New College Durham
VMware View 4.5 on FusionIO—Worlds Fastest Solid State Storage
VMware View simplifies the Manage-
New College Durham Makes Exemplary Use Of VMware
ment, Deployment and Security of the View, Reducing Costs Of Their Desktop Environment
College Desktop Infrastructure whilst
New College Durham is a Beacon College in the North East
providing much better performance and
The College enrols approximately 10,000 students, and has been rated Outstanding by Ofsted.
lower power requirements than tradition-
al desktops” At New College, excellence extends beyond the classroom to the IT department, which strives
to use technology as effectively as possible to support the goals of the College.
- George Wraith
“When it comes to IT assets such as our desktops, we need a fast reliable platform so that teachers
and students don’t have to do without access to Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and other ap-
KEY HIGHLIGHTS plications that they’ve come to depend upon, NCD is also continuing to strive to reduce its Carbon
Footprint”
CHALLENGE This goal led the College to explore desktop virtualization as a cost-saving strategy.
Provide long term cost, deployment and management savings “Normally, we refresh our desktops every five years, but desktop virtualization would enable us to
whilst providing a high performance VDI Solution for up to 1200
replace our old high power usage desktops with low power Thin Clients as part of a long term
desktops
strategy to reduce desktop management costs and reduce power consumption throughout the col-
SOLUTION lege.”
VMware® View™ 4.5 provides a platform for desktop virtualiza-
tion that helps NCD reduce costs of the desktop environment. NCD therefore evaluated VMware View, Phoenix and NCD ran a Proof of Concept using
existing hardware and a high performance SSD Solution to ensure suitable backend storage
RESULTS
performance based on a Capacity Planning Exercise Phoenix had previously run on the exist-
Replace 400 Desktops with WYSE P20 PCOIP Terminals
ing 1200 College Desktops
Managed Desktop Environment, easy provisioning of new
Images and Applications via ThinApp
Developing the Solution with Phoenix Enterprise Professional Services
Increased performance of desktop applications, providing a For New College Durham, the support and knowledge-sharing that the Phoenix Software
superior educational experience for students and teachers Enterprise Services team provided was extremely important.
alike.
Deployed Windows 7, Office and Multiple Applications “The Phoenix team came in and did a ‘health check’ on our existing Desktop infrastructure to
make sure it was ready to handle the latest version of VMware View,” says Wraith. “To have
Improved availability over a desktop solution.
Phoenix come in, analyse the environment and then design a high performance VDI Solution based
Eliminated need for expensive SAN, Power and Mainte-
on cutting edge technology has ensured that NCD has a solution that massively exceeds the perfor-
nance and Networking Infrastructure costs
mance requirements possible via even a large traditional SAN based technology in a modular
V M WA R E AT W O R K building blocks based solution that builds linearly and is also significantly cheaper than a tradi-
tional SAN based solution”
VMware Infrastructure 4.1 Premier, featuring:
Technology
VMware vSphere 4.1
vCenterServer2.5 Phoenix and NCD have worked closely with FusionIO to deliver one of the worlds first VDI
View 4.5, ThinApp 4.6
Solutions based entirely on FusionIO Storage Technology. NCD now has a VDI solution for
Windows 7 on the worlds fastest Solid State Storage Solution, this ensures that the heavy IO
TECHNOLOGY / PERFORMANCE loads experienced on an hourly basis with hundreds of users logging on / off and launching
High Performance Platform featuring: Apps is more than catered for. Traditional SAN based solutions would have required many
Dell R810—128GB 24 Cores (80 to 100 vm’s per host) shelves of disks for the complete solution, had high power usage and significant cooling with
FusionIO IO-DriveDuo 640GB (~200,000 IOPS and
high maintenance costs. The FusionIO solution exceeds the performance of an entire large
>800MB/s throughput per card) SAN Array. With around 200,000 IOPS and almost 1000MB/s or 1GB/s per server this means
WYSE P20—PCOIP Terminals
we have around 800,000 IOPS of performance across the 4 vSphere Hosts, NCD is confident
that they are able to cater for this version and future versions of Windows without any issues,
power usage is just 25 watts per server per card saving thousands in power costs over a SAN
Solution
New College Durham
VMware View 4.5 on FusionIO—Worlds Fastest Solid State Storage
VMware View simplifies the Manage-
New College Durham Makes Exemplary Use Of VMware
ment, Deployment and Security of the View, Reducing Costs Of Their Desktop Environment
College Desktop Infrastructure whilst
Virtualized Desktops Boost Performance, Streamline Management
providing much better performance and
Working on the recommendation of the Phoenix Software Professional Services team, NCD
lower power requirements than tradition-
began a rollout of VMware View; starting with the replacement of 140 Desktops in the
al desktops”
Learning Resource Centre, one of the College’s busiest environments. “We have also rolled
- George Wraith out another 220 WYSE P20 PCOIP Clients to 20 classrooms.”
Virtualizing the desktops has had an immediate impact. “We achieved a huge boost in perfor-
KEY HIGHLIGHTS mance on our applications” says Wraith. “Logins that used to take a minute or more were com-
pleted in a matter of seconds. So not only is VMware View helping us provide a better Desktop
Experience, it was helping it run much faster, which lets the teachers and students be more pro-
CHALLENGE ductive.”
Provide long term cost, deployment and management savings
whilst providing a high performance VDI Solution for up to 1200 Application delivery has also received a boost. “With VMware View delivering PC-over-IP
desktops (PCoIP) support, users notice a significant improvement in graphics rendering with some of the
SOLUTION applications that traditionally would not have worked well in a virtualized desktop environment. ”
VMware® View™ 4.5 provides a platform for desktop virtualiza- Additionally, the ability to centrally manage the virtual desktops makes it easier for NCD to
tion that helps NCD reduce costs of the desktop environment.
make better use of its IT personnel. “It takes a lot of time and effort to send people out to the
RESULTS actual physical workstations to do upgrades or updates. With VMware View, everything is central-
Replace 400 Desktops with WYSE P20 PCOIP Terminals ized, and we can make changes to desktops in a matter of minutes, each time the user logs off the
desktop is refreshed and each user always logs on to a clean image. That helps us make much
Managed Desktop Environment, easy provisioning of new
more efficient use of our people and reduce costs and increase efficiency .”
Images and Applications via ThinApp
Increased performance of desktop applications, providing a The WYSE Management suite allows all Terminals to be managed Centrally, this includes
superior educational experience for students and teachers configuration and Firmware upgrades, initial deployment was simple and was a simple case
alike.
of plug in the power, network, monitor, keyboard, mouse, power on and walk away, the rest
Deployed Windows 7, Office and Multiple Applications was done centrally.
Improved availability over a desktop solution.
Future Plans
Eliminated need for expensive SAN, Power and Mainte-
nance and Networking Infrastructure costs Based on the initial success using VMware View, NCD is seeking to further its usage of
desktop virtualization throughout the College. This will be accomplished over the next cou-
V M WA R E AT W O R K
ple of years, NCD is looking to replace the remaining 800 Desktops with WYSE P20 Thin
VMware Infrastructure 4.1 Premier, featuring:
Terminals and expand the VMware Server Farm.
VMware vSphere 4.1
vCenterServer2.5
View 4.5, ThinApp 4.6
TECHNOLOGY / PERFORMANCE
High Performance Platform featuring:
Dell R810—128GB 24 Cores (80 to 100 vm’s per host)
FusionIO IO-DriveDuo 640GB (~200,000 IOPS and
>800MB/s throughput per card)
WYSE P20—PCOIP Terminals