V3 Appliance FAQ Why is the V3 appliance so effective as a physical desktop replacement? The V3 appliance leverages local solid-state storage in the appliance. This design allows V3 to dramatically reduce the unnecessary latency that accompanies many VDI approaches of the day. Keeping the OS and Temp disks on local storage allows the most active data to be as close to the computing resources as possible, providing unmatched performance. In addition to reducing storage latency by using local storage, reducing network latency is also a key objective in providing a replacement for physical desktop devices. What is a V3 Appliance? The V3 Appliance is a 2U server appliance that is purpose-built to provide desktop replacement virtualized desktops. The V3 solution can serve 50-200 virtual desktops on a single appliance. This approach dramatically reduces the footprint in physical hardware and networking that often accompanies VDI implementations. Deployment is simple and requires only that you install the V3 Appliance in a rack, plug it in, and configure networking into an existing VMware infrastructure. To ensure the best outcome, a pre-deployment survey is conducted, which enables pre-configuring the V3 appliance prior to shipment to the deployment location. What does a V3 Appliance provide? The V3 Appliance provides the hypervisor platform for running virtual desktops using VMware View. It provides all the local storage needed to run the virtual desktops. Network-Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN) is used to maintain user persistent data.
What exactly is a hypervisor? A hypervisor is an abstraction layer that sits between the hardware and the operating system of a virtual desktop. It enables virtualization by allowing the separation of the operating system from the physical hardware. The hypervisor software allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer concurrently. It is the hypervisor software that coordinates the low-level interaction between virtual desktops and the underlying physical computer hardware. How does the V3 Appliance provide cost savings? As a result of the dramatic performance achieved, and the high density of VMs per appliance, the V3 solution allows organizations to repurpose many of their investments to other parts of the organization. The V3 Appliance also dramatically increases IT management efficiencies and control, as well as dramatically reduces the costs associated with cooling and power consumption. How does the V3 solution differ from other VDI solutions? Many of the current VDI infrastructures rely heavily on shared storage and complex networking to provide their virtual desktops. The V3 appliance leverages local solidstate storage in the appliance. This design allows V3 to dramatically reduce the unnecessary latency that accompanies many VDI approaches of the day. This approach has also dramatically simplified deployments as well as the infrastructure needed to serve virtual desktops. V3 also features its Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (DCO) software to simplify managing virtual desktop environments. What does a typical V3 solution look like? A typical V3 deployment involves the following components, as illustrated in the diagram below. V3 s solution will leverage and integrate with any of these components that already exist within the customer s infrastructure.
Typical V3 Deployment
V3 Deployment Components Connection Server - Manages the distributed platform for running virtual user desktops using VMware View. Enables centralized and efficient management of the distributed enterprise virtual desktop platform. Server Network - Manages the networking communications for the V3 Appliances, which host the hypervisor platform. Microsoft Active Directory - Provides directory services for provisioning and authenticating users and systems. V3 Appliance Hosts the hypervisor platform for running virtual desktops using VMware ESX and other hypervisors. The V3 Appliance uses local solid-state storage to run the virtual desktops and store the OS and Temp disks, and can be optionally configured to store user data as well. Typically, two V3 Appliances are deployed in a failover configuration to ensure high availability. V3 Appliances can scale horizontally to meet current and future needs. Storage Network - Provides the communications between hosts and storage devices. Storage Array - Provides disk storage to maintain user data and session information. Depending upon the client s infrastructure, the storage array may be implemented using Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Storage Area Network (SAN) technology. vcenter Server - Hosts the software suite from VMware for vsphere and View Composer. How does the V3 Appliance work in a VMware environment? In a VMware environment, the V3 Appliance functions as the VMware ESX hypervisor host, which can serve from 50-200 virtual desktops on a single appliance. Do you support VMware only? Today, V3 supports multiple hypervisor platforms including VMware ESX, to effectively support 85-90% of all virtual desktops implementations on the market. In addition, V3 is compatible with many of the other third-party tools that manage, deploy, and provision
virtual desktops to a VMware ESX environment. Your V3 sales representative will be glad to provide you with additional detailed information on V3-supported products. How does your appliance fit into my existing environment? The V3 appliance plugs in seamlessly as another VMware ESXi host. In 25 words or less, what is the benefit of a V3 appliance? The V3 appliance accelerates virtual desktop performance; simplifies VDI installation, infrastructure, and management; and succeeds when traditional VDI solutions fail or cost too much. What is the main drawback of traditional VDI solutions? Traditional VDI requires specialized, expensive and proprietary storage infrastructure and redundancy, which results in too much complexity. Traditional VDI deployments require multiple vendors hardware, software and services. Traditional VDI deployments also have the reputation of delivering a poor end user, desktop computing experience. How does an Overland V3 solution differ from traditional VDI? Overland Storage delivers a completely customized, turn-key package including V3 VDI appliances, SnapServer NAS, SnapScale Clustered NAS, backup and archive applications and the unique ability to virtualize stubborn legacy applications with Glassware 2.0 application virtualizer. Overland with its partners also provides pre and post-sale services including architecting, pre-sales engineering, installation, training, consulting and customization.
What benefits can I expect from deploying a V3 appliance? A far better end-user computing experience with performance 2X to 8X better than physical desktop systems. Lower TCO over three to five years compared to managing and operating physical desktop systems Much greater, simpler capability for deploying, managing and securing large numbers of Windows desktops Enhanced flexibility to meet new and changing requirements Decreased total energy consumption and heat output What is the benefit of DCO software? Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (DCO) is V3 s comprehensive management solution for pool creation, management and policy-based administration of failover and reporting. DCO makes life easier for desktop administrators by eliminating the effort and training required to interface with traditional hypervisor administration tools. With DCO, everything desktop administrators need for day-to-day management of an organization s virtual desktops is aggregated into a single, centralized console. DCO automatically backs up persistent pools upon creation thereby enabling quick, seamless pool movement between V3 Appliances for flawless failover or maintenance. What is meant by the simplicity plus ease of management? MANAGEMENT: V3 appliances minimize the complexity and administrator technical sophistication required while dramatically simplifying management burden and training requirements with the Desktop Cloud Orchestrator VDI management console. INFRASTRUCTURE: Users choose the best storage to meet their needs, whether it is NAS, SAN or some combination of these two storage topologies. Local pools with local storage and with local replication deliver maximum uptime and business continuity without relying on WAN availability and bandwidth management.
Why should a small to medium size enterprise deploy a V3 appliance? The V3 architecture is far more economical for small to medium sized enterprises as well as departments in large enterprises. Traditional VDI deployments require thousands of desktops to deliver a compelling cost per desktop. What is V3 s most important competitive differentiator? The V3 architecture delivers higher performance compared to traditional VDI implementations by eliminating the inherent latency issues. V3 s DCO software also enables manual failover by administrators for continuous uptime and availability of desktop systems. What are the main problems a V3 appliance solves? Aging and obsolete desktop systems that are too expensive to upgrade or even maintain Lack of support for BYOD Overcoming past failed VDI implementations Solving the problems with traditional VDI o Unpredictable costs o Poor economies for deployments of less than 5,000 desktops o Latency and performance issues that inhibit adoption o Requires expensive and complex high performance infrastructure including SAN
What licenses are needed to use the V3 appliance? Overland Storage delivers a completely turn-key package including V3 VDI appliances and VMware licenses. If a user already has the required VMware software, they can reuse their licenses with V3 appliances. What makes your appliance different from just using VMware? V3 Appliances Unique Selling Proposition versus VMware V3 appliances enable a performance guarantee that VMware alone cannot offer. The combination of local storage, Optimized Data allocation and management tailored specifically for VDI make V3 a superior solution compared with VMware. Dramatic simplification of hardware, deployment, and management with lower costs Integrated Compute + Storage in the same chassis eliminates latency with better performance than physical workstations Superior Manageability with Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (DCO) Eliminates training requirements by combining and simplifying interaction with vsphere ODA feature manages and provisions desktop pools to enable replication, failover, and migration between public, private, and hybrid clouds What type of virtual desktop pools are supported used DCO? Linked clones are supported. A linked clone is a copy of a virtual machine that shares virtual disks with the parent virtual machine in an ongoing manner. This conserves disk space, and allows multiple virtual machines to use the same software installation.
Configuring linked closes (creating pools) are configured in minutes using a wizard-like tool. The advantage of linked clones includes efficient use of resources, simple setup and storage capacity savings. Is DCO available for any other VDI appliance? DCO currently supports V3 appliances, which are exclusively available through Overland Storage.