F5 Networks, Inc.,the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced
support for leading virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions, including
Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View, Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, and
others. For customers using VDI technologies, F5 offers a unified and
comprehensive approach to manage and accelerate network traffic, optimize
performance, and centralize access and security policies.
Leveraging Existing Infrastructure
VDI solutions offer an alternative to the increasing cost, maintenance, and
security concerns associated with company-supplied PCs. However, VDI solutions
can also increase infrastructure costs, introduce scaling challenges in large
deployments, and reduce performance due to the inherent latency of wide area
networks (WANs). Unlike other proprietary solutions, F5 BIG-IP products do
not require changes to the delivery infrastructure, thus offering the perfect
complement to all VDI deployments.
"Many organizations aren't aware that they can overcome the most significant
challenges of VDI deployments by leveraging their existing network
infrastructure, specifically, their BIG-IP advanced application delivery
controllers," said Erik Giesa, SVP of Product Management and Product Marketing
at F5 Networks. "BIG-IP products are unique in that they integrate
authentication, directory services, SSL offloading, and other services
throughout the desktop infrastructure so organizations can optimize virtual
desktop delivery with fewer resources, while also supporting network and
application access control for non-VDI enabled applications. Unlike the current
alternatives, BIG-IP gives organizations the flexibility to implement a VDI
solution that best meets their needs today, as well as tomorrow, while keeping
infrastructure costs down."
BIG-IP Enhances VDI Deployments
BIG-IP solutions help organizations make the most of their VDI deployments by
delivering the following benefits:
- Superior Performance and User Experience -- With a large number of virtual
desktops, corporate networks can see a considerable increase in traffic due to
greater amounts of data being transferred between clients and desktops in the
data center. When clients access their desktops using a WAN or the Internet,
performance can quickly deteriorate. BIG-IP solutions improve VDI performance by
reducing server load, optimizing TCP connections, and intelligently managing
both local and global traffic. In addition, BIG-IP provides Quality of Service
and supports Multi-Stream ICA, improving the performance of latency-sensitive
traffic such as VoIP.
- Infrastructure Savings -- Many add-on components are often needed to
maximize the performance of VDI deployments, which can rapidly increase costs.
Because BIG-IP integrates easily into most existing infrastructures, it can
substantially reduce the ancillary costs associated with new VDI deployments.
For Citrix XenDesktop deployments, BIG-IP v11.1 provides additional savings with
its integrated web interface service, which eliminates the need for Citrix web
interface servers and ticketing servers.
- High Availability and Scalability -- In addition to offloading
computationally intensive tasks from servers and optimizing TCP, BIG-IP's
intelligent traffic management features enable it to route users away from data
centers that are overloaded or experiencing downtime. This not only improves
availability but also enables organizations to easily scale their VDI
deployments as their needs change.
- Improved Security -- For most organizations, security is a paramount
concern as more workers want access to corporate resources using personal
devices such as smartphones and tablets. BIG-IP significantly enhances security
of VDI deployments by enabling IT to apply unified access and security policies
across all devices and users, both internal and external.
- Quick Deployment and Simplified Management -- BIG-IP solutions include
native iApps(TM) templates for VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop. Because iApps
templates markedly shorten deployment time, reduce the chance of manual
configuration errors, and make it easier to manage VDI deployments across
multiple data centers, BIG-IP also helps reduce operating expenses.
Supplies Network offers an innovative cloud services solution designed to
help businesses realize greater efficiencies for their enterprise printing
requirements. "Implementing a successful VDI initiative on any scale requires
the ability to handle myriad challenges--network access control; certificates;
anti-virus, firewall, and browser checking; bandwidth reservation and traffic
prioritization; single-sign on--not to mention ensuring the security and
availability of back-end systems," said Daniel Shipley, IT Architect at Supplies
Network. "F5's BIG-IP Edge Gateway gives us all of that and more in a single
device; in terms of functionality and performance, it is unmatched by any other
vendor. Our VDI deployment would not have succeeded without F5."
"VDI solutions have the potential to provide many benefits--especially as the
mobile workforce continues to grow and users want access to mission critical
applications from any device, anywhere," said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst with
Enterprise Strategy Group. "But VDI solutions must be implemented correctly in
order to deliver the cost savings, optimum security, and excellent performance
required to preserve a consistent user experience. Enterprises that understand
the full capabilities of their network infrastructure and are able to use those
resources to their maximum advantage have a greater chance of realizing the
long-term financial and operational benefits of VDI."
Availability
Support for VDI solutions is available today in version 11 of various BIG-IP
products, including BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), BIG-IP Global
Traffic Manager (GTM), BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM), and
BIG-IP Edge Gateway. Integrated web interface service and support for Citrix
Multi-Stream ICA are new features of BIG-IP version 11.1 products, also
available today. No additional licensing is required to support VDI.