What the new release of VDI-in-a-Box 5.2 means to you

At Dell, we are very excited about the upcoming release of Citrix VDI-in-a-Box version 5.2. This innovative new version offers even greater functionality and benefit for our customers, including:

  • Ability to export virtual desktop golden images, offering incremental flexibility to the image management
  • Support for MS Lync, an increasingly important application for small and medium businesses
  • Support Citrix Cloud Gateway for unified access to any Citrix CloudGateway delivered service. Users will be able to access their VDI-in-a-Box virtual desktops side-by-side with their applications and data, all in one place

The successful Dell DVS Simplified Appliance solution is currently running Citrix’s VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 software but in the future it will migrate to version 5.2 to deliver the maximum benefit from our pre-engineered, pre-tested virtual desktop solution.

All of this means that our DVS Simplified Appliance solution will continue its evolution as new versions of VDI-in-a-Box software becomes available, re-enforcing the promises of the initial solution:

  • Affordable with an average cost per seat of $500 which includes VDI software, hardware and services
  •  Dell as a single point of contact to service all elements of the solution
  • Easy to configure with as little as four hours from unboxing to initial deployment
  • Easy to manage with “a single  pane of glass” to both provision and update software and users

In fact we just announced updates to our DVS Simplified Appliance to specifically address the cost and complexity challenges of virtual desktop adoption with new flexible server form factors, support for new hypervisors and additional new capabilities.

Dell DVS Simplified Appliance offers a true end to end solution with the addition of the new Dell Wyse Xenith 2 thin zero client for Citrix which continues the tradition of supporting VDI-in-a-Box and Citrix solutions with:

  • Malware and virus immune client endpoint with zero attack surface
  • Power-on to fully functional, productive desktop in under 10 seconds
  • Central file management, which allows administrators to make one change and have that change replicated across the entire network, drastically simplifying deployments
  • Simple zero-touch firmware updates
  • Fast time to complete imaging, along with lower bandwidth used during firmware upgrades, which is especially beneficial over WANs and frequently congested networks
  • Powerful HD media decoding abilities for a rich user experience, and the ability to support dense server loads due to its client-side decoding of multimedia content

As these preferred enhancements become available, our DVS Simplified Appliance story keeps getting better and better.

Visit the DVS Simplified Appliance website at Dell.com/dvssimplified to learn more.

About the Author: Rafael Colorado

Rafael Colorado is a product director in Dell EMC’s Extreme Scale Infrastructure division. Rafael leads a group responsible for defining and managing products and solutions for scale-out markets that are rapidly shifting towards cloud-based architectures. Rafael earned an Industrial Engineering degree and holds an EMBA from the University of Illinois. His previous experience includes Motorola where he led a product marketing and strategy team and Colgate Palmolive in different marketing roles. He also funded a successful technology startup company.