White Paper Converged Infrastructure: End-to-End Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Transcription

1 White Paper Converged Infrastructure: End-to-End Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

2 Contents Executive Summary... 3 The Data Center Landscape... 4 The Challenge of Storage... 5 Commodity Servers... 6 Simplification and Convergence... 7 The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance... 8 End-to-End Solutions... 9 Innovative Client Solutions SUMMARY About NCS Technologies

3 Executive Summary Data centers are the back office IT brains of many organizations. Yet data centers continue to house aging infrastructure that is costly to maintain and ponderous to operate. IT managers are seeking a fresh, new way to reduce complexity and costs. At the heart of the data center are compute, storage and networking equipment that power the most critical enterprise applications such as forecasting, resource planning, order tracking, inventory management, procurement, human resources management and sales automation. Administrators have taken various approaches to expansion and modernization. Many organizations have relied on top tier vendors for a reference architecture who charge premium pricing and effectively implement a system administration lock in. Other managers have gone with best of breed solutions, which can present a potential nightmare of complicated configuration and planning decisions. In both IT scenarios, cost and complexity rise dramatically In this environment, visionary companies are offering convergence options to dramatically improve system utilization, performance and cost of ownership. The good news is that organizations do not have to be budget-rich Fortune 50 web services companies to still be able to invest in the most attractive, next-generation solutions. If implemented, converged infrastructure will make immediate contributions to simplification, cost savings and performance improvements. Analysts and the media are calling data center convergence literally the next big thing

4 The Data Center Landscape Data centers - a sophisticated collection of servers, appliances, firewalls, gateways, devices and systems - are the back office IT brains of many organizations. While futuristic images of rows of rack-mounted appliances dominate trade media and marketing imagery, researchers say that in reality many data centers continue to house aging, older-generation infrastructure that is expensive to acquire, unnecessarily complex to administer, costly to maintain and ponderous to operate. These challenges are amplified by the need to keep up with the explosive growth of data files. Add the drivers of continuing virtualization (both in the data center itself and at the client), surging video traffic, BYOD plus the wide array of popular enterprise use cases and growth and modernization strategies become even more complicated for the IT administrator. While the cloud will play a growing role in the evolution of the data center, many drivers such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) will likely ensure that significant data center resources will remain private and localized into the foreseeable future. Finally, IT managers have struggled with a practice of buying premium-branded, expensive hardware with proprietary software that served as an architecture lock-in to premium brands such as Cisco, Dell, HP and others. Recently, the trends of convergence, hyper-convergence and web-scale converged infrastructure have emerged from smaller players promising a fresh, new way to reduce complexity and costs

5 The Challenge of Storage It is estimated that the world's data is doubling every two years, and the outlook is that enterprises will have to deal with 50 times more data and 75 times more files in the next decade. As mentioned, many IT administrators have generally settled on buying hardware and software from a familiar group of branded vendors and as needs arise added more powerful servers, higher-capacity storage and higher performance networking nodes. In practice this meant a lock in of buying expensively-branded hardware and proprietary software. With the explosion of enterprise data applications over the past two decades, poorly planned, incremental growth and the emergence of silos has added to complexity, inefficiency and unnecessary expense. Storage of all that new data is often called the most critical function in the data center. Legacy network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) block storage systems have dominated the market. But storage systems have faced constraints with capacity and manageability. In older architectures, capacity constraints have been addressed by a scale-up strategy where two controllers shared the workload with the redundancy of the storage controllers providing failover protection. Scale was achieved by adding disks and shelves. The addition of more processors and memory helped address performance issues. This silo-type architecture has proved difficult to manage in the era of unstructured data, virtualization and cloud computing. Looking ahead, disruptive, next generation storage solutions based on flash SSD (solid state devices, or memory-based storage, rather than rotating disks with flying heads) are getting wide attention and are being widely implemented today. Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) are significantly higher with lower latency but pure flash SSD solutions are very expensive and analysts have noted that SSD storage is often being poorly implemented, with precious IT budget wasted. Also, IT administrators are looking at a new breed of storage arrays, sometimes called hybrids, which blend the high performance of SSD with the lower cost of rotating disk. Hybrid arrays offer a good price-performance ratio, but not all applications work well with them

6 By implementing the latest disruptive storage technologies, incremental growth or additions may still lead to an inefficient or silo-based data center architecture. Wouldn t it be nice to just get rid of the networked storage arrays through convergence? Next, we consider the compute part of the data center equation. Commodity Servers Many IT administrators consider the traditional x86 server appliance to be the least complicated, hard-core commodity component in their data center. These machines are thought to generally deliver similar performance, availability, memory capacity and energy efficiency at attractive price points. For years many vendors have tried to differentiate their products through price and improvements in memory capacity, security features and energy efficiency. While it s understood that vendors will always attempt to differentiate their products by promoting their brand, memory capacity, system management, energy efficiency or security capabilities, the goal of IT administrators remains to invest in the most efficient and costeffective platforms (blade, rack or tower) matched to the needed applications. And while the server buying decision may appear to be the least complicated aspect of the data center architecture, as we have noted, IT administrators waste resources in the implementation of virtualization strategies. As is frequently documented, implementation of virtualization leads to server resources that are in significantly underused, wasting money, spaces and energy

7 Simplification and Convergence In this era of high cost and complexity, visionary companies competing with the largest vendors are offering data center convergence options to dramatically improve architectures and performance and deliver savings. The good news is that organizations do not have to be Fortune 50 web services companies or have tens of millions of dollars to invest in IT technology to still be able to invest in the most attractive, next-generation solutions. If implemented, converged infrastructure will make immediate contributions to simplification, cost savings and performance improvements in the data center environment. Analysts and the media are calling data center convergence literally the next big thing. What is converged infrastructure? It is the combination of server/compute, storage and networking infrastructure, plus convergence software, into one enterprise data center appliance. This architecture taking advantage of highly cost-effective commodity hardware promises to deliver a highly scalable, cost-efficient implementation that needs little configuration. Systems are in effect pre-tested and easily deployed. Customers can deploy a single appliance, or scale both capacity and performance by clustering the hardware. Cost of operation can be greatly reduced, with ongoing support and maintenance a breeze compared to mix and match product implementations. This approach is also sometimes called hyper-converged infrastructure in the media and analyst reports

8 The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance Typically, as we ve previously described, at the heart of a converged strategy is the converged appliance solution, bundled with management software, which combines server, storage and network infrastructure. Converged appliances are implemented in nodes, with each node equipped with key hardware resources: compute, storage and networking. At this appliance level, application load is distributed across multiple nodes. The image below shows a specific example of a VDI node: Besides all the administrative benefits we ve described, the converged appliance approach delivers a range of performance benefits and resource savings

9 End-to-End Solutions Turnkey solutions may also bundle the client end, including virtual desktops and mobile virtual laptop solutions. With a turnkey VDI solution, IT administrators can effortlessly deploy and manage hundreds of zero clients while scaling the data center in the most cost-efficient manner. In a turnkey solution now available from NCS Technologies, an end-to-end VDI architecture is offered that delivers market-leading technologies integrated to deliver the highest performance in the smallest footprint. COTS hardware scales linearly with performance without service disruption as resource demands grow. Highly skilled engineering and support is provided throughout installation and into day-to-day service

10 Innovative Client Solutions NCS Cirrus LT, the Industry First Zero Client Laptop This innovative mobile zero client laptop delivers the full desktop user experience. Complete with docking station, battery and Wi- Fi capability, Cirrus LT represents a whole new level of computing innovation. Cirrus LT uses Teradici PCoIP technology and is compatible with VMWare Horizon View, delivering a highly secure, highly efficient experience. NSA Suite B ciphers and AES-256 encryption ensure maximum security. Cirrus LT can move around an office building or go along on business trips new with zero client computing. Cirrus TZ Family Desktop Zero Client For those needing a zero client desktop, the Cirrus TZ family enables the consolidation of all IT resources into the data center while delivering an uncompromising user experience to each desk. Like its cousin, the Cirrus LT laptop, the Cirrus TZ desktop has no hard drive, no OS, no local storage, no persistent user data and no antivirus needed. The Cirrus TZ family will serve up to two displays or up to four displays, depending on configuration. It runs quietly, reduces IT administration and costs, provides excellent security and improves efficiency

11 SUMMARY Your choice of converged infrastructure will deliver a new generation of administrative efficiency, reduced cost, increased performance and lower cost of ownership. For more information on the NCS converged solution, please contact Joe Guest, NCS Vice President, Sales, at (703) , jguest@ncst.com, or your NCS sales representative. About NCS Technologies NCS Technologies is a leading domestic computer manufacturer located in Gainesville, VA. NCS offers an end-to-end portfolio of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), including a new data center appliance, network management software, desktop zero clients and the zero client laptop PC. For enterprises and government, this turnkey virtual solution reduces costs, improves security and eases IT administration. NCS also offers a full range of computing solutions including commercial-off-the-shelf laptops and desktops and custom-built high-performance servers for use in corporate networks as application delivery platforms. For more information, please go to. NCS Technologies, Inc. is registered to ISO 9001:2008 (quality management) and ISO 14001:2004 (environmental management). This status is the manifestation of our commitment to quality excellence and environmental stewardship. NCS is a Small Business NCS is Minority Owned CAGE Code: 1BEK6 DUNS: EIN: ORCA Registration Complete (Sept 2014)