Video Transcript:
When you look at many SAN solutions today, many of our competitors have a frame-based SAN.

With EqualLogic, we have a frameless or virtualized architecture.

When you start looking at a frame-based architecture, what you basically start off with is a frame.  You have to sit down and decide, for the next 3-5 years, how much data growth and performance, the types of features, functionality, etc. that you need, and with a frame-based SAN, that usually comes as a specific model number, and a specific model number of a SAN that you purchase can grow to a specific amount of drives.

When you look at many SAN solutions today, many of our competitors have a frame-based SAN.  With EqualLogic, we have a frameless or virtualized architecture.  When you start looking at a frame-based architecture, what you basically start off with is a frame.  You have to sit down and decide, for the next 3-5 years, how much data growth and performance, the types of features, functionality, etc. that you need, and with a frame-based SAN, that usually comes as a specific model number, and a specific model number of a SAN that you purchase can grow to a specific amount of drives.

As an example, you start off with dual controllers for redundancy and performance, and a number of disks.  With EqualLogic, we also do this same thing.  We also start off with dual controllers and a certain number of drives and this is your basic SAN.  Right now the frame vs. frameless, or the competitive architecture vs. EqualLogic, doesn’t look that different.  Let’s grow that frame-based SAN.

As months go by, you need to add more capacity for disks or performance, so we go ahead and we add more drives.  With the EqualLogic array, when you’re ready to add more drives for capacity and performance, you not only add disks, but you also add two more controllers for cache throughput and performance with your disks.  As you add more and more EqualLogic arrays, your performance and your capacity, will scale more linear than by just adding disks or spindles to your SAN.  Then if you’ve planned out your performance or capacity requirements  for 3-5 years, you’ve just purchased your SAN, what happens if you’re acquired by another company, you acquire another company, or a new application comes online, compliance, video surveillance, etc, now what happens with your frame-based SAN, is you’ve now added all the disks and all the spindles that you can to your frame-based SAN.  What this means is there is no way to continue to grow with this frame-based SAN.  If you’re frame-based SAN in this example grows to 60 drives, you’ve filled those drives up, now you need that 61^st drive, you need to buy another frame-based SAN and that’s a forklift upgrade.

However with EqualLogic, what you’re going to see here is that you can have up to 16 physical EqualLogic arrays, and you can manage those as a single storage system.  So whether you have one, single EqualLogic array, or 16 EqualLogic arrays, you manage that EqualLogic environment the same way.  Ease of use and scaling are still going to be the same from day one, or day 365.  Also, what you’re able to do, is these 16 physical EqualLogic arrays can be solid state drives, SAS drives, beta drives, it doesn’t matter.  Every single, physical EqualLogic array is called a member.  Multiple EqualLogic arrays or multiple members fit into an EqualLogic group.

Also, you don’t have to worry about provisioning and rate types.   Once you select the rate type per EqualLogic array, the array or member will take care of the provisioning, the hot spares, the movement of date, etc.  So as you see you have one physical array or 16 array or members, you basically are working with a single pool of storage.  From that single pool of storage, what you’re going to do is create volumes, so these volumes 1, 2 and 3; you would map these as physical drives, or drive letters to a Windows server.  These volumes 1, 2 and 3 could be drive E, F and G to your local Windows server.  Also if we talk about virtualization as an example with VMware, volumes 1, 2 and 3 could be mapped or connected as data stores to your ESX servers.

With your frameless architecture, or virtualized architecture for SANs, whether you have one or 16 EqualLogic arrays you manage that the same way.  The same thing is not just for management, but also when we look at the pool of storage.  With our automatic load balancing and tiering, what you’re able to do is these volumes can move from one physical array to another, and because of our virtualized architecture, the physical server or virtual server doesn’t care what physical array these volumes are on.

During production you can have these volumes on high performance, low capacity, 15K SAS arrays and solid state SAS arrays and then later on as you look at compliance with archive and keeping data around longer, it might not necessarily need that production type of performance, but we still need to have it readily available so these volumes can actually automatically tier themselves, and they can move from solid state and 15K SAS drives to 10K SAS drives and SATA drives.  You can have EqualLogic take care of the movement of data or you as the network administrator can simply click on these volumes and say move it from one rate type to another rate type that’s on separate or distinct drives and different EqualLogic arrays.

Read EqualLogic Frameless Architecture: Part 2

See a live EqualLogic product demo

Learn about Dell storage

So Citrix changes names and terminology every so often, right?  OK, that’s the understatement of the century!

From MetaFrame to MetaFrame Presentation Server, to Presentation Server, to XenApp + XenDesktop, to XenDesktop with FlexCast.. whew!  I may have even missed a few

Citrix FlexCast is.. well.. watch the video!

Citrix FlexCast: Overview

Different types of workers across the enterprise need different types of desktops. Some require simplicity and standardization, while others require high performance and personalization.

XenDesktop can meet these requirements in a single solution with its unique FlexCast™ delivery technology.

With FlexCast™, IT can deliver every type of virtual desktop – each specifically tailored to meet the performance, security and flexibility requirements of each individual user. There are five delivery options:

FlexCast for Apps: Hosted Shared, Hosted VM, and Streamed

Allows any Windows® application to be centralized and managed in the datacenter, hosted either on multi-user terminal servers or virtual machines, and instantly delivered as a service to physical and virtual desktops. Optimized for each user device, network and location, applications are delivered via a high speed protocol for use while connected or streamed via Citrix application virtualization or Microsoft App-V directly to the endpoint for use when offline.

Local VM

Local VM desktops extend the benefits of centralized, single-instance management to mobile workers that need to use their laptops offline. When they are able to connect to a suitable network, changes to the OS, apps and user data are automatically synchronized with the datacenter.

Streamed VHD

Streamed VHDs leverage the local processing power of rich clients, while providing centralized single-image management of the desktop. This approach offers an easy, low-cost way for customers to get started with desktop virtualization by leveraging existing PC resources and keeping datacenter overhead to a minimum. It can also be ideal for government and university labs that use diskless PCs for maximum data security.

Hosted VDI

Hosted VDI desktops offer a personalized Windows® desktop experience, typically needed by office workers, which can be securely delivered over any network to any device. This option combines the benefits of central management with full user personalization, and can generally support up to 150 desktops per server.

Hosted Shared

Hosted Shared desktops provide a locked down, streamlined and standardized environment with a core set of applications, ideally suited for task workers where personalization is not needed – or allowed. Supporting up to 500 users on a single server, this model offers a significant cost savings over any other virtual desktop technology.

Citrix extended its 2-for-1 trade up promotion until the end of 2010

Last year, Citrix revealed that the latest version of its VDI solution, XenDesktop, will be licensed on a per-user / per-device basis rather than the concurrent licensing model Citrix customers have been accustomed to.

To help ease the transition from concurrent licensing, Citrix introduced a Trade-Up promotion that included a 2-for-1 deal for customers that traded up ALL of their existing licensing.

The original Trade-Up program ended on June 30th, 2010. However, Citrix has recently announced an extension to its popular program until Dec 31, 2010.

Learn more about Citrix XenDesktop and calculate your savings

Trade-up to Citrix XenDesktop Now

Take the UltraLevel Challenge!

If your FREE power assessment doesn’t reveal a six-month or less ROI, we’ll give you a $100 Visa Gift Card!

Start saving $1000’s of dollars a MONTH on your power expense

Citrix is finally releasing their long awaited major upgrade to XenDesktop. This just in from Citrix.

Tomorrow on October 6, 2009, Citrix will announce XenDesktop 4, a revolutionary desktop virtualization solution that will clearly exemplify our leadership in desktop virtualization. This is an unprecedented move forward for us all, as we will be able to offer our customers a desktop virtualization solution that delivers Windows desktops as an on-demand service to any user, anywhere.

Citrix has been the leader in application virtualization with XenApp for years; now we will drive desktop virtualization into the computing mainstream, led by XenDesktop 4. Desktop virtualization is hot, with a market potential bigger than server virtualization and we want you to join us at the forefront of this huge opportunity.

Use UltraLevel’s easy new tool to calculate the environmental impact that could be achieved by turning off your PC’s at night and switching to WYSE thin clients.

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Citrix XenServer gives organizations a way to widely adopt an enterprise-class, cloud-proven virtualization platform to dramatically affect the economics of delivering IT. Radically reduce datacenter costs by transforming static and complex datacenter environments into more dynamic, easy to manage IT service delivery centers.

VMware ESXi is the virtualization platform customers build upon for continuous application availability and infrastructure security. With VMware Infrastructure 3, customers can add the benefits of server consolidation, automatic load balancing and business continuity to ESXi.

Satisfy your excitement with a free license for VMware ESXi and build virtual machines in minutes with this easy-to-deploy, OS-independent hypervisor.