VDI with Workspot and HC3
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One of the questions we often get for our HC3 platform is, “Can it be used for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)?” Yes, of course, it can. In addition to solutions we support like RDS or Citrix, we are very excited about our partnership with Workspot and their VDI 2.0 solution. But first, I want to explain a bit about why we think VDI on HC3 makes so much sense.
VDI greatly benefits from simplicity in infrastructure. The idea behind VDI is to reduce both infrastructure management and cost by moving workloads from the front end to the bank end infrastructure. This makes it much easier to control resource utilization and manage images. HC3 provides that simple infrastructure that from box to running VMs takes less than an hour. Also, the entire firmware and software including hypervisor can be updated or scaled out with additional capacity without downtime. Your desktops will never be as highly available as on HC3. Simple, scalable, and available are the ideas HC3 is built on.
So why Workspot on HC3? Workspot brought together some of the original creators of VDI to reinvent it as a next generation solution.The CTO of Workspot is one of the founding engineers to code the VMware View VDI product! What makes it innovative though? By leveraging cloud management infrastructure, Workspot simplifies VDI management for the IT generalist while supporting BYOD for the modern workplace. Workspot on HC3 can be deployed in under an hour, making it possible to deploy a full VDI solution in less than a day.
We did validation testing with Workspot on HC3and were able to run 175 desktop VMs on a 3-node HC1150 cluster using LoginVSI as a benchmark for performance. We also validated an 3-node HC4150 cluster with 360 desktops with similar results. You can see a more detailed description of the reference architecture here. By adding more nodes, and even additional clusters, the capacity can be expanded almost infinitely but more importantly, just as much as you need, when you need it. We think these results speak for themselves as positioning this solution as a perfect fit for the midmarket, where HC3 already shines.
Maybe you’ve been considering VDI but have been hesitant because of the added complexity of having to create even more traditional virtualization infrastructure in your datacenter. It doesn’t have to be that way. Workspot and Scale Computing are both in the business of reducing complexity and cost to make these solutions more accessible and more affordable. Just take a look and you’ll see why we continue to do things differently than everyone else.
Click here for the press release.
