VDI on Dell Technologies Cloud Platform – Part 1: Introduction
Fri, 09 Dec 2022 13:47:56 -0000
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The way we work is changing. With more employees working from home and outside the office on flexible schedules, organizations are shifting towards digital workspaces. Digital workspaces allow employees to access their applications and data from anywhere, anytime, across any device. The flexibility offered by digital workspaces fosters collaboration and enhances the productivity of employees.
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is an enabling technology for workspace transformation initiatives. A growing number of organizations rely on VDI for providing accessibility to business applications and data while ensuring a secure and superior user experience. VDI provides the agility, security, and centralized management that are critical to successful workspace transformation initiatives.
According to a survey by market intelligence company IDC, 93 percent of customers will deploy their workloads across two or more clouds. A multi-cloud approach comes with its unique benefits, and VDI is a workload that takes full advantage of it. For example, VDI customers can utilize the flexibility and economics of the multi-cloud approach by extending their on-premises infrastructure for seasonal demand spikes and/or can also host a disaster recovery (DR) environment on the public cloud.
However, a multi-cloud approach can increase complexity by creating multiple management and operational silos. Due to the difference in the architecture and environments of the multiple clouds involved, workload migrations are often complicated. Maintaining consistent and efficient security is challenging with multiple cloud providers, and existing security best practices adopted by your organization may not be portable across a multi-cloud environment. The best solution to overcome these challenges is a hybrid cloud approach that offers consistent operations and infrastructure.
VCF on VxRail, the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform1 (DTCP), takes the complexity out of a multi-cloud environment by offering true hybrid compatibility and facilitating consistent operations across private and public cloud environments. DTCP is an on-premises infrastructure based on industry-leading Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure running VMWare Cloud Foundation (VCF). It offers options to extend your infrastructure to Dell Technologies’ partner public clouds, providing choice and flexibility. DTCP allows you to build standardized VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) architecture that provides a consistent infrastructure connecting your on-premises and public clouds.
Figure 1: VCF on VxRail, Dell Technologies Cloud Platform
Let’s see how you can benefit from a VDI solution based on VMware Horizon running on DTCP.
VMware Horizon on DTCP
Dell Technologies offers a tested and validated VMware Horizon solution running on DTCP for your VDI workloads. Horizon on DTCP allows you to leverage a software-defined infrastructure for compute, storage, networking, and security with the market-leading capabilities of VMware Horizon for a complete, secure, and easy-to-operate desktop and application virtualization solution. The native integration of VxRail Manager with SDDC Manager offers automation and simplifies lifecycle management for your entire VDI stack, including hardware. With VMware NSX2, you can secure east-west traffic within your data center by creating fast and simple network policies that follow virtual desktops. The Micro-segmentation feature of NSX creates a perimeter defense around the virtual desktops, eliminating unauthorized access between virtual desktops and adjacent critical workloads.
Our Horizon solution architecture aligns with the VMware Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA)3. CPA allows you to join multiple pods to form a single Horizon implementation. This pod federation spans multiple sites, simplifying the administration effort that is required to manage a large-scale Horizon deployment. See the ‘VDI on DTCP using VMware Horizon’ reference architecture guide4 available on the VDI InfoHub for more details on our validated solution.
VMware Horizon on DTCP offers a hybrid platform where you can easily enable public cloud use-cases like provisioning additional capacity and DR. With DTCP, you can have an extended Horizon deployment on one of our public partner clouds such as VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS. VMC on AWS delivers VMware SDDCs as a service on the AWS cloud. If you already have a Horizon installation on-premises on VMware SDDC, you can leverage those skills to build a Horizon infrastructure on VMC on AWS. You get a unified architecture, operational consistency, and a similar feature set for Horizon across on-prem and VMC on AWS.
Conclusion
DTCP can offer you a true hybrid cloud experience by delivering consistent operations and infrastructure for your VDI workloads across a multi-cloud environment. By running VDI on DTCP powered by Dell EMC VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure, you can enable typical VDI use-cases like provisioning additional capacity and DR in a simple, flexible and cost-effective manner.
DTCP is also available with subscription pricing5, which gives you freedom of choice between CapEx and OpEx models. You can start small, easily scale and align with growing business needs.
I hope you enjoyed reading part 1 of this blog series. In part 2, we will discuss the public cloud interoperability use-cases of VMware Horizon on DTCP in detail. Stay tuned!
Additional Resources
- DTCP: https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-in/solutions/cloud/vmware-cloud-foundation-on-vxrail.htm
- NSX for Horizon: https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/horizon/vmware-nsx-with-horizon.pdf
- Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture: https://techzone.vmware.com/resource/workspace-one-and-horizon-reference-architecture#sec10-sub2
- VDI on DTCP using VMware Horizon: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/section-assets/h18160-vdi-dtcp-horizon-reference-architecture
- DTCP with the subscription: https://www.dellemc.com/en-us/collaterals/unauth/offering-overview-documents/products/dell-technologies-cloud/h18181-dell-technologies-cloud-platform-with-subscription-solution-brief.pdf