What is VDI-in-a-Box?

Citrix VDI-in-a-Box is an affordable all-in-one desktop virtualisation solution that brings the benefits of desktop virtualisation to any organisation regardless of size. Small and medium sized businesses can take advantage of the benefits provided by enterprise level desktop virtualisation even when working within a tight budget and with limited resources. The solution runs on off-the-shelf servers which IT staff use to deliver centrally managed virtual desktops to users regardless of the device they use. Users then have the freedom to work from anywhere while lowering costs and improving security.

Why VDI-in-a-Box?

VDI-in-a-Box simplifies the setup and management while reducing costs when compared with an enterprise class VDI solution. A traditional, enterprise class VDI deployment would include load balancers and connection brokers to manage the desktop sessions with high availability, servers to provision and manage the desktops, and management servers to control the environment. VDI-in-a-Box combines all this functionality into a virtual appliance.
The key benefits of VDI-in-a-Box are:

• High Availability without Shared Storage. Traditional VDI solutions require shared storage to deliver high availability. Usually this requires the expense of a SAN with high-speed interconnects. VDI-in-a-Box removes this requirement provides scalable high availability using inexpensive direct-attached storage. When run on two or more servers, VDI-in-a-Box automatically load balances and maintains redundancy.
• Start Small and Deploy in Phases Using Current Budgets. Citrix VDI-in-a-Box runs on inexpensive commodity servers so you can start with just one or two servers and scale the deployment as needs grow. Since the upfront investment is minimal, VDI-in-a-Box can be used to prove the concept of virtual desktops and then scale the solution from there.
• Organisational or Cultural Change Not Required. Traditional VDI requires collaboration across storage, server and desktop IT teams. VDI-in-a-Box provides a management interface which is intuitive to existing desktop IT and abstracts virtualisation details. This makes the set up and management of the solution simple without requiring additional expertise.
• Avoid Management of Bottlenecks Caused When Scaling Traditional VDI. As a Traditional VDI solution scales, a number of bottlenecks need to be managed due to the solutions centralised nature. Bottlenecks can appear at the connection servers, management servers and shared storage pools. Citrix VDI-in-a-Box inherently has a grid architecture which avoids issues such issues as "boot storms" that create bottlenecks in traditional VDI architectures.