Hyperconvergence for VDI
Maxta Hyperconvergence Software is the only solution that gives IT the ability to run virtual desktops alongside other workloads in the same cluster with no performance penalty.
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) promises to simplify management and security of user desktops, but the infrastructure costs – especially storage – have always been a roadblock to success. Hyperconverged appliances look promising, but come at a premium price and often lack the flexibility to run mixed workloads on one cluster or scale compute and storage separately.
Maxta gives IT the ability to build VDI environments using industry standard hardware. With Maxta, IT can scale infrastructure out as need grows, and run mixed workloads on the same cluster without any performance penalty.
Maxta Storage Platform for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
A growing number of businesses today are adopting virtualization technology for their data centers for consolidation, efficiency, ease of management, and greater mobility. Virtualization has also radically changed the storage requirements for the IT environment.
Drawn by the success of server virtualization and the growing challenge of managing desktops, businesses are exploring Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for their desktops to extend the benefits of virtualization to their desktop environment.
A VDI environment promises to deliver a great user experience including several benefits, such as better security, ease of management and provisioning as compared to traditional desktop environments. However, VDI is unable to meet this promise and is not popular due to high storage costs and poor end-user experience. In a VDI environment, though the server hardware could be a low-cost hardware, as the virtual desktops and applications are located centrally, the demands on storage are high. In trying to provide a better user experience, than that of a traditional PC environment, storage administrators often need to use enterprise storage arrays with large number of hard disks or employ expensive solid-state drives (SSDs). This increases the storage costs and management complexities that the project becomes non-viable.
Optimized for Mixed Workloads
Consistent Performance for Any Application
Why create separate, siloed clusters for VDI when you can use the infrastructure you have?
Maxta is an VM-centric platform. It optimizes performance and availability on a per-application basis, so you can reduce costs and increase flexibility by running mixed workloads on the same cluster – and improve performance for applications 25 percent. With Maxta, there’s no need to wait until you can afford completely new infrastructure to run VDI. You can run VDI on the servers you already own, even if there are other applications running on them today.
From Zero to VDI in 15 Minutes
No More Wrestling With Capacity planning
Maxta Hyperconvergence Software can get you running on VDI quickly, without the headaches of planning and configuring traditional storage.
Choose from Maxta software you install on your own servers or buy pre-configured systems with Maxta software ready to go. Just connect to your virtualization environment – either VMware vSphere or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization – and start deploying virtual desktops. Since Maxta lets you control performance and availability policies per VM, there’s no need to worry about tuning the environment just for VDI.
Scale Compute and Storage Independently
All the Advantages of an Appliance Without Any of the Downsides
VDI doesn’t always scale in linear increments of compute and storage. Maxta gives you the flexibility grow compute and storage independently – something hyperconverged appliances can’t offer.
On the surface, a turnkey hyperconverged appliance looks like a good way to go for VDI. It’s simple to rack and stack new systems as demand grows. But appliances can’t scale in small increments, or scale compute and storage resources separately – the very thing VDI deployments often need. There’s also a “refresh tax” – whenever you refresh the hardware, you have to buy the software again.
The alternative, hyperconverged software, means you’re never locked into a hardware or hypervisor platform. And software lets you scale compute and storage independently.
Hardware and Virtualization Independent
The Freedom to Choose. The Flexibility to Change.
Maxta gives you the choice of server vendor and hypervisor so you can build virtual desktop infrastructure that’s best for your organization.
Hyperconverged appliances and even some hyperconvergence software restrict your choice of hardware and hypervisor. Maxta provides platform-agnostic Hyperconvergence Software, so you have a choice of hardware and hypervisors. That gives you a clear advantage over costly and complex traditional storage arrays that lock you into their platform. Hyperconverged appliances promise to solve this too but still lock you into a hypervisor, a hardware platform or both. Maxta gives you the freedom to choose both, and easily change platforms down the road.
Choose Your Hardware and Hypervisor
Avoid Hardware and Hypervisor Lock-in
Maxta supports for over 7 enterprise server vendors and multiple hypervisors.
Maxta works with most major server vendors, including Cisco, Dell-EMC, HP Enterprise, Huawei, Lenovo, Quanta, Super Micro, and more. You can choose from pre-configured, pre-validated solutions with Maxta pre-installed, buy your own hardware, or even use existing server hardware. Maxta supports VMware vSphere and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platforms and gives you the ability migrate VMs seamlessly between them.
Advantages for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Run Mixed Workloads
Never worry about creating silos of infrastructure for VDI. Mix and match different desktop types or even server applications on the same cluster with no performance penalty.
Use Your Existing Hardware
Why buy new hardware when you’re just getting started with VDI? Use your existing servers to get started.
Never Overprovision Compute or Storage
Scale compute and storage separately by adding disk, memory, or CPU to existing nodes, add new nodes as you need them.
Manage VMs, Not Storage
Improve infrastructure utilization by 40% and improve performance by 25% with VM-level policies.
Hardware & Virtualization Independent
Use your brand of x86 server with the flexibility to run different hardware and multiple hypervisors on a single platform.
No Refresh Tax
Only pay for software once with a perpetual or subscription license – not every time you refresh hardware.
No Upgrade Tax
Add capacity to a node, add a node, or add compute only nodes – without appliance or storage vendor markups.
Documentation:
Download the Maxta Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Solution Brief (.PDF)