* Posts by Bill Roth

1 publicly visible post • joined 26 Oct 2012

Nimble, Cisco gang up to hammer out VDI ref template

Bill Roth

Just read the above story “Nimble, Cisco gang up to hammer out VDI ref template”. If everyone is invited, I think it’s only fair to mention that the Nimble party is not a cheap or particularly easy one to attend. The first rule for any business that picks the VDI route is to always start small, and then grow their virtual desktops. But the only way to cost justify a Nimble solution is to start at a minimum of 1,000 desktops this is way too high for a typical desktop deployment.

Secondly, it’s important to realise that not all VDI deployments are the same. What about floating desktops, dedicated desktops, Win XP, Win 7 32 bit, Win 8, normal users, power users etc. Launching one single solution that tries to fit all use cases is not going to work, it’s too rigid. VDI deployments can be complicated. But introducing a storage appliance is not the answer, it’s just adding another layer of complexity. It’s far easier to install a VDI software solution on to Cisco hardware to manage both the compute and the storage, that way customers do not have to learn how to use another hardware appliance.

If you make sure that this software solution also supports VMware View, has built in automation between the virtual storage appliance, and VMware vCenter and View composer - it greatly simplifies deployment, management and maintenance of VDI and Storage. Finally, users entering the VDI space want to leverage their existing investments. Nexenta VSA for View can complement an existing external storage appliance by off loading the IOPS from the VDI workload with a local virtual storage appliance on the compute node.

You’re right the number of storage vendors at the VDI party is definitely increasing, but is it the right party to be at? Users should consider a software-defined storage solution as another option.

To see Nexenta’s work with Cisco, See: http://blog.nexenta.com/blog/bid/231585/Nexenta-Cisco-and-VMware-View-Achieve-Rapid-Desktop-Certification