Whitepaper Vertex VDI Tangent, Inc.
To the reader, As head of engineering at Tangent, I m responsible for our VDI solutions. This white paper is intended to provide useful information to help you investigate various approaches to implementing VDI in your network environment. If you are interested in learning more, Tangent offers VDI webinars, technical briefings and no risk pilot programs. Our 10 user VDI test beds provide a perfect way to test and refine your VDI deployment plans before proceeding to live network integration. I regularly conduct short technical briefings covering VDI best practices and will be happy to discuss the topic with you and your team. I hope you find this whitepaper informative. Best Regards, Ron Perkes Vice President, Technical Engineering Tangent Inc. Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 2 tangent.com
VDI DESIGN OBJECTIVES We introduced our first VDI solutions in early 2008 to find most customers were unable to justify implementing VDI because of high startup costs and complex infrastructure requirements. Our goals became to reduce the cost per seat of a VDI deployment by fifty percent and eliminate most of the complexity. Our aim was to extend VDI beyond pooled or cookie cutter deployments and provide IT staff the ability to allow users to customize their own personal virtual desktops by adding user installed apps and other desktop profile customizations. To simplify support, this ability to customize virtual desktops needed to be based on one gold master desktop image. Tangent s Vertex VDI solutions incorporate the design goals stated above. Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 3 tangent.com
HOW VERTEX DIFFERS Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 4 tangent.com
VERTEX BENEFITS SIMPLE CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT Manage your VDI deployment from a simple network admin screen. Complex VDI solutions require certified network engineers. Vertex can be managed by your current PC support staff. LOWER COST PER SEAT The total cost per seat is significantly lower than the cost for standard desktop deployments with the added benefit of lower support costs. BYOD, ios, ANDROID Vertex simplifies IT support for BYOD and mobile device management while providing users secure internal (or remote) access to their applications. ENERGY COST REDUCTIONS Energy efficient end points consume less than 5 watts of energy per hour reducing standard desktop energy consumption by ninety percent. More than fifty dollars per seat in annual energy savings can be achieved. PERSONALIZED VIRTUAL DESKTOPS Vertex supports personalized desktop profiles per user or user group. Userinstalled apps are supported. Vertex integrates seamlessly with Active Directory. Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 5 tangent.com
SINGLE INSTANCE MANAGEMENT Personalized and pooled desktops are built and managed using a single gold master image. This powerful capability is called Single Instance Management. EASY SETUP / DEPLOYMENT Vertex is a complete turnkey solution that eliminates the need for up to six standard VDI hardware components. This lowers your startup costs and simplifies network integration. HIGH AVAILABILITY Fault tolerance, load balancing, and failover provide a high availability VDI network. To add additional resources, simply add Vertex appliances to your existing grid. No downtime is required for patching or updating the grid. EXTEND DESKTOP REPLACEMENT CYCLES Vertex provides a warranted service life of up to five years on both the VDI appliance and end point devices. SOFTWARE UPDATES Moving to Win7 or Win8 takes less than one hour, without touching end points or upgrading to new hardware. IT uses the gold master image to apply the change and then propagates the change to all your virtual desktops at the next user login. THE VERTEX VDI SOLUTION VERTEX VDI APPLIANCE The Vertex VDI Appliance is the heart of Tangent s VDI solution. The Vertex appliance support up to 100 concurrent virtual desktop sessions and can be clustered. A 10 user VDI test bed is available for organizations that want to test usage cases prior to full network implementation. Vertex includes direct attached storage to optimize performance delivering more than 25 disk IOPs per virtual desktop. This is double the 10 15 IOPs specified by Citrix and VMware. This eliminates the cost of expensive SANs, NAS devices and connecting infrastructure. HDD, SSD, and hybrid arrays are used. Vertex supports dual data stores. Clustering enables Vertex to create a computing grid with auto load balancing and failover. Appliances of different sizes can be clustered together. The grid is modular and designed for easy expansion. Adding an additional appliance to the grid takes less than one hour. END POINT SAVINGS Successful VDI deployments require a well thought out end point strategy in order to best satisfy end user needs. Selecting the proper end point depends on such things as your graphics display requirements, form factor needs, peripheral support, mobility, connectivity, and budget. End points do not require optical drives, expansion slots, Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 6 tangent.com
or storage. Because the data processing occurs on the Vertex appliance, end points do not require powerful processors or large amounts of RAM. The end point device utilizes a slim operating system like Microsoft WinXP Embedded, Linux or a custom environment using a specialized processing platform known as a system on a chip (SoC). A broad range of tablets, pads, Macs, e book readers and smart phones with an RDP client can also be used. Legacy PCs and Macs can be utilized with their original OS by simply adding appropriate connection software. Recent advances in end points take advantage of system on a chip (SoC) technology designed for smart phones to bring down costs and dramatically reduce energy consumption, while still offering excellent graphics and rich media playback. Management software is included and models with dual display or built in WiFi are available. VDI SOFTWARE HYPERVISOR The hypervisor divides the resources of a powerful physical machine into a number of virtual machines that each behave as a standalone PC. Vertex can utilize the VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer or Microsoft Hyper V hypervisors. VERTEX CONNECTION BROKER (VCB) The Vertex Connection Broker manages the end user connections to a virtual machine. VCB assesses which virtual machine to connect to, provides load balancing, assigning a virtual machine session to an appliance that shows the greatest resource availability. VCB also moves a virtual machine connection to another appliance in the event of hardware failure (failover). VCB simplifies the creation and management of virtual desktops. Virtual desktops are pushed and patched through a simple admin console. DESKTOP PROVISIONING VCB provisions (allocates) the desired amount of memory and resources to a given virtual machine. It controls whether the virtual machine desktop is a follow me or persistent or kiosk mode desktop or standard desktop. Provisioning determines which users have access to which desktops. REMOTE ACCESS GATEWAY An optional RDP Remote Access Gateway enables ipads and other devices to easily access a virtual desktop. The remote access gateway also allows users to access a virtual desktop from outside the network. Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 7 tangent.com
GOLD MASTER IMAGE The gold master image is effectively the user s operating system environment which includes your standard software and network settings. Tangent helps you build and deploy a gold master image as part of our basic installation support. Tangent can also assist in the physical to virtual (P2V) conversion from a physical system that has already been configured for your environment, to be used as a gold master image. Vertex supports multiple gold master images. MICROSOFT WINDOWS LICENSE Virtual desktops running a Windows OS must be licensed through an authorized Microsoft reseller. Organizations that have a Volume Purchase Agreement, Enterprise Agreement, or Software Assurance can take advantage of substantial discounts. RETURN ON INVESTMENT Our experience has taught us that VDI projects are only approved when a clear cut ROI case can be made. One of the benefits of attending a VDI briefing is that Tangent will help you calculate your projected ROI using figures applicable to your installation. GETTING STARTED Transitioning to VDI is a big decision that begs larger questions such as: What is our future desktop strategy? Will virtual desktops provide all the capabilities our users require? How will VDI benefit my organization? Will VDI provide a significant reduction in desktop support? WHAT ARE THE TOTAL COSTS INVOLVED? Is there a clear ROI advantage? What are the risks? Tangent s goal is to make your transition as easy and risk free as possible. We assist customers in taking a slow, deliberate path to integrating VDI. We recommend attending one of Tangent s one hour VDI webinars. If you like the solution, you can order a 10 user VDI test bed to get started. The test bed helps you test use cases at your own pace. When the time comes to scale, you simply plug in a larger appliance and it replicates the test bed desktop images. A Tangent Account Executive can provide you with details on these programs Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 8 tangent.com
CONCLUSION Return on Investment for VDI can be precisely calculated and demonstrated in most instances. The Vertex VDI Appliance reduces costs by an average of 50% compared to other VDI solutions. A Vertex environment costs up to forty percent less in terms of total cost of ownership when compared to traditional desktop computing. For organizations that consider centralized desktop management to be the key reason to consider VDI, Vertex does a superior job of delivering simplified and centralized management. Existing PC support staff can manage Vertex virtual desktops. Infrastructure requirements, complexity, installation time and training are all significantly reduced. Desktops are managed via gold master images to simplify desktop support. Vertex allows organizations to quickly update software and migrate to new versions of Windows. Advanced profile management and desktop personalization allow users the freedom to personalize their desktop and satisfy a broader spectrum of use requirements. A remote access gateway extends access to users (mobile, etc) outside your network. New end point devices reduce energy costs by up to 90% when compared to traditional desktop PCs. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) support is provided for devices such as ipads and Android smart phones and tablets. Warranted service life of up to 5 years is available. We hope this whitepaper sparks your further interest in VDI. Tangent is happy to schedule a short technical webinar with you to discuss your current environment in detail, demonstrate our VDI solution and provide cost ROI detail to you. Let s discuss how you can start down a VDI path that saves money, simplifies management and avoids risk. Tangent Enterprise Solutions Page 9 tangent.com