What do Citrix XenDesktop and VMware Horizon have in common?

At Citrix Summit this week, Dell announced expansion of its hyper-converged infrastructure portfolio for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with Dell EMC VxRail Appliance 4.0 Solution for Citrix XenDesktop. VxRail Appliances, including models based on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, have rapidly forged a leadership position in the exploding hyper-converged marketplace. VxRail configure-to-order hardware can address virtually any data center use case including those demanding GPU hardware (perfect for graphics intensive virtual desktops), dense storage and/or high performance computing options.

With this announcement, customers can now select either Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizon solutions on VxRail. The VxRail with VMware Horizon solution was made available in October, and is enjoying considerable success. Subsequently, Enterprise Strategy Group released a whitepaper discussing how Hyper-converged Infrastructure Shrinks Complexity and Cost for VDI.

Since its February 2016 launch, Dell EMC VxRail has attracted customers in over 90 countries. Spanning multiple industries, customers keep choosing VxRail as an easy to deploy, cost effective hyper-converged solution that solves their data center challenges, simply and elegantly.

Desktop virtualization was among the five most commonly-identified IT priorities in 2016, according to ESG research.1 However, the complexities of implementing a robust, scalable VDI solution have caused many organizations to suspend pilot programs or hesitate deploying VDI in production.

Dell EMC VxRail removes complexities of standing up a new VDI solution, dramatically speeds time to deployment and reduces costs. With single-node scaling and storage capacity expansion, VxRail delivers a repeatable, simple and agile way to scale on demand as the number of users grow and requirements evolve.

Here are some cool VxRail features that are important for either Citrix XenDesktop or VMware Horizon:

  1. Available all-flash models handle peak performance requirements such as boot storms
  2. Application uptime, automation and policy management are ensured through high availability VMware vSAN
  3. Quick and easy deployment configuration enables power-on to desktop deployment and management in minutes, and easy VM deployment and management thereafter
  4. Linear and granular scalability with as few as 80 to up to 550 virtual desktops per appliance, and single node scaling from three to 64 nodes that takes as little as five minutes per node
  5. VxRail can host virtual desktops from VMware, Citrix, and other VDI vendors

For more information about achieving the promise of VDI with VxRail, read this solution brief.

1 Source: ESG Research Report, 2016 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2016.

About the Author: Bob Wambach