The traditional workplace has changed beyond recognition, with more employees working remotely – a growing trend. To make the most of your workspaces without compromising on security, solutions like VDI and Creative’s VDIPOD can enable your staff to hot-desk and even access their desktops from home or on the move.
What Is VDI?
VDI is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, it provides users with access to a remotely hosted virtualised desktop. Run on a centralised server, the virtual desktop infrastructure is accessible by all approved users, from any device.
How to Implement a VDI?
The challenge for many organisations is how to integrate VDI into their company environments. Going down the in-house route using a managed offering might limit your flexibility to deliver the solution that meets your needs, as managed solutions are often built on standard, non-customisable hardware.
At Creative Consulting we look at things differently, and our VDI managed platform is completely built to our customers’ requirements. This could mean you need K2 Graphics cards for CAD users with high IOPS data, or you’re looking for a low-end solution just for your admin staff.
The solution we design is always custom built exactly for you and managed by us. This gives our clients the solution they need based on a simple monthly ‘per-user’ model.
Will a VDI Benefit you?
Upgrading desktop computers is expensive and time-consuming, especially for larger outfits. VDI makes this easier to manage, enabling central management of all personalised desktops and greater control over what’s being installed.
Due to this central management, VDI is also secure, as it stores sensitive data on the server in the data centre rather than on the device.
An additional benefit is that many users choose to access their virtual desktops from thin clients like laptops and tablets – which have a far lower carbon footprint than desktops and will save on energy costs.
Signs you will Benefit from a VDI
Experience enhanced productivity and streamlined IT management with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). With VDI, you’ll enjoy simplified IT management, allowing you to focus on core business objectives. Benefit from robust multi-layered security, safeguarding your sensitive data and ensuring peace of mind. Additionally, VDI offers cost savings by optimizing hardware utilization and reducing maintenance expenses. Its versatility empowers employees to access their desktops from anywhere, at any time, increasing flexibility and collaboration. Discover how VDI revolutionizes your workflow, boosts security, saves costs, and provides unmatched versatility
Data Security
One of the major benefits of VDI is its data security and instant backup capabilities. Companies sometimes deploy VDI in two separate data centres. One serves as primary while the other is a backup site.
If for any reason a server goes down due to a compromise in security or component failure, there is an instant handover to the backup site. This makes things seamless and reduces risk and cost.
Customisation
VDI makes the user experience customisable in several unique ways. Users can use any device of their choice (thin client, PC, Apple, Linux, etc). There’s also lots of customisable options available meaning each desktop can be its own unique platform.
Reduced Costs
VDI can help organisations cut costs is by reducing your IT staff working hours. IT workers usually must maintain servers for every device in your workplace. VDI eliminates the need for this. The IT team can be much smaller, and their job would mainly be to maintain your data centre and troubleshoot any potential issues.
Moving to VDI and hosting your server in the cloud can reduce data management and security costs. A virtual desktop system will make your work flexible and reduce costs providing better security for your data.
Improved Productivity
VDI increases productivity. The maintenance and end user management frees admin to focus on other key tasks. End users are also not slowed down due to system failures, upgrades, or security issues like a virus attack these are resolved straight away.
Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Microsoft VDI enables your IT team to deliver desktops and applications to users on a variety of devices. Centralising and controlling applications and data through a virtual desktop enables people to get their work done on the devices they choose while helping IT maintain compliance.
Benefits of Microsoft VDI
Microsoft VDI can host
Personal and pooled virtual machine desktops, session-based desktops, and RemoteApp programs
Efficient management
Unified administration provides a single integrated console for roles, servers, collections, users, and VMs. Simplifies management of pooled and personal VMs. It’s quick to deploy – with a few clicks you can set up a basic VM, a session-based VDI, a single server pilot, or a high-availability enterprise deployment.
Rich user experience
Microsoft VDI delivers a rich user experience, providing RemoteFX for WAN, Microsoft Remote Desktop App, GPU support, multi-touch remote, RemoteApp programs and user profile disk.
Citrix VDI in a Box
Benefits of Citrix VDI in a Box
Deploy personalised virtual desktops for every user
Users can install their own applications, set up individual profiles and store their data. IT administrators can update and manage these personalized desktops just like pooled desktops by updating and managing the single master image from which they were generated.
Start small and scale on-demand
A deploy-as-you-grow model gives organisations the flexibility to start small and add more off-the-shelf servers as needed. The hot-pluggable VDI-in-a-Box grid can be reconfigured on demand without having to turn off a production grid.
Choose from industry-leading hypervisors
An open architecture allows many options for platform and protocol. VDI-in-a-Box is available on Citrix XenServer, Microsoft® Hyper-V® and VMware vSphere™ hypervisors. It is also protocol agnostic, supporting both HDX and Microsoft® RDP technologies.
Provide a high-definition user experience
Built-in HDX technology ensures a high-definition, high-performance desktop experience for virtual desktop users anytime, anywhere, on any device. Integration with Citrix user profile manager customises the user experience by delivering personalised virtual desktops.
Why Choose Creative ITC?
No one knows infrastructure better than Creative. For nearly ten years, we have been exclusively focused on working with our customers to help them deliver better ways of managing, securing, and deploying IT infrastructure.
Creative is a technical organisation by nature, we are Infrastructure Specialists and not IT Generalists. When it comes to your IT infrastructure, whether that’s Networking, Server Platforms, Storage or Virtualisation. Get in touch today.