting your blog on Twitter.

I agree,in a small part, with what David says above however; I feel solutions already exist to resolve most of the concerns his comment implies. For instance, there are agent-less security solutions such as Trend Micro's DSVA, as well as VMware vShield which will resolve most of those concerns.

The question I might have is what was the average boot times for end users and what impacts could users expect to experience as they ramp up to steady-state? Perhaps their session boots quickly, but can they open Outlook, a GIS solution and a complex linked spreadsheet without too much impact? With say 50 people doing such in a couple separate VLANs; who all is impacted? Or maybe there are no impacts?

I'm familiar with the VNX 5300 however; I'm curious how you designed the storage itself. Surely you are using an auto-tiered solution, but how was the storage provisioned? Thin/Thin Thick/Thin?

Again, thanks for the great post. And if you don't mind answering a few questions, then thanks again. ;)