The Best 8 Free and Open Source Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software

Published on :September 27, 2019
By :Andrea Hernandez

If you are running a business that demands remote working and if you are open to giving the users access to your desktop from anywhere, then the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) technique is the right choice. The virtual desktop solutions will provide you centralized management, high agility and availability, better security, and compatibility of the legacy applications.

How Is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software Critical to Your Business?

All sizes of businesses aim to pick up better operational efficiencies and simultaneously reclaim control over their expenditures. If the companies make use of VDI software, then they can efficiently use their hardware.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure technology allows hosting of an entire desktop operating system on a centralized server. Based on the available hardware resources, a single server can run multiple virtual desktops.

The VDI technique will serve as a real game-changer to your business in the following ways:

how is virtual  desktop infrstructure sofware critical to your business

Key Features of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 

Key features of VDI software are as follows:

features of virtual desktop infrastructure software

What is the reason behind using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software?

VDI software is helpful due to the following reasons:

Reason behind virtual desktop infrastructure software Which industries benefit from VDI software solutions?

Which industries get benefited virtual desktop infrastructure software

Although you can utilize the services of any of the 8 best free and open source VDI software discussed below, Ace Cloud Hosting VDI deserves a special mention. A global leader in virtual desktop infrastructure management solutions and services, Ace Cloud Hosting VDI, is a one-stop solution for a secure VDI experience for your remote workforce. Its enterprise-grade solutions and high-performance VDI platforms are used worldwide for efficient remote workspace management. Let us discuss the features of Ace Cloud Hosting VDI in detail:

Ace Cloud Hosting VDI

Ace Cloud Hosting VDI is a high-end software solution that offers fully managed VDI services for all desktop-related activities, including implementation, design, scaling, management, software updates, and security. Created with the help of VDI technology, Ace Cloud Hosting VDI simplifies your IT management, enhances flexibility at work, drives cost savings, and increases productivity. 

Ace VDI offers virtual workspaces capable of handling complex workflows. It unleashes real-time collaboration, data backup, high-end security, remote access, and many more.VDI provides industry-specific solutions with pricing plans tailored according to individual business requirements. 

ACE cloud hosting software

(Source- Ace Cloud Hosting VDI)

Features:

  • Protected with a multi-layered security environment, endpoint protection, OS patching, intrusion detection, and antivirus management
  • High-Performance Computing (HPC) cloud with multi-generational DaaS infrastructure
  • Users can work on multiple graphic-intensive applications simultaneously without experiencing interruptions or lag in service
  • Multi-redundant and fault-tolerant infrastructure
  • Disaster data recovery plan  
  • ACE VDI Solutions work on both platforms: VMware Horizon and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 
  • Customized desktop configurations
  • Add or remove virtual desktops as required
  • All-device compatibility
  • Round the clock  customer support
  • Free consultation via call, chat, or email
  • 99.99% uptime on all applications
  • Proactive monitoring
  • Granular access to ensure compliance and secure virtual desktops
  • Ability to carry out cost benefit analysis

If you prefer to use open-source and free virtual desktop software, then here you will get the list of top-quality VDI software.

Let’s move ahead to know the insight of the free and open-source virtual desktop infrastructure solutions along with the comparison chart of the same.

Comparison Chart of Free and Open-Source Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 

comparision of best free and opensource virtual desktop infratructure software

Free and open-source Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software

#1 Red Hat Virtualization (Open-source, free for 60 days)

Red Hat Virtualization is the open-source virtual desktop infrastructure software that is easy-to-setup, manage, and use. This software will allow you to virtualize your data center more affordably.

It serves as cross-portfolio and cross-platform integration. This app is as good as bare-metal and provides industry-leading performance. The software allows businesses to gain insight and intelligence into the virtualized infrastructure. In the entire business environment, this tool helps in automating the processes. 

The app also facilitates networking services and storage. It is easy to gain workload performance efficiency,  agility, reliability, and scalability for virtualized resource-intensive and critical workloads.

It improves performance and reduces the cost of high-performing Linux workstations. Apart from other features, it can also accommodate easy migration and management of virtual machines onto hybrid cloud platforms.

Red Hat Virtualization(Source: Red Hat Virtualization)

Features: 

  • It visualizes any business-critical application with full confidence.
  • This tool provides a lower cost of virtualization solutions.
  • The apps running with Red Hat Virtualization tend to run faster.
  • Being open-source, it can integrate easily with existing business tools.
  • The intuitive tools allow you to start using this app quickly and automate migration from another vendor.
  • This app can easily create, start, stop, pause, migrate, and template single VMs in minutes or mass deployments in hours.
  • The single management component allows you to provision new VMs, clone the existing ones, and can observe how it works together.
  • It holds highly available resources and offers cross-platform support along with migration tooling.
  • Centralized management to standardize infrastructure deployment is another leading feature.
  • Self-service options
  • Ability to monitor health and performance of virtual machines

#2 Vagrant (Open source & free) 

If you are looking for the easiest and fastest way to create a virtualized environment, then Vagrant by HashiCorp is apt for you. It serves as the open-source VDI software that offers cross-platform support.

The tool works on Linux, Windows, Mac, and other platforms. You can effortlessly install this tool.  

The solution holds unified workflows. It is simple and powerful, so whether you are a developer, operator, or designer, you can easily enjoy and use this app. It is meant for everyone as it builds and maintains portable virtual software development environments.

This free virtual desktop infrastructure software offers easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments. In your organization, you can maximize the productivity and flexibility of yours and your team members too.

With most of the major hypervisors, together with VirtualBox, Hyper-V, and VMware, the Vagrant is compatible. Across teams, the Vagrant Cloud enables access, insight, and collaboration. Companies make use of Vagrant cloud in their workings.Vagrant Software

(Source: Vagrant)

Features:

  • Being cross-platform it works where you work. From the local laptop, the user can easily code in a text editor and edit images.
  • It automates the development environments of the developers, operators, and designers in lightweight and reproducible ways. 
  • In a single workflow, it builds and manages virtual machine environments. 
  • With a unified workflow, this app believes in enhancing consistency.
  • It holds the declarative configuration file along with configuration management tools.
  • Can mirror production environments
  • Architecture mapping for Windows
  • Network capability configurations
  • Guest detection module import

#3 Xen Project  (Free and open-source)

Xen Project  is the open-source VDI software that is extremely versatile and customizable. This free virtual desktop software brings everywhere the power of virtualization due to its unique architecture.

It supports multiple guest operating systems like Linux, Windows, NetBSD, and FreeBSD. This app offers scalability, security, flexibility, modularity, reliability, and multi-vendor support. 

The solution supports multiple cloud platforms – CloudStack and OpenStack.

For large, critical, and extremely secure environments, this tool allows scalability, security, and robustness. The architecture of this app is modular.

xen hypervisor ui

(Source: Xen Project)

Features:

  • This app holds multiple guest operating systems and numerous cloud platforms support.
  • It provides Xen security modules for secure use-cases.
  • This open-source app offers multi-vendor support. The end-users have numerous places and service providers to work with.
  • With full control on the direction of code, there is maximum flexibility along with modular architecture.
  • It enables virtual machine migration. The workloads can be protected on the servers.
  • Security features like KCONFIG and Virtual Machine Introspection
  • Tailored virtualization
  • Paravirtualization to avoid extra overhead costs
  • Driver isolation to ensure crashed and compromised VM drivers doesn’t impact the whole system

#4 OpenVZ (Free and open-source)

OpenVZ, the open-source virtual desktop infrastructure software is container-based virtualization for Linux. If Linux is installed on your machine, then this free virtual desktop software is easy to install.  

On a single physical server, this tool offers better server utilization and ensures that applications do not conflict. This app includes OpenVZ Kernel and user-level tools that are licensed under GNU GPL.

The site administrators can deploy multiple and independent instances of an operating system on a web server with this container-based virtualization solution. The containers in this app can perform like a stand-alone server.

OpenVZ software (Source:OpenVZ)

Features:

  • This app provides container virtualization, and each container acts as an independent system.  
  • The layer of network virtualization is designed to isolate containers from each other and from the physical network.
  • OS templates are used to populate one or more containers. These templates act as the set of packages from some Linux distribution.
  • The resources are controlled in Virtual Private Servers with the help of OpenVZ resource management.
  • In general or for every container, this app allows flexible configuration among various settings.
  • Dynamic resource sharing for efficient utilization
  • Ability to reboot containers independently
  • Support Vagrant to easily run virtual environments
  • Seamlessly scale the creation, management, and expansion of containers as per business growth

#5 Oracle VM VirtualBox(Free and open source)

Are you looking for a free and open-source cross-platform application for creating, running, and managing virtual machines, then Oracle VM VirtualBox can meet your requirements. This app uses the virtual drive format that allows users to run programs in a high-speed virtual environment.  

For the enterprise as well as home use, this app is an excellent virtualization product. This cross-platform tool allows running multiple operating systems. It holds the capacity to manage several virtual machines and the users can enjoy the flexibility.

Oracle VM Virtual Box(Source: Oracle VM VirtualBox)

Features:

  • It is a portable solution and can run on any operating system.
  • This cross-platform virtualization runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris hosts, and other guest operating systems.
  • This costless software is released under the GNU license. The user can enjoy full access to the functions of this app.
  • With the host system this app streamlines the communication. It believes in guest enhancements.
  • It is easy to save the current state of the virtual machine due to the snapshots feature of the virtual machines.
  • It offers remote machine display and excellent hardware support.
  • Import/Export virtual machines
  • Multi lingual supporting Turkish, Indonesian, Italian and other languages
  • Automatically upgrade guest additions via Devices menu
  • Modernized UI functionality
  • Performance dashboard
  • Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack to enhance functionalities

#6 VMware Horizon Cloud (Free trial)

Horizon Cloud is another prominent virtual desktop infrastructure software that delivers published applications and desktops on a single integrated VDI platform. It offers a simple and efficient approach to deliver, protect, and manage virtual desktops and apps. From anywhere and anytime, the end-users can work with the help of this tool.

For every need, this app delivers simple and cost-effective desktop and application virtualization. It serves as the leading platform for virtual desktops and applications. This solution supports usability, centralized control, scalability, and security. Across devices and locations, this tool provides a consistent user experience. In the data center, it keeps the corporate data compliant and securely stored.

vmware horizon cloud ui

(Source: VMware HorizonCloud)

Features:

  • Across multiple data centers, it quickly delivers Windows and Linux resources at scale.
  • It offers smart policies with streamlined networking, automated intelligence, and threat protection.  
  • With a single digital workspace, the end-users hold easy access to virtual desktops and published applications.
  • The extreme blast performance delivers an immersive and feature-rich user experience for end-users, across devices, locations, media, and network connections.
  • It believes in improving the user experience by easily monitoring the performance, setting up alerts, and remediate issues.
  • It delivers a better user experience of Skype for businesses and helps in improving productivity at lower costs.
  • Real-time application delivery and lifecycle management
  • Advanced management features for App Volumes and DEM Enterprise
  • Multi-tenant, cloud-scale architecture
  • Cloud-native design to quickly manage desktop and app virtualization

#7 QVD (Open-source)

QVD is another prominent VDI software that is widely used by businesses owing to its unmatched security, flexibility, customizations, and cost savings in virtual desktop infrastructure management. It is trusted by over 30,000 current users to effectively manage their on-site and cloud desktop services. For a convenient and seamless virtual desktop infrastructure management experience, it offers a responsive and user-friendly interface, multi-administrator support, multiple languages, customized views, disk image tag management, property management and visualization, disk image blocking/unblocking, multi-tenant management, style customizations, and much more. The software also comes with a Web Administration Panel to easily configure, update, and manage virtual machines as well as their content, provide filter controls, and remotely turn on/off virtual machines.

qvd ui

(Source: QVD)

Features:

  • High-density desktops with high availability
  • Self provision of users and virtual machines
  • Multi-platform support including iOS, Windows, Android, OS X, Linux, etc.
  • Multiple authentication methods including LDAP and Active Directory
  • Instant Data recovery 
  • Nutanix Ready AHV to deliver high-density Linux Desktops
  • USBIP feature for USB devices management
  • Graphics hardware acceleration for improved performance

#8 Ravada VDI (Open-source and free )

Ravada VDI is another leading free and open source virtual desktop infrastructure software through which users can seamlessly connect with virtual desktops. Only a web browser and a remote viewer supporting spice protocol are required to connect, deploy, and run virtual machines in a few minutes. It comes with a simple and easy to use interface to manage and access virtual machines. This software is highly scalable, ensuring users can add new hypervisors to the framework whenever required.

ravada vdi ui

(Source: Ravada VDI)

Features:

  • LDAP and SQL authentication
  • Remote console access
  • Snapshot management
  • Manage multiple VMs from a central interface
  • Virtual machine cloning for each and every user
  • Create KVM virtual machines through ISO images
  • Supports server monitoring
  • Ability to extend guest disk space in both Linux and Windows
  • Ravada weblate repository to localize and translate content

The above mentioned free and open-source virtual desktop software offers promising solutions. However, if you are not satisfied and looking for better and popular solutions, the following section will discuss some of the major VDI solutions that are rapidly gaining popularity across various industries.

Popular Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software

V2 Cloud

With over 25,000+ active users, V2 Cloud stands as a secure and reliable virtual desktop infrastructure software to quickly deploy and manage virtual desktops in just a few clicks. Through a single panel or dashboard, users can access cloud resources, billing, security, user controls, backups, etc., with full administrator access permissions. Features like daily backups, real-time malware protection, RDP access, Active Directory integration, IPsec VPNs, storage buckets option, etc., make it a perfect choice for modern desktop virtualization functions. Apart from these, this software also supports multi-monitor, microphones, cameras, printers, single/multi-user desktop deployment, Raspberry Pi app, etc. It is free to use for 7 days, after which premium plans start from $40/month, billed annually.

CompleteCloud

When it comes to advanced VDI software with robust capabilities, Avatara’s CompleteCloud is a top-notch solution to strengthen security, enhance productivity, scale, and smoothly scale virtual desktop infrastructure. Through a centralized user interface, businesses can deploy dedicated virtual desktops to each employee at the workspace, set permissions for user access, and customize individual desktop images. Artificial intelligence capabilities with self-healing, automated proactive support, pre-support engagement diagnostics, anomaly monitoring, and user productivity tips also come equipped with this tool. Managed security, unified communications suite, integration with Avatara Connect, and many more features are also available to effectively manage remote virtual desktops.  A customer portal is also available to track orders, cases, projects, real-time resource manager, user productivity metrics, and various other aspects of the virtual desktop infrastructure.

Inuvika OVD Enterprise

Another popular VDI software in this list is Inuvika OVD Enterprise, a cost-effective solution to create secure virtual desktops and workspaces. Some major features include comprehensive security, simplified management through a central web-based console, RDP support, linked clones creation, on-demand scaling, resource adjustment, etc. Besides other features, its multiple delivery modes feature is a popular one that allows businesses to select the most convenient format for their end users, thus reducing the support. Integration with other notable virtualization platforms like Nutanix, VMware, Microsoft Hyper V, Zadara, OpenStack, Amazon AWS, and many more is supported. The premium pricing packages start from $9.50 per concurrent user/month.

Amazon WorkSpaces

Amazon WorkSpaces offers secure, managed, and cloud-based virtual desktop experience. It serves as the complete cloud-based virtual desktop service that can smoothly work on Windows and Linux. Being scalable, it becomes easy to. Through this scalable solution,  businesses can easily manage data and applications, simplifies desktop delivery, reduces costs, controls the desktop resources, keeps the data secure, and delivers information to multiple devices. For remote, mobile, and contract employees, this app provides secure cloud desktops. This software also makes it easy for the IT teams to decommission secure WorkSpaces with this app which in turn helps them to keep up with the changing organizational structures. The developers can also scale desktops for the purpose of software testing and development.

Industry-wise List of Top Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software for the Manufacturing Industry

At present, there is a dire need for the manufacturing industry to accelerate digital transformation. For this, they can rely on virtual desktop infrastructure solutions that can help them dump physical desktops and migrate to cloud-based virtual desktops. Migration to virtual desktops help manufacturers centralize management, reduce costs, rapidly deliver applications, gain unprecedented security, and ensure on-demand scalability. Following are the top VDI software for the manufacturing industry;

NetScaler

NetScaler, formerly Citrix ADC, is one of the best manufacturing VDI software to bolster security and performance of the virtual desktop infrastructure. Whether on premises, fully cloud or hybrid infrastructure, NetScaler can be used to deploy applications and virtual desktops lighting-fast across all types of infrastructure. Small to large manufacturers can benefit from capabilities like high performance, comprehensive security, end-to-end observability, dynamic path selection, blind-spot detection, one-pass architecture, integration with Splunk, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, etc. This unique software can significantly optimize CPU efficiency, production throughput, and latency than other available VDI solutions.

Parallels RAS

Another leading VDI software for the manufacturing industry is Parallels RAS, a reliable solution to centralize manufacturing IT infrastructure, reduce production downtime, and maintain production targets. It is of utmost benefit to small to large manufacturers for publishing virtual applications, reducing IT complexities, securely accessing data, and cutting costs without sacrificing quality. This flexible software is designed for hybrid deployments, is compatible with leading hypervisors, and can be used from any browser or device. Apart from these, selective multi-monitor, user session pre-launch, peripherals support, dynamic scaling, multi-tenancy, built-in FSLogix support, user monitoring, access based on rule filters, etc., are a few popular features. Besides a 30-day free trial, the premium plans start from $120/concurrent user, billed annually. 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software for the Finance Industry

Virtual desktops are rapidly gaining momentum in the financial industry enabling users to achieve the highest security, prevent financial risks, and deliver a better user experience. To effectively manage these virtual desktops and infrastructure, financial institutions are actively implementing VDI software that are useful in enhancing security, strictly adhering to regulatory compliance, optimizing operational costs, reducing downtime, preventing insider threats, centralizing data, and do much more. Here are some of the major virtual desktop infrastructure software for the finance industry as follows;

vDesk.works

For the financial industry, vDesk.works is a standalone VDI software to securely collaborate and share financial data across virtual desktops. Financial institutions are increasingly relying on this VDI software to become more agile, work without IT distractions, effectively manage virtual apps and environments, and securely access virtual apps. Users can configure the vDesk.works to automatically delete virtual desktops that are not used frequently, ensuring optimized resource utilization and management. Web-based access, hardware repurposing, rotating IPs, backup and restore, disaster recovery, automation through PowerShell, session load balancing, remote support, etc., are a few notable features to help financial professionals can benefit from. 

Workspot

When it comes to modernized virtual desktop infrastructure solutions for the financial industry, Workspot is a unified digital workplace platform to simplify and streamline VDI management. Financial firms of all sizes and types can leverage this software solution to ensure zero-trust security, high performance of virtual apps, proper compliance, real time access, etc. In addition, comprehensive multi-cloud support, tailored configurations, enhanced resource optimization, intelligent just-in-time provisioning, and many more smart features are there to efficiently manage virtual desktop and application infrastructure. Apart from these, businesses can also manage their entire deployment lifecycle from this user-friendly software. 

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software for the Education Industry

In this digital age, educational institutions are also increasingly adopting VDI software to deliver seamless learning experiences. Moreover, virtual desktop infrastructure tools can also help with simplified desktop management, remote learning, efficient IT administration, and in maintaining secure and controlled access. Some of the leading VDI software for the education industry are as follows;

Netoyed

With over 40 years of market experience, and thousands of users since 2020, Netoyed has been helping educational institutions create a holistic learning environment by efficiently managing the physical as well as virtual IT infrastructure. Schools, K-12, and universities are actively implementing this next-generation platform to deliver uninterrupted learning irrespective of whether it is on-premises, remote, or hybrid infrastructure. Users can access the virtual desktops and application from anywhere and from any device. Enhanced security measures, scalability, cost effectiveness, centralized data storage, etc., effectively contribute to reducing downtime, optimizing costs, and improving productivity.

HiveIO

Trusted by over 1000s of businesses, HiveIO is a fully integrated VDI software to quickly deploy and scale virtual desktops, servers, storages,  and applications. This all-in-one and advanced  virtual desktop infrastructure software offers unmatched end user experience, intelligent resource utilization, scalability, in-memory storage, and much more to meet educational needs. KVM Hypervisor, fabric storage, access gateway, data protection, integration with Hive Sense, profile management, reporting, desktop and server workloads, and various other features are a few differentiators of this software from its competitors.

Closing Thoughts

With limited resources, it is tough to streamline the IT functions in your organization. The best way to overcome software obstacles is to make use of virtual desktop software in your work environment.

As an administrator, you can have access to remote desktops and operating systems in your business with VDI solutions. Additionally, the users can remotely access the virtual desktop. Without increasing costs, companies can employ free virtual desktop infrastructure software solutions. The employees can run multiple operating systems on the same data centre.

Hoping the list of free and open-source virtual desktop infrastructure solutions provided in this article allows you to understand the purpose of VDI and its various benefits.

If you want more advanced features of Virtual desktop software solutions for your business or organization, then you can refer to the list of popular virtual desktop infrastructure software solutions.

Feel free to share your reviews here.

If you are looking for other software categories, then click here.

Andrea Hernandez
Andrea Hernandez

Andrea Hernandez is a tech blogger and content marketing expert. She writes about disruptive tech trends counting blockchain, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things. Presently, as a senior writer, she is associated with GoodFirms, a pioneering B2B research, review, and rating platform. Follow her on social media for valuable information on the software.

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