Cloud Technologies for Small Businesses
Kaviza VDI-in – a-box - virtualization for small businesses.
In one of our previous articles, we talked about the annual Citrix Synergy conference, which was held in San Francisco this May. The main topic of discussion at the conference was the development of personal, public and private clouds. In anticipation of the new conference to be held this October in Barcelona, we propose a more detailed discussion of solutions for private clouds. Moreover, the acquisition of Kaviza allowed Citrix Systems to expand its portfolio of software products, adding an inexpensive and high-quality VDI solution for small companies.
Virtualization can reduce desktop management costs, increase the level of security and flexibility of the business. However, many small and medium-sized enterprises do not dare to implement VDI solutions, arguing that the high cost and complexity of deploying enterprise-class solutions in small companies.
Previously, to transfer IT infrastructure from physical servers and desktops to their virtual counterparts, Citrix had only one solution - XenDesktop, originally developed for the corporate segment and not always 100% suitable for the needs of medium and small businesses. After the acquisition of Kaviza, the Citrix System VDI product line has been expanded with the affordable and functional VDI-in-a-box product, aimed at small enterprises that require mostly the same type of virtual desktop.
Compared to XenDesktop, the simple and flexible Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution is less demanding on the IT infrastructure, allowing you to use low-speed data channels and simple, massive servers assembled without any special requirements and purchased in ordinary stores and almost any operating system on a client device. Maintenance and configuration of the complex does not require special knowledge and skills from the administrator, and the company does not require a permanent administrator on staff.
Comparison of the specifications of popular VDI solutions. The
yellow frame highlights the components that provide comparable functionality, and the red - elements that are not required when using the Kaviza solution
Deploying a virtual desktop system based on the Kaviza solution is also easy. A technician needs to “raise” one server, after which further configuration is carried out inside the system, and the addition of a new server with replication of all components among themselves occurs 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 several thousand, and the maximum registered number of deployed virtual machines can exceed 5000.
Kaviza VDI-in-a-box is not an enterprise-class product with limited functionality, performance and manageability, but is a universal solution specially designed for small and medium-sized enterprises. The Kaviza VDI solution runs on VMware and Citrix hypervisors, and in the near future will also be able to work on Microsoft's hypervisor.
In terms of its functionality and multimedia capabilities, 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 the 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 enterprises, this factor is one of the most important.
The interesting features of the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system also include access from mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) and support for various operating systems (Android, iOS). All that is required to 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 poses a very non-trivial task for IT specialists: to provide the opportunity to work in the corporate environment on a mobile device and provide access not only to network resources, but also to 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 Citrix developers, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system is optimal for deployment in healthcare institutions, federal and local governments, law firms, educational institutions (schools and universities), regional divisions of banks and credit organizations, as well as - in small manufacturing companies, i.e. wherever there is a need for remote access to the same type of virtual desktops and both human (administrators) and financial (IT budget) resources are limited.
On October 26 and 27, Barcelona will host the European version of the traditional Citrix Synergy conference on the development of virtualization and cloud computing technologies. We will certainly continue our story and highlight the new products that the company will present to the market.
In one of our previous articles, we talked about the annual Citrix Synergy conference, which was held in San Francisco this May. The main topic of discussion at the conference was the development of personal, public and private clouds. In anticipation of the new conference to be held this October in Barcelona, we propose a more detailed discussion of solutions for private clouds. Moreover, the acquisition of Kaviza allowed Citrix Systems to expand its portfolio of software products, adding an inexpensive and high-quality VDI solution for small companies.
Virtualization can reduce desktop management costs, increase the level of security and flexibility of the business. However, many small and medium-sized enterprises do not dare to implement VDI solutions, arguing that the high cost and complexity of deploying enterprise-class solutions in small companies.
Previously, to transfer IT infrastructure from physical servers and desktops to their virtual counterparts, Citrix had only one solution - XenDesktop, originally developed for the corporate segment and not always 100% suitable for the needs of medium and small businesses. After the acquisition of Kaviza, the Citrix System VDI product line has been expanded with the affordable and functional VDI-in-a-box product, aimed at small enterprises that require mostly the same type of virtual desktop.
Compared to XenDesktop, the simple and flexible Kaviza VDI-in-a-box solution is less demanding on the IT infrastructure, allowing you to use low-speed data channels and simple, massive servers assembled without any special requirements and purchased in ordinary stores and almost any operating system on a client device. Maintenance and configuration of the complex does not require special knowledge and skills from the administrator, and the company does not require a permanent administrator on staff.
Comparison of the specifications of popular VDI solutions. The
yellow frame highlights the components that provide comparable functionality, and the red - elements that are not required when using the Kaviza solution
Deploying a virtual desktop system based on the Kaviza solution is also easy. A technician needs to “raise” one server, after which further configuration is carried out inside the system, and the addition of a new server with replication of all components among themselves occurs 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 several thousand, and the maximum registered number of deployed virtual machines can exceed 5000.
Kaviza VDI-in-a-box is not an enterprise-class product with limited functionality, performance and manageability, but is a universal solution specially designed for small and medium-sized enterprises. The Kaviza VDI solution runs on VMware and Citrix hypervisors, and in the near future will also be able to work on Microsoft's hypervisor.
In terms of its functionality and multimedia capabilities, 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 the 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 enterprises, this factor is one of the most important.
The interesting features of the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system also include access from mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) and support for various operating systems (Android, iOS). All that is required to 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 poses a very non-trivial task for IT specialists: to provide the opportunity to work in the corporate environment on a mobile device and provide access not only to network resources, but also to 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 Citrix developers, the Kaviza VDI-in-a-box virtualization system is optimal for deployment in healthcare institutions, federal and local governments, law firms, educational institutions (schools and universities), regional divisions of banks and credit organizations, as well as - in small manufacturing companies, i.e. wherever there is a need for remote access to the same type of virtual desktops and both human (administrators) and financial (IT budget) resources are limited.
On October 26 and 27, Barcelona will host the European version of the traditional Citrix Synergy conference on the development of virtualization and cloud computing technologies. We will certainly continue our story and highlight the new products that the company will present to the market.