Re: I guess
"For those who do really want to play in the DaaS space, build a decent Terminal Services/RDS setup and leave it at that - it's far less work, provides pretty much the same user experience and is much more efficient on server/storage resources."
Until you run into licensing issues with any number of applications. Or some application crashes in one user session and either tanks the whole server or at least crashes the app in all user sessions on that machine. Or one user manages to overcome even Microsoft's latest and greatest "noisy neighbor" protections, rendering the entire system unusable for all users. Or until a single configuration error tanks a server for all users...
Please, RDS as the solution to all ills is a Microsoft sales pitch used primarily because Microsoft is terrified that if people can ever actually afford to proper endpoint VDI then they will lose their "windows on every endpoint" monopoly. People will buy Android devices and just RDP in to consume Windows for legacy apps and use modern device local stuff for everything else.
Oh wait, I see this every day.
VDI done right is bloody easy today. VMware's Horizon 6.0 Suite makes all of the bits for proper VDI so simple a lobotomized chimp could do it. That includes packaging your apps into individual VMDKs and attaching them on an as-needed, policy-driven approach to golden master/spawned child disposable VMs.
Or you can go the "static, dedicated" route for VDI, which I also have extensively deployed. They work like a hot damn for just about everything, and Liquidware Labs will solve any/all of your profile-related ills. Either in a VM or on a desktop. Or switching between the two.
VDI is easy today. And it gets easier every day. That's why it's such a threat to Microsoft and why they so viciously protect their extortionate monopolistic pricing. Microsoft licensing if the roadblock to VDI, not the ancillary technologies that compensate for Microsoft's shitty - and downright insane - design decisions in the creation of their endpoint OS.
Microsoft's engineers have been defeated. But the industry may never defeat their lawyers.