IDC predicts that by 2018 approximately 40B devices including those carried by 3.8B mobile users will produce about 6.75TB of data per person a day! Likewise, the entry of untrusted devices, multiple OS’s, and consumer-oriented applications into what used to be a controlled IT environment creates an onslaught of potential security holes and governance nightmares.
Virtual Client Computing (VCC) has long held the promise of easing the delivery of desktops and applications to business users in an efficient and secure way, while also reducing operational costs. However, when attempting to centralize and run desktop/app workloads in the datacenter, IT often struggles with the complexity of designing, implementing, and managing the infrastructure required to operate a high-availability virtualized client environment. The inability to address these challenges can directly impact end-user experience, adoption, and ultimately the success of the implementation. Likewise, we often find that, when not properly planned and designed, VDI deployments begin to either stall or fail once they being to reach approximately 1,000+ users in production due to network and storage performance degradations.
I invite you to read the IDC Analyst Connection, sponsored by VCE, where I discuss recent trends and advancements in converged infrastructure and VCC technologies that stand to enable organizations to optimize virtual client computing. Topics include:
- End-user computing trends IT organizations should be aware of and/or plan for
- Key changes in VCC software
- Common technology challenges in planning and/or designing a virtualized end-user computing environment
- Options to efficiently and effectively scale the supporting infrastructure and reduce total cost of ownership
- How to optimize ongoing performance and quickly mitigate service degradations, particularly as scaling requirements increase
There are several key benefits of converged infrastructure-based offerings that are making these systems increasingly become a preferred platform for VCC rollouts. For instance, converged infrastructure systems allow the supporting virtual desktop infrastructure to be easily tuned to the size appropriate for a given organization. This helps IT avoid “VDI stall” and deliver service to thousands of users across multiple device types and geographies.
I find it’s key to take the entire data center architecture into account when considering VDI solutions on converged infrastructure. For instance:
- Consider current data center design as well as future aspirations to operate a more traditional or software-defined environment (or a hybrid mix of the two).
- Evaluate the full range of converged infrastructure systems (e.g., block, rackscale or appliance) to determine which flavor best aligns with datacenter requirements.
- Seek solutions that stand to streamline and optimize your IT environment, such as a storage-area network (SAN) that provides fast response times, remains highly responsive under heavy workloads, and scales to enterprise levels.
- Consider a VDI model where desktops are running in a centralized environment, as opposed to a highly distributed VDI model that relies on a WAN infrastructure, which can impact performance.
When properly designed, implemented, and managed, VCC running on converged infrastructure stands to enable the highly secure, reliable, and efficient delivery of business critical desktops, applications, and data to tens of thousands of users across varying device types.