A customer could deploy one node and deliver VDI to 50 users and then scale it by just adding more nodes. The grid of nodes automatically load balanced the virtual desktops amongst themselves, provided high availability and was managed as one logical system.
Citrix acquired Kaviza back in May and was lauded for gaining a VDI product that was easy to install and operate. The suspicion that the acquisition was nothing more than an attempt to eliminate the competition proved to be true when Citrix announced the demise of VDI-in-a-Box earlier this year.
Many of the organisations who loved it have been left with a stark choice — stay with an unsupported system, migrate to XenDesktop or View and loose the simplicity or find an alternative.
Due to advances in many of the component technologies, Workspot , a startup founded by many of the same people who built VDI technologies at Citrix and VMware, has gone further in simplifying VDI than even Kaviza did.
Just plugin in your network cable, build out your virtual desktops and then configure Workspot to point to your environment. By using Workspot with your Nutanix, Atlantis or possibly VMware boxes, you are removing the need to setup and manage an infrastructure for hosting web services for management tools; you also remove the need to setup provisioning tools, load balancing products or brokering services.
With a hyper-converged solution, scaling with Workspot is as simple as plugging in a new appliance. So the key adoption challenges are: High upfront costs Lengthy and complex deployments Operational complexity and associated costs OpEx.
Simplicity strikes back Due to advances in many of the component technologies, Workspot , a startup founded by many of the same people who built VDI technologies at Citrix and VMware, has gone further in simplifying VDI than even Kaviza did. Share this Post. For My Organisation. For My Clients. AVD Provisioning. More Services. They strongly believed that the need for shared storage, numerous management servers, and connection brokers was hindering the adoption of VDI.
They therefore set out to develop a simpler, software appliance-based solution that could deliver server-based VDI desktops. VIAB won a series of awards and was successfully implemented across the globe in a very short space of time. In Citrix— the global leader in desktop virtualization—acquired Kaviza and created a new division called SMB Solutions, which became home for the Kaviza employees.
Citrix released VDI-in-a-Box 5. The current version is 5. VIAB was the vision of a group of clever, experienced IT professionals, who believed that VDI did not need to be complex and require significant investments in shared storage, making it expensive to implement.
VIAB delivers server-based VDI sessions only, so once you have decided you want to virtualize your desktop, you need to determine the following aspects.
It is important to distinguish between virtual desktops and shared desktops. VIAB delivers virtual desktops only. As we have said a virtual desktop runs a copy of a Windows desktop operating system for each user.
The applications are either virtualized or installed on the RDS server. Server-based virtual desktops have many advantages over shared desktops, including the following:. Microsoft license shared desktops and virtual desktops in different ways which can affect the cost of VDI solutions. If you need users to be able to access their desktops offline then VIAB cannot be used as it only delivers server-based virtual desktops. Therefore, there needs to be a network connection between the appliance and the user's device.
An offline desktop runs locally on the device and can operate without a network connection. The vast majority, if not all thin clients, support Citrix HDX too. If your users require a high multimedia content and so on, they will use more bandwidth. There are a number of tools and guides on the Citrix website to help with bandwidth analysis that are quite useful when determining bandwidth requirements.
Virtual desktops can either be persistent or non-persistent. Persistent means that any changes made by the user are stored, so that when they log off and on again, their desktop remains how they left it.
Non-persistent desktops are when a user logs off, their desktop is destroyed and they are presented with a fresh build each time they log on. There is a lot of debate about this, and it is an important design issue to address. VIAB essentially allows both environments and also supports an innovative feature called pooled and personal desktops. A pooled desktop is refreshed regularly to provide the user with a fresh build. This has huge advantages in terms of desktop speeds and simplified management.
Pooled desktops can be personalized to each user with the user profiles, so in most cases, persistent desktops may not be required. If you want users to be able to add their own applications to their desktop, VIAB has a great new feature that came out in Version 5. This is a clever technology, originally developed for Citrix XenDesktop, which enables administrators to configure a personal vDisk for users who require a personal desktop.
Users with a personal desktop can then install their own personal applications in their vDisk, and VIAB will connect the vDisk to the desktop image it creates, forming the persistent desktop for the user. This can be a very useful feature to enable more savvy users to install their own applications, which may be unique to them. VIAB can also deliver persistent desktops from pooled desktops by enabling IT to never refresh the desktop, allowing the user's desktop to continue to run at all times on the appliance.
However, when the appliance is rebooted this desktop will be lost. The software appliance uses local disks rather than an SAN, which enables greater scalability and reduces costs. Citrix support the three main bare metal hypervisors, including the following:. We are referring to the bare metal version of Microsoft Hyper-V, which sits directly on the hardware without the need for a chargeable Windows server operating system.
Once the hypervisor is installed, the VIAB software appliance is imported. Once imported, you can configure the appliance and create the grid.
The appliance includes all the functions required to deliver server-based virtual desktops, including the following:. When PCs come to the end of their lives, many IT managers don't automatically order replacement PCs, choosing to look at alternative solutions.
By running the desktops in the data center, older PCs can act as display devices, extending their useful life. The time taken supporting desktops at different sites can be significant, and when the need arises IT managers often look at VDI.
By centralizing the desktops, the IT support team have better tools to support, manage, and secure desktops to users in different locations and potentially from home. VIAB does have its own workgroup facility to create local accounts on the appliance when you don't wish to connect to Microsoft Active Directory, which can be useful for remote sites.
It also supports kiosk mode and can deliver a standard desktop that can be refreshed on log out without any user credentials required. Enabling users to access their desktop and applications more flexibly can also significantly increase productivity. It also has many features to improve multimedia and peripheral support to provide users with a local PC-like experience.
Just recently, it was announced that the sales of tablet devices has outstripped PCs. VIAB could prove a good solution here, if you need to publish the whole corporate desktop to devices such as tablets and mobile phones. We will talk more about Citrix HDX and the vast number of devices it can support later. VIAB is being used by cloud providers to deliver both Windows desktops and Windows servers to vast numbers of users around the globe.
Therefore, it could be considered by cloud providers wishing to sell Desktop and Windows as a service. One of the first decisions to make is what hardware will you use to run the software appliance.
If you are planning to run a trial of VIAB that you will destroy and then start from scratch, you have vast choices. You can use a workstation, laptop, or small server for test purposes.
As long as your test device can run the hypervisor and supports virtualization, it can be utilized. Citrix offers a day trial of VIAB to enable organizations to test the solution. Click on the Try it button at the top of the page, and create an account if you don't already have one. You then download the version of VIAB you need, depending on your hypervisor choice. This is a very important decision, and we will discuss this in much more detail later.
You have to use the same hypervisor for all the servers in the grid. You can add a production license to a VIAB trial anytime, even after the evaluation license has expired, and build the production system from the trial appliance. Once you have selected a test server, you can install the hypervisor. This will wipe everything off the server and install a bare metal hypervisor. Once the hypervisor is installed, you can import the VIAB software appliance. All the hypervisors have management consoles, which you can use to manage them.
Once imported, VIAB will guide you through some simple steps to set up the grid.
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