UNC Health Care selects IGEL Universal Desktop Converter (UDC) and IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) for simplicity, cost-savings and security.
“The need to provide users with access to their desktops from any device anywhere, anytime is driving a growing number of IT organizations to migrate toward VDI environments,” said Simon Clephan, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances, IGEL. “One of the key advantages that IGEL brings to the table is the simplicity that comes from being able to manage an entire fleet of thin clients from a single console. Additionally, the IGEL Universal Desktop Converter provides IT organizations with the flexibility they need to convert any compatible thin client, desktop or laptop computer into an IGEL thin client solution, without having to make an upfront investment in new hardware to support their virtualized infrastructures.”
UNC Health Care selected the IGEL UDC and UMS software for its Citrix VDI deployment following a “bake-off” between thin client solutions. “IGEL won hands down due the simplicity and superiority of its management capabilities,” said James Cole, Technical Architect, UNC Health Care. “And, because the IGEL UDC software is designed to quickly and efficiently convert existing endpoint hardware into IGEL Linux OS-powered thin clients, we knew that by selecting the IGEL solution we would also realize a significant reduction in our capital expenditures.”
Since initiating the deployment of the IGEL UDC and UMS software, UNC Health Care has also experienced significant time savings. “Prior to deploying the IGEL UDC and UMS software, it took our team 25-30 minutes to create a virtual image on each system, not counting the personalization of the system for each use case, now that process takes less than 10 minutes, and even less time when converting the system to VDI roaming,” added Cole.
Additionally, the ease of integration between the IGEL UDC and IGEL UMS with Citrix XenDesktop and other solutions offered by Citrix Ecosystem partners, including Imprivata, has enabled secure access to the health care network’s Epic Systems’ Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system.
The primary goal of a multi-cloud data management strategy is to supply data, either via copying or moving data to the various multi-cloud use cases. A key enabler of this movement is the data management software applications. In theory, data protection applications can perform both of the copy and move functions. A key consideration is how the multi-cloud data management experience is unified. In most cases, data protection applications ignore the user experience of each cloud and use their proprietary interface as the unifying entity, which increases complexity.
There are a variety of reasons organizations may want to leverage multiple clouds. The first use case is to use public cloud storage as a backup mirror to an on-premises data protection process. Using public cloud storage as a backup mirror enables the organization to automatically off-site data. It also sets up many of the more advanced use cases.
Another use case is using the cloud for disaster recovery.
Another use case is “Lift and Shift,” which means the organization wants to run the application in the cloud natively. Initial steps in the “lift and shift” use case are similar to Dev/Test, but now the workload is storing unique data in the cloud.
Multi-cloud is a reality now for most organizations and managing the movement of data between these clouds is critical.
Managing Windows user profiles can be a complex and challenging process. Better profile management is usually sought by organizations looking to reduce Windows login times, accommodate applications that do not adhere to best practice application data storage, and to give users the flexibility to login to any Windows Operating System (OS) and have their profile follow them.
Note that additional profile challenges and solutions are covered in a related ProfileUnity whitepaper entitled “User Profile and Environment Management with ProfileUnity.” To efficiently manage the complex challenges of today’s diverse Windows profile environments, Liquidware ProfileUnity exclusively features two user profile technologies that can be used together or separately depending on the use case. These include:
1. ProfileDisk™, a virtual disk based profile that delivers the entire profile as a layer from an attached user VHD or VMDK, and
2. Profile Portability, a file and registry based profile solution that restores files at login, post login, or based on environment triggers.
When looking to identify and isolate compromised network hosts, the following questions are important to answer promptly and accurately:
Once the exposure is identified, isolating the devices is a much simpler and faster process. Read the use case for more details, including an example of how the blast radius feature can locate the host device and document in seconds every destination, protocol, and L4 port it could possibly reach.
The author of this Pathfinder report is Mike Fratto, a Senior Research Analyst on the Applied Infrastructure & DevOps team at 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Pathfinder reports navigate decision-makers through the issues surrounding a specific technology or business case, explore the business value of adoption, and recommend the range of considerations and concrete next steps in the decision-making process.
This report explores the following topics:
Kubernetes is the de-facto standard for container orchestration, and it’s being used by born-in-the-cloud startups and cloud-native enterprises alike. In 2021, Kubernetes was in production on-premises, in the cloud, and even at the edge for many different types of applications, including those that Kubernetes wasn’t initially built for.
Kubernetes was never really built for stateful applications and, by default, lacks features for data protection. However, we see many organizations building and running their stateful applications on top of Kubernetes, indicating there’s a gap in functionality between what Kubernetes offers and what the (enterprise) market wants.
Unfortunately, existing data protection tools, mostly built for legacy technologies such as virtual machines, do not fit well into the container paradigm. Vendors are adapting existing solutions or creating new products from scratch that are often better aligned with the cloud-native and container paradigms.
The market for cloud-native data protection is growing rapidly, with both incumbent vendors and challengers competing for completeness of features, and differences can be observed between those targeting more traditional infrastructure alignment and those aimed at fully cloud-native environments.
In any case, we see a growing need for flexible, adaptive solutions that can meet the changing requirements of their customers. Multi-platform, multi-cloud, multi-environment (including edge), multi-team, and self-service capabilities are quickly becoming differentiating features that ensure successful adoption, not for just one use case but for continuously changing use cases across the entire enterprise.
CloudCasa is the perfect example of this type of modern solution that can adapt quickly to changing business and technical needs. Designed to be Kubernetes native, it is a SaaS offering with a friendly licensing model that significantly eases the initial testing and adoption of the solution.