Egenera Inc. has announced two new customer-proven reference architectures that enable companies to rapidly implement virtual desktop "blocks" in 1,000-seat increments, which include Egenera's integrated HA, DR and scaling capabilities. The reference architectures are based on multiple real-world production deployments using Egenera's open platform approach to converged infrastructure.

The architectures are based on Citrix™ desktop virtualization products, a choice of Dell™ or Fujitsu PRIMERGY™ blade servers, FiberChannel SANs from all major vendors, and inexpensive, industry-standard Ethernet components. Egenera's PAN Manager Software provides integrated I/O virtualization, converged networking, load balancing, software provisioning and High Availability (HA) / Disaster Recovery (DR) for both physical and virtual services. PAN Manager Software was the first converged infrastructure software to be certified as Citrix Ready™ for Citrix XenServer®, ensuring compatibility and stability.

"The simplicity offered by Egenera's pre-architected, converged infrastructure is unrivaled. Our position goes against the one-vendor-fits-all, closed technology models on the market today, which ultimately result in vendor lock-in and intentionally high switching costs," said Pete Manca, President and CEO of Egenera. "Our approach, in use with customers today, demonstrates that companies can indeed achieve both simplicity and choice. Further, our multi-vendor direction appeals to the channel whose relevance is being jeopardized by other pre-configured, unified computing vendors such as the VCE alliance."

Egenera's reference architectures, available immediately from here http://www.egenera.com/products-white-papers.htm, depict server, storage and network blocks that can be installed and configured simply and quickly.

"Citrix XenDesktop fulfills critical business objectives for disaster recovery by centralizing desktops in the datacenter and delivering them to users anywhere, on any device, whether a corporate issued laptop, a home PC, smartphone or tablet device. Citrix continues to work to create a broad ecosystem so our customers can leverage open, innovative solutions from our partners. Egenera's unique features ensure that Citrix virtual desktops are protected with integral HA and DR," said Natalie Lambert, director of product marketing, XenDesktop product group at Citrix.

"Egenera's desktop virtualization architecture is an excellent example of Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Servers' versatility," said Jens-Peter Seick, senior vice president of the Datacenter Systems product division at Fujitsu Technology Solutions. "The platform offers end-to-end reliable, balanced performance, enabling optimal virtual machine deployment at an exceptional value point."

"Virtual desktop solutions require well architected, yet easy to deploy solutions. Egenera pioneered the converged infrastructure space, and now delivers a customer-proven modular design that provides customers the flexibility of utilizing multiple platforms and cost savings with standard Ethernet," said Stuart Miniman, Senior Analyst at The Wikibon Project. "Egenera has been at this for years, as evidenced by the maturity and functionality of their software."