New Citrix VDI-in-a-Box Release Makes Simple, Affordable
Virtual Desktops More Personal
India, August 22,
2012: Citrix today
announced the release of Citrix
VDI-in-a-Box™ 5.1, which just won the 2012
Best of Interop award for delivering a simple, affordable
yet complete VDI solution
with personalized end-user experiences. The latest release of VDI-in-a-Box
delivers complete end-user personalization with personal vDisk technology that
allows end-user applications and data to be preserved while giving IT the
ability to manage only a single instance of the master image - saving time and
cost. This version also includes several feature enhancements to improve
ease-of-use, flexibility, and performance such as optimizations for Google
Earth, support for Active Directory failover, and beta support for the
upcoming
Windows 8 operating system.
The industry is rapidly moving from the PC era
to the cloud era. Businesses of all sizes want to adopt desktop virtualization
and realize its benefits of driving efficiencies, adopting mobile workstyles and
improving continuity, but many face tight budget and resource challenges. Citrix
VDI-in-a-Box address these needs head on. The VDI-in-a-Box design eliminates
multiple moving parts that run up the cost and complexity of VDI. The all-in-one
grid architecture runs on inexpensive off-the-shelf servers. Scaling simply
involves adding another server, with nothing to rearchitect or reconfigure.
Citrix is building on the success of VDI-in-a-Box by further simplifying the
purchase and rapid adoption of desktop virtualization with these new
additions:
·
Personalized Virtual Desktops: Customers no longer
have to choose between consolidating management using desktop pools or providing
end-users the flexibility to install their own applications, data and
personalized settings. VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 eliminates the need to create separate
static desktops to carry forward end-user customization by coupling
single-instance management with the ability to have individual user workspaces
for their applications and data.
·
Single Instance Management: Rather than juggling
many persistent desktops, IT can maintain one master copy of desktop images
while preserving the personalization of user applications and data. This
dramatically reduces maintenance efforts and cuts datacenter storage costs up to
90 percent.
·
Cost-effective Windows-as-a-Service with
VDI: VDI-in-a-Box extends the Citrix vision of enabling Windows-as-a-Service
and adds a simple, yet highly cost-effective VDI option based on VDI-in-a-Box to
the successful Citrix Service Provider (CSP) portfolio of hosted-shared desktops
with Citrix XenApp™, and enterprise-class desktop virtualization with
XenDesktop. A new reference architecture enables service providers to deliver
VDI-based Desktops-as-a-Service at a fraction of the costs of other alternatives
while complying with Microsoft licensing.
·
Better performance, Google Earth
Support: VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 has several enhancements to improve performance in
a variety of settings: Active Directory failover increases robustness; dual data
stores to provide an option for faster tiers of storage such as SSDs for
critical data; a grid-wide virtual IP provides another layer of built-in load
balancing; and optimizations for Google Earth enable users to run the popular
application seamlessly.
·
Simpler: VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 continues to push the
envelope on simplicity and automation with a host of new features that make
deployment, upgrades, and management intuitive and fast. The new touchless
desktop agent automatically propagates upgrades across all the images in a
VDI-in-a-Box grid, thus saving administrator time. Other new features such as
support for multiple virtual CPUs, and partitioning of user and computer domains
increase compliance and flexibility.
·
Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 8
(Beta): VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 manages Windows 2008 R2, Windows XP, Windows 7 and
Windows 8-based virtual desktops, enabling customers to select the ideal virtual
desktop environment based on compatibility and costs. All features of Windows 8
including the new Metro interface are fully supported. This feature is currently
in beta pending the general availability of Windows 8.
·
Proactive Monitoring and Alerting: VDI-in-a-Box
deployments can be easily monitored, tracking key health and performance metrics
on the physical and virtual infrastructure helping to keep end users productive.
Alerts can be configured to provide an “early-warning-system,” giving IT time to
troubleshoot problems proactively, making configuration changes before users are
even impacted. Using VDI-in-a-Box combined with Citrix
GoToAssist®, cloud-based monitoring and remote support
tools, IT can monitor all VDI deployments and set up and securely access, over
the internet, all VDI-in-a-Box servers from a PC, Mac or iPad using remote
support.
Growing Partner Ecosystem
With the growing popularity of VDI-in-a-Box, partners are joining forces with Citrix to make virtual desktops easy with validated hardware appliances and configurations that eliminate guesswork and deliver predictable, repeatable performance at affordable prices.
·
Dell has updated its DVS Simplified appliance running VDI-in-a-Box to leverage the increased
memory capabilities and I/O performance of the Dell PowerEdge R720 servers to
support up to 129 users per appliance for a basic workload. The DVS
Simplified appliance delivers virtual desktops for under
$500 per desktop, including three years of Dell ProSupport. To complement DVS
Simplified Appliance, Dell has verified several Dell Wyse zero and thin clients:
Dell Wyse C10LE, Xenith, R10L, R90LW and T10, as Citrix Ready® for
VDI-in-a-Box.
·
HP released its client
virtualization reference architecture for VDI-in-a-Box,
providing simple configurations for 50 or 100 users, and scalable to higher user
count . The reference architecture provides a means for HP
channel partners and customers to realize affordable solutions with an
end-to-end VDI bundle with HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 servers, Citrix VDI-in-a-Box,
and HP Thin Clients. All new HP Thin Clients are verified Citrix HDX
Ready.
Extending Desktop Virtualization Beyond VDI
Citrix has also made available a license migration path from VDI-in-a-Box to XenDesktop for customers that want to extend beyond VDI to leverage the full flexibility of XenDesktop. The end-user experience is consistent across both products as both VDI-in-a-Box and XenDesktop use the same Citrix HDX stack and Citrix Receiver™.
Quote
Kumar Goswami, Vice
President, Products, VDI-in-a-Box, Citrix
“As
customers are growing their deployments on VDI-in-a-Box, they are looking to
increase the level of personalization offered to end-users without increasing
complexity or costs. With VDI-in-a-Box 5.1, we offer customers a simple and
affordable approach to delivering personalized virtual desktops, helping
businesses of all sizes leverage the power of desktop virtualization to deliver
employee mobility and flexibility.”
About Citrix
Citrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) transforms how businesses and IT work and people collaborate in the cloud era. With market-leading cloud, collaboration, networking and virtualization technologies, Citrix powers mobile workstyles and cloud services, making complex enterprise IT simpler and more accessible for 260,000 organizations. Citrix products touch 75 percent of Internet users each day and it partners with more than 10,000 companies in 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2011 was $2.21 billion.
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