In IT, there is a concept known as End User Computing — computing for end users. How, where, and in what ways can such solutions help, and what should they look like? According to today's requirements, employees would like the ability to work securely from any device, anywhere. Technological aspects account for up to 30% of the incentives for engaged employees, as stated in the Forrester report (Employee Index). This is a significant factor in attracting and retaining qualified talent.
Computer systems collectively referred to as EUC help reduce costs and simplify desktop management.
For example, new applications can be installed centrally, updates managed, and user permissions granted. This applies not only to PCs but also to other devices that users can access corporate applications and data from anywhere. In particular, the BYOD concept can be implemented.
Employees today are becoming increasingly mobile. They work remotely, on various projects, from different countries, time zones, and organizations. The services created by vendors aim to ensure flexibility in responding to the changing needs of employees.
PC: disadvantages of the traditional model.
Ideally, such services allow the provisioning of necessary resources to users, including without the deployment and operation of their own IT infrastructure (in the case of a cloud model), scaling up or down as needed, connecting new users with a few clicks or via API, or removing them. Administrators have a much easier time managing users, applications, images, and policies.
Company data is not stored on user devices, allowing for detailed access control. Companies with strict regulatory requirements choose EUC to comply with legislation for the financial sector, retail, healthcare, government organizations, and more.
In the traditional model, managing desktops is typically quite a challenge. Furthermore, it is inefficient and costly. Adding new client systems can take a lot of time. Not to mention that managing such an environment and maintaining it with the growing number of PCs becomes increasingly difficult. Another issue is updating this fleet. According to a Forrester report (Analytics Global Business Technographics Infrastructure), 67% of respondents plan to replace corporate PCs at least once every three years. Meanwhile, users, wherever they are, need access to their applications and files.
To address this challenge, IT departments are increasingly considering EUC — a set of technologies used for delivering desktops, managing, and protecting desktops, applications, and data.
As shown by , the primary users of EUC are healthcare, the financial sector, and government.
How can excess complexities in deploying EUC be eliminated? Nowadays, vendors offer ready-to-deploy EUC solutions, including hardware and software complexes for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) based on Citrix and VMware software. Alternatively, a cloud service DaaS (Desktop as a Service) is also available.
VDI
Over the past decade, rethinking their approach to EUC, many organizations have turned to the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment.
Why do companies choose VDI?
Ease of maintenance.
VDI simplifies tasks for administrators, allowing them to quickly deploy standard workstations with the necessary set of applications and configurations. It eases the administration of workstations and tracking of license usage.
Security.
Security policies can be centrally assigned and enforced, and access can be managed.
Protection of corporate data.
Data is stored not on user devices but in corporate infrastructure or data centers.
Performance.
Users receive dedicated resources (processors, memory) and stable workstation performance.
Initially, the drivers for implementing VDI were reducing the cost of workspaces in large organizations and information security requirements. IT departments also had to ensure that end users did not experience performance issues when transitioning from physical workstations to virtual ones. Balancing costs and performance became one of the most challenging tasks in providing users with effective VDI platforms.
Meanwhile, unifying virtual workstation software leads to cost savings on maintenance, prevents unauthorized application downloads or malware through controlled boot images. Additionally, such a solution can be scaled to support hundreds or even thousands of users. It is suitable for a wide range of VDI deployment scenarios and employee categories, from typical office application users to 3D rendering specialists.
According to Maximize Market Research, the global VDI market is expected to grow at an average annual growth rate of over 11% in the coming years, reaching a volume of $14.6 billion by 2024.
As one of the most effective and easy-to-use platforms for VDI deployment, the industry offers hyper-converged systems. In particular, this VDI solution was developed by Nutanix and Lenovo.
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure for VDI
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) represents the next stage in the evolution of data center hardware. This modular solution integrates servers, storage systems, network components, and virtualization software responsible for creating and distributing resource pools, while the software-defined approach endows hyper-converged systems with high flexibility and scalability of corporate IT infrastructure. VDI is one of the primary use cases for HCI.
IDC estimates that investment in hyper-converged infrastructure will grow by more than 70% in the next five years.
Benefits of HCI solutions:
Rapid deployment.
Infrastructure deployment in 2-3 hours.
Horizontal scaling.
Simple scaling with universal blocks (nodes) in 15-20 minutes.
Effective use of storage systems.
There's no need to purchase a separate storage system, which is usually chosen with extra capacity and performance.
Reduction of downtime
All functions are fully distributed among the platform components, ensuring high availability.
HCI platforms have become a worthy alternative to solutions with servers, virtualization platforms, and storage systems, especially for high-performance configurations.
Almost all major software and hardware vendors offer their HCI solutions, including Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, and several niche players. In Russia, developments from IBS and Kraftway are known, based on the software of 'Rospatforma'.
of the HCI market by target applications. Source: KBV Research.
Nutanix has developed a scalable HCI solution for building virtual data centers, integrating server resources, storage systems, and virtualization into a single software-hardware complex, with unlimited node additions possible for increasing system power/capacity.
According to IDC, the Nutanix solution is 60% cheaper over five years compared to traditional IT architecture.
The Nutanix solution has received several prestigious global awards and industry accolades in the field of virtualization and cloud computing. According to IDC, Nutanix ranked second in 2019 in the global HCI market with a share of over 20% and in the HCI software market with a share of over 30%.
Gartner's Magic Quadrant for 2019 on hyper-converged infrastructure shows the competitive landscape among vendors of comprehensive IT infrastructure management solutions based on virtualization technologies for storage systems, networks, and servers. Nutanix and VMware are neck and neck.
Validated architectures on the Lenovo ThinkAgile HX platform for VMware and Citrix software
Lenovo offers two options for EUC solutions based on its hyper-converged platform Lenovo ThinkAgile HX and Nutanix software: a validated architecture for VMware and Citrix solutions.
EUC from Nutanix and Citrix based on hyper-converged infrastructure.
Benefits of the solution:
- simplified data center infrastructure through the use of software solutions compatible with the Lenovo platform;
- increased efficiency of IT processes;
- the ability to transition from outdated, inherited IT infrastructure through the use of scalable Nutanix technology on a high-performance Lenovo platform.
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX series are integrated, tested, and tuned solutions based on Intel Xeon processors. They:
- Accelerate deployment (up to 80%).
- Reduce administrative labor costs due to high network automation.
- Lower operational expenses by 23% compared to traditional solutions.
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX systems scale linearly and can support tens of thousands of users.
Lenovo solution consolidates computing power, storage, and virtualization software into blocks suitable for creating horizontally scalable clusters, managed through a single interface.
Virtualization is a powerful solution for ensuring flexibility and availability of computing resources while maintaining data security and compliance on mobile devices. It addresses the challenges of organizations deploying a large number of PCs, laptops, and mobile devices across branches and remote offices.
Lenovo's client virtualization solution for VMware Horizon is designed precisely for this purpose. VMware Horizon enables centralized management of Windows and Linux virtual desktop images. Users gain secure access to data and applications from anywhere, at any time, on any device, including tablets and smartphones.
Lenovo's client virtualization solution for delivering virtual applications and virtual desktops from Citrix (formerly XenApp and XenDesktop) is intended to create a more flexible environment for mobile employees while ensuring compliance, security, cost control, and support for BYOD environments.
Lenovo ThinkAgile HX nodes are designed to create horizontally scalable compute clusters that are easy to manage and deploy. They combine Nutanix software with Lenovo servers. Deploying tested and configured nodes with comprehensive integration increases profitability and reduces time and costs for infrastructure maintenance.
Arguments and Facts
So, let's summarize. Where is the solution currently being applied? ?
- on its basis, the VDI environment is deployed by a large number of clients for tens of thousands of users, including U.S. government agencies and Fortune 500 financial sector companies;
- large telecom companies reduced registration time in the system by 56% for 15,000 Citrix users;
- a major airline reduced the time to provide virtual workstations from months to hours;
- an energy sector company reduced the time to allocate a virtual workstation from hours to minutes;
- according to a VDI ROI study in the U.S., the ROI is 595%, and the payback period is 7.4 months;
- a 45% reduction in TCO (study among healthcare industry companies);
- according to the VDI ROI study among U.S. cities, the ROI is 450%, and the payback period is 6.3 months.
According to media reports, Russian bank VTB is ready to spend 4.32 billion rubles on software and hardware complexes from Dell and Lenovo using Nutanix virtualization software. In particular, the purchase of Lenovo Nutanix complexes is expected with a starting lot price of 1.5 billion rubles. The purchased equipment will be used to expand VTB's existing infrastructure based on Dell Nutanix and Lenovo Nutanix. The Lenovo-Nutanix ThinkAgile HX series platform with Nutanix software includes deployment services.
Lenovo HX series systems with pre-installed Nutanix software are suitable not only for deploying virtual workstations but also for organizing and building software-defined environments, public and private clouds, working with databases, and big data. They help reduce capital and operational expenses, simplify the deployment and management of IT infrastructure while enhancing the reliability of the solution. Lenovo offers several models of ThinkAgile HX Series software and hardware complexes, each optimized to support specific types of workloads.
Source: habr.com
