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Citrix VDI and virtual desktop solutions from C24
May 13, 2013
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Application Hosting, Managed Service Hosting, Marketing, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Business, E-Commerce, Cloud computing, Citrix Systems, Xen, Information technology, Desktop virtualization, Citrix, specialist application, business applications, application hosting | 
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Posted by david ricketts
New HP VDI Reference Architecture Delivers Breakthrough Scalability with HP IO Accelerators
September 4, 2012With more than 1.1 billion mobile devices in use worldwide as projected by IDC, and the increasing need to access, manage and secure these devices and the data generated by them, HP recently announced a set of new offerings to help businesses update their infrastructure addressing requirements for their growing mobile workforce.
This includes a new virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) reference architecture that provides new scale and performance breakthroughs using HP IO Accelerators. As a proven and tested stateless architecture supporting 200 virtual desktops per host, running locally on HP IO Accelerators, this provides linear scalability from a single host to hundreds of hosts, and allows a modular approach for customers to scale out their virtual desktop infrastructure.
HP has been running a live demonstration of this client virtualization solution this week at VMworld 2012, in San Francisco. It’s available today and includes:
• HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 Server
• HP ioDrive2 IO Accelerators
• HP LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance Software (HP VSA)
• VMware View 5.1 Software
This highly flexible, cost-effective solution provides greater VM density with improved VDI economics for lower cost operations and higher productivity. Other key benefits include:
• Superior performance and an enhanced user experience
• Assured high availability (HA) and business continuity
• Ability to scale on-demand
• Simplified mobile desktop management
• Enhanced security and compliance
• Improved end-user access
To learn more about this new HP VDI reference architecture, the full HP Whitepaper and HP Solution Brief are available on hp.com.
For further information please contact http://www.c24.co.uk
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- Cisco in VMware’s Rapid Desktop Program: A Cost-Effective Approach to Deploy VDI at the Branch and for SMBs (blogs.cisco.com)
- How the cloud changes the virtual desktop landscape (computerworld.co.nz)
- What is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)? (lockergnome.com)
1 Comment | Application Hosting, Marketing, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Desktop virtualization, IDC, International Data Corporation, San Francisco, Scalability, Virtual machine, VirtualBox, VMware View | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
Best Practices for Deploying ioMemory in VDI Environments
July 23, 2012
Image via CrunchBase
Fusion Powered VDI servers deliver uncompromised I/O to support a guaranteed number of users at a far lower cost than centralized storage.
The benefits of Fusion-io for VDI are significant, and include the following:
- More virtual desktops per virtual server
- High performance even during peak loads
- Faster clone generation
- Low latency for faster end user desktop experiences
- Reduced reliance on expensive, complex external storage
- Lower overall cost per desktop
VMware View VDI environments are ideal for ioMemory. The figure below illustrates a Fusion Powered VDI architecture.
Figure 1. Example ioMemory and VMware View VDI architecture
Fusion’s Technical Guide 209 – Deploying ioMemory in VMware Environments provides information on how to use ioMemory, VMware View 5.x, and ESXi 5 in VDI configurations to increase desktop performance and density, while lowering costs. For example, you can provision 100 or more virtual desktop sessions per server, with the ability to scale overall installation nearly linearly by adding more servers — while minimizing external storage costs.
For more information please contact http://www.c24.co.uk
Related articles
- Fusion-IO Continues Its Path to Dominance in Storage Market (c24.co.uk)
- VDI and the “The Psychic Desktop” (c24.co.uk)
1 Comment | Application Hosting, Managed Service Hosting, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: centralized storage, Desktop virtualization, Fusion, Fusion - io, Physics, server, Virtual desktop, virtual desktops, VMware, Windows | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
VDI and the “The Psychic Desktop”
July 5, 2012Interesting post from the guys at fusion-io. The VDI solution is just amazing
In my last 15 years of designing and implementing storage solutions, I have seen and heard a lot of things — some good, some bad, and some pretty unusual. In one strange accident, a 180-slot tape library tumbled down a flight of stairs (not my fault!). Then there was $1 million SAN virtualization solution that caught fire at the first power-on because an electrician mixed up the cables in the 16A wall socket. I have also seen some poor design choices, like the customer who was running his virtual desktops from a high latency, low cost iSCSI solution because it was the only thing that would fit within his budget. The IT manager actually stopped having his lunch in the company restaurant for a few weeks because of all his complaining co-workers. These are exceptions, but they all started because of a small, bad decision.
In the storage world, people are used to measuring device latency in milliseconds. At Fusion-io, our device latency is just a couple of microseconds. Most users couldn’t care less about differences that small. It sounds ridiculous at first — 1/1000 of a second isn’t fast enough, so let’s build something hundreds of times faster. But when thousands of machines and processes start asking that storage device for data at the same time, it has an unbelievable impact. Anyone can build storage infrastructures with millions of IOPS, as long as you keep throwing racks and racks of hardware at it. But reducing latency calls for a change in the way we look at storage.
A few weeks ago, I was lost for words when I had a cup of coffee with an IT administrator who just migrated to a Fusion-io based VDI solution. He looked at me and said, “You guys have given us the psychic desktop. Thank you for that.” Not sure whether that was a good thing, I looked at him and asked him what he meant. He smiled and explained that one of his company’s users had come into the IT department to ask what they had done to his computer. The previous weekend, IT had migrated his virtual desktop from a storage array to the new Fusion-io based infrastructure. The user was very surprised. He said he had the feeling that his applications were opening so fast, it felt like the desktop knew where he was going to double-click before he actually did.
Over time, this employee got used to clicking on something and waiting for five or six seconds before something actually happened on his screen. He was shocked to see his complete Inbox in less than half a second after he clicked the e-mail icon. The user was convinced the company was running new software that gave his desktop some sort of future-telling capabilities. His question was actually serious, but at that moment, the IT department’s psychic desktop jokes were born.
Jerry Rijnbeek
Sales Engineer, Netherlands
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- Fusion – io helps with application time to market? (c24.co.uk)
3 Comments | Application Hosting, Managed Service Hosting, Marketing, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Desktop virtualization, Disk array, Fusion - io, IOPS, ISCSI, VDI, Virtual desktop, VirtualBox | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
Microsoft TechEd 2012 HP VirtualSystem for Microsoft
June 13, 2012
Image via CrunchBase
Fusion-io is excited to be heading to Microsoft TechEdnext week, where we’ll be showing off virtualization solutions in booth #135. The optimal virtual system has the right pieces to make a proper whole—hardware with resources tuned to the unique demands of virtual environments and software that allocates the right resources to virtual machines at the right time.
The TechEd 2012 labs demonstrates just how powerful such a system can be, with a live system that supports the following:
- Performance to support over 300 concurrent lab users running disparate workloads, including full System Center 2012 environments, complex SQL Server 2012 scenarios, SharePoint environments, and others
- Virtual environments comprised of 1-10 virtual machines using 2 -24GB of RAM
- Exceptional virtual environment performance for with host systems via a VirtualSystem free of processor, disk, and memory bottlenecks
All this from a 1-rack, 16-blade HP VirtualSystem for Microsoft, each with two Fusion Powered HP IO Accelerators added as an option.
Purpose-built HP VirtualSystem Hardware
HP VirtualSystem simplifies and extends HP Converged Infrastructure into optimized solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V-based server virtualization, delivering a complete, high-performance virtualized environment with pre-tuned server, storage, networking, and systems management, ideal for cloud deployments. HP VirtualSystem delivers agile and efficient virtualized application solutions that do the following:
- Eliminate performance bottlenecks with a balanced architecture optimized for virtualized application environments
- Simplify management, deployment and security across physical and virtual environments
- Provide the foundation for a private cloud with simplified upgrade to HP CloudSystem
Fusion Powered I/O Acceleration
Virtualization introduces an abstraction layer that makes even sequential I/O random. HP IO Accelerators, based on Fusion’s industry-leading ioMemory technology, eliminate this I/O bottleneck to fully utilize server CPUs, unleashing virtualization’s true potential. HP IO Accelerator benefits to virtual environments include the following:
- Increased virtual machine density and performance
- Enable simple, elegant, and cost-effective virtual environments
- More efficient use of infrastructure investment and utilization
- Reduction in infrastructure complexity, cost, and risk
Industry-leading Virtualization Software
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 provides a dynamic, reliable, and scalable virtualization platform combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources, enabling you to create an agile and dynamic data center with the following:
- Dynamic Memory to better utilize memory resources
- Server consolidation to reduce costs while retaining competitive advantage
- Business continuity, with features such as live backup and quick migration that help meet stringent uptime and response metrics
- Disaster recovery, with geographically dispersed clustering capabilities
- Testing and Development, with a self-contained environment that accurately approximates the operation of physical servers and clients
- Dynamic Datacenter, with features to create a dynamic IT environment that uses virtualization to not only respond to problems, but also to anticipate increased demands
- Desktop Deployment Options that expand Session Virtualization from delivering session-based desktops and applications to also enabling the delivery of virtual desktops in a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
Hyper-V is also a strong foundation to build highly flexible, scalable Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and SQL Server solutions. The added HP IO Accelerators highlight the advantages of using flash memory for accelerating associated Hyper-V performance and scaling virtualized environments.
Want to Learn More
Contact C24 at www.c24.co.uk
Related articles
- Why Your Business Should Consider Virtual Desktops (pctechmojo.com)
2 Comments | Application Hosting, Managed Service Hosting, Retail IT Solutions | Tagged: Central processing unit, Desktop virtualization, Hyper-V, IO Accelerator, Microsoft, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft SharePoint, Virtual Reality | Permalink
Posted by david ricketts
