Cloud Technologies for Small Business
Kaviza VDI-in – a-box - virtualization for small businesses.
In one of our previous stories, we talked about the annual conference of Citrix Synergy, which took place in May of this year in San Francisco. The main topic of discussion at the conference was the development of personal, public and private clouds. On the eve of a new conference to be held this October in Barcelona, we offer a more detailed discussion on solutions for private clouds. Moreover, the purchase of Kaviza allowed Citrix Systems to expand its product portfolio by adding an inexpensive and high-quality VDI solution for small companies.
Virtualization allows you to reduce the cost of managing desktops, increase the level of security and business flexibility. However, many small and medium-sized businesses are hesitant to implement VDI solutions, arguing this is the high cost and complexity of deploying enterprise-class solutions in small companies.
Previously, Citrix had only one solution for transferring IT infrastructure from physical servers and desktops to their virtual counterparts - XenDesktop, originally developed for the corporate segment and not always 100% suitable for the needs of small and medium businesses. After the acquisition of Kaviza, the Citrix System VDI solutions line was replenished with an affordable and functional VDI-in-a-box product, targeted at small enterprises that require mostly virtual desktop of the same type.
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Compared to XenDesktop, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box simple and flexible solution is less demanding of its IT infrastructure, allowing the use of low-speed data transmission channels and simple, massive servers collected without any special requirements and purchased in regular stores and virtually any operating system on the client device. Maintenance and configuration of the complex does not require any special knowledge and skills from the administrator, and the company does not require a permanent administrator on staff.
Comparison of specifications of popular VDI solutions
The yellow frame highlights components that provide comparable functionality, and the red frame indicates elements not required when using the Kaviza solution.
Deploying a virtual desktop system based on Kaviza solution is also not difficult. A technician needs to “raise” one server, after which further configuration is carried out within the system, and adding a new server with the replication of all components between them happens automatically. Ease of configuration is provided by the grid technology, using which the administrator creates templates and performs settings on one server and then replicates the configuration and templates to other servers. The number of virtual desktops can vary from a few to a few thousand, and the maximum registered number of deployed virtual machines can exceed 5000.
Kaviza's VDI-in-a-box is not an enterprise-class product with limited functionality, performance and manageability, but a universal solution specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Kaviza's VDI solution operates on VMware hypervisors, Citrix and in the near future will also be able to work on Microsoft's hypervisor.
In terms of functionality and capabilities of working with multimedia data, Kaviza is almost as good as XenDesktop. To transfer multimedia content, both systems use the HDX protocol, which provides high performance and a full range of virtualization capabilities on any device from a laptop and thin client to a tablet PC. The use of the Citrix HDX protocol significantly reduces channel bandwidth requirements, allowing the use of low-speed data networks for transporting multimedia.
The main advantage of Kaviza over XenDesktop is the total cost of the entire system - the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution costs, on average, 60% cheaper than its corporate counterpart. In the conditions of austerity typical of small and medium-sized businesses, this factor is one of the most important.
The interesting features of the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system also include the ability to access from mobile devices (tablet PCs, smartphones) and support for various operating systems (Android, iOS). All that is required for work is a browser or a Java client. All this makes it easy and simple to integrate various mobile devices into the virtual environment, the wide distribution of which increasingly sets IT professionals a very nontrivial task: to provide the ability to work in a corporate environment on a mobile device and provide access not only to network resources, but also to the software while maintaining a high level of security. Such a task is most easily solved not by developing separate software for mobile platforms, but by implementing a virtual desktop system.
According to the developers of Citrix, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system is optimal for deployment in healthcare institutions, federal and local authorities, law firms, educational institutions (schools and universities), regional branches of banks and credit organizations, as well as in small manufacturing companies, i.e. wherever there is a need for remote access to virtual desktops of the same type, both human (administrators) and financial (IT budget) resources are limited.
The European version of the traditional Citrix Synergy conference on the development of virtualization and cloud computing technologies will take place on October 26 and 27 in Barcelona. We will definitely continue our story and highlight the new items that the company will present to the market.
In one of our previous stories, we talked about the annual conference of Citrix Synergy, which took place in May of this year in San Francisco. The main topic of discussion at the conference was the development of personal, public and private clouds. On the eve of a new conference to be held this October in Barcelona, we offer a more detailed discussion on solutions for private clouds. Moreover, the purchase of Kaviza allowed Citrix Systems to expand its product portfolio by adding an inexpensive and high-quality VDI solution for small companies.
Virtualization allows you to reduce the cost of managing desktops, increase the level of security and business flexibility. However, many small and medium-sized businesses are hesitant to implement VDI solutions, arguing this is the high cost and complexity of deploying enterprise-class solutions in small companies.
Previously, Citrix had only one solution for transferring IT infrastructure from physical servers and desktops to their virtual counterparts - XenDesktop, originally developed for the corporate segment and not always 100% suitable for the needs of small and medium businesses. After the acquisition of Kaviza, the Citrix System VDI solutions line was replenished with an affordable and functional VDI-in-a-box product, targeted at small enterprises that require mostly virtual desktop of the same type.
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Compared to XenDesktop, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box simple and flexible solution is less demanding of its IT infrastructure, allowing the use of low-speed data transmission channels and simple, massive servers collected without any special requirements and purchased in regular stores and virtually any operating system on the client device. Maintenance and configuration of the complex does not require any special knowledge and skills from the administrator, and the company does not require a permanent administrator on staff.
Comparison of specifications of popular VDI solutions
The yellow frame highlights components that provide comparable functionality, and the red frame indicates elements not required when using the Kaviza solution.
Deploying a virtual desktop system based on Kaviza solution is also not difficult. A technician needs to “raise” one server, after which further configuration is carried out within the system, and adding a new server with the replication of all components between them happens automatically. Ease of configuration is provided by the grid technology, using which the administrator creates templates and performs settings on one server and then replicates the configuration and templates to other servers. The number of virtual desktops can vary from a few to a few thousand, and the maximum registered number of deployed virtual machines can exceed 5000.
Kaviza's VDI-in-a-box is not an enterprise-class product with limited functionality, performance and manageability, but a universal solution specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Kaviza's VDI solution operates on VMware hypervisors, Citrix and in the near future will also be able to work on Microsoft's hypervisor.
In terms of functionality and capabilities of working with multimedia data, Kaviza is almost as good as XenDesktop. To transfer multimedia content, both systems use the HDX protocol, which provides high performance and a full range of virtualization capabilities on any device from a laptop and thin client to a tablet PC. The use of the Citrix HDX protocol significantly reduces channel bandwidth requirements, allowing the use of low-speed data networks for transporting multimedia.
The main advantage of Kaviza over XenDesktop is the total cost of the entire system - the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution costs, on average, 60% cheaper than its corporate counterpart. In the conditions of austerity typical of small and medium-sized businesses, this factor is one of the most important.
The interesting features of the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system also include the ability to access from mobile devices (tablet PCs, smartphones) and support for various operating systems (Android, iOS). All that is required for work is a browser or a Java client. All this makes it easy and simple to integrate various mobile devices into the virtual environment, the wide distribution of which increasingly sets IT professionals a very nontrivial task: to provide the ability to work in a corporate environment on a mobile device and provide access not only to network resources, but also to the software while maintaining a high level of security. Such a task is most easily solved not by developing separate software for mobile platforms, but by implementing a virtual desktop system.
According to the developers of Citrix, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system is optimal for deployment in healthcare institutions, federal and local authorities, law firms, educational institutions (schools and universities), regional branches of banks and credit organizations, as well as in small manufacturing companies, i.e. wherever there is a need for remote access to virtual desktops of the same type, both human (administrators) and financial (IT budget) resources are limited.
The European version of the traditional Citrix Synergy conference on the development of virtualization and cloud computing technologies will take place on October 26 and 27 in Barcelona. We will definitely continue our story and highlight the new items that the company will present to the market.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/129828/
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