The three Cs in today’s business world are consolidation, centralization, and conservation. The focus is to create a harmoniously designed network that efficiently and economically meets all of a business’ desired goals.
Businesses are seeking the three Cs in the areas of network storage, virtualization, and remote access:
1. Virtual NAS/SAN
In today’s economy, businesses are reevaluating their infrastructure; thus, the evolution of the virtual NAS/SAN. Hypervisors like VMware and Citrix can now take advantage of these virtual NAS/SAN technologies with little-to-no impact on performance or functionality from a virtualization perspective. If a company only needs to provide live VM migration capabilities, a virtual NAS/SAN is highly beneficial. In cases where the storage is being provisioned for other purposes or the need for performance outweighs the need for cost savings, then hardware-based network storage is sensible.
Another surfacing trend is the conservation of storage by reprovisioning testing environments and non-critical servers to virtual SANs, thereby achieving a higher ROI and TCO.
2. Virtual Desktops
The cost-saving and conservation benefits of virtualization are already clear, but one area that has not been readily explored is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). By bringing desktops back into the data center, a company can centralize its environment. Tasks like patch management and desktop provisioning can be greatly simplified. Products like Ericom and Citrix are already implementing these technologies into their core infrastructure. However, only Ericom has truly developed a hybrid solution that takes advantage of a broad spectrum of technologies, such as VDI, server-based computing (SBC), PCoIP, and host emulation. Ericom has also taken an additional step in accelerating remote desktop protocol (RDP) traffic for SBC via Blaze technology.
3. Desktop Management and Remote Access
Today’s dynamic work paradigm requires remote access to desktop applications. Once again, virtualization solves the problem. Virtualization allows for various platforms, applications, and hardware to be updated, managed, accessed, and secured on virtual machines hosted at a central data center. By managing desktops and servers from this central location, IT professionals can quickly and uniformly install patches and other infrastructure upgrades on all PCs, saving valuable time.
Many today are using Windows Terminal Services (WTS) as a remote access solution. For 20-30% of the workforce, remote access through WTS is restricted due to issues such as: application compatibility, security restrictions, and desktop OS requirements.
To grant access to the entire workforce, VDI should be combined with WTS.
The benefits of combining VDI with WTS include:
- Improved performance, robustness, and security
- Mixing several operating systems in the same environment
- Access to a greater variety of applications
- Cost reduction, as compared to using VDI alone
So, the old saying “united we stand, divided we fall” applies to these technologies, which complement each other and make today’s enterprises more resilient.
Scott Brousseau, CTO, PBG, Inc.