VMware Horizon

Accelerating VDI with Cisco UCS and VMware Horizon View

By: Courtney Burry, Director of PMM, EUC BU, VMware

VMware recently announced new vFast Track Reference Architectures with a number of storage and appliance vendors that are designed to provide IT organizations of all sizes with cost-effective, simple and scalable solutions for VDI deployments. Well we didn’t just stop there-we’ve actually partnered with Cisco on a number of these validations to ensure that customers have an end to end stack that is purpose-built to take the guesswork out of VDI. What’s more, the two companies today announced a joint bundled offering-the Cisco UCS SmartPlay with VMware Horizon View to take the cost of acquisition for desktop virtualization to all time lows.

New End-to-End Validations

Together, VMware and Cisco have validated designs with Nimble, Fusion io, Atlantis Computing, Nexenta, NetApp and EMC. These designs give customers the choice and flexibility to take advantage of new high-capacity disks, hybrid arrays,  and Flash-based storage technologies to help drive down costs while still ensuring high levels of throughput and lower latencies as deployments scale over time.

What’s more-Cisco and VMware realize that when it comes to VDI, most customers want to start small and the business case needs to add up just as much for 100 seats as it does for 1000 or 10,000 seats. These new architectures are designed to optimize on cost even for smaller deployments. And our new joint bundles help ensure customers can accelerate the business case for VDI.

New Discounted Bundles

The Cisco UCS and Horizon View SmartPlay bundle is a convenient single-SKU that combines Cisco UCS and VMware Horizon in an attractively discounted bundle. This SmartPlay Starter Configuration includes:

  • (2) UCS 6248UP Fabric Interconnects
  • (1) UCS Chassis w/ two 2208 FEX
  • (1) UCS B200 M3 Management Blade
  • (3) UCS B200 M3 Desktop Workload Blades
  • (300) View licenses

Expansion Bundles for additional users, and upgrade options for server-based storage are also available.

And for customers looking to test the waters who want to use rack-mount servers with internal storage- there’s also a UCS C240 M3 Bundle sized for 100 users of View.  For additional information on our bundles please click here.

Getting the Most out of Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization offers the benefits of enhanced security for an increasingly mobile workforce. It ensures that businesses can cost effectively manage IT and provide end users with highly available services. And now with Cisco and VMware, customers can enjoy these benefits while getting started and scaling out for much, much less.

Looking to find out more? Visit VMware’s vFast Track Reference Architecture page today.