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Exceptional VDI Performance on a Converged Infrastructure-Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device

Implement an infrastructure that can meet the flexibility and performance needs of today’s workers, provide better data security, scale easily and rapidly, and support the ever-increasing graphics demands of modern applications.

OverviewIT departments can struggle to meet the varied, and sometimes conflicting, demands of the organizations they support. Workers want a better digital experience, with more flexibility in terms of when, where, and how they work. Management wants to control costs, maintain data and network security, and scale up or down as needed. Cisco® converged-infrastructure solutions for VDI with VMware Horizon can provide the needed flexibility for workers, maintain or increase data security, and reduce total cost of ownership by lowering management costs. Cisco and VMware combine best-in-class data-center computing, networking, storage, and management software, enabling a high-performance, easy-to-manage, and cost-effective environment.© 2020 Cisco and/ or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public. 1

The digital workplace is changing how we work:

• Windows 10 requires a 50 percent increase in CPU consumption from Windows 7.

• Applications that require graphics have doubled since 2012; over half of enterprise users access at least one graphics-accelerated application.

• Use of multiple monitors is the new normal.

Cisco and VMware have partnered together to deliver Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions on converged infrastructures to address a wide range of organizational and end-user needs. These stacks, validated by Cisco, provide performance, flexibility, and cost savings.

A flexible solution for organizations and workers

Solution overviewCisco public

Digital expectations of today’s workforce

Digital expectations of today’s organizations

With the speed of change and technology advances taking place, workers today expect the same type of performance and flexibility they experience with their personal devices. As shown in Figure 1, a recent survey of 6400 workers indicates the majority are looking for a better digital experience in the workplace. IT departments struggle with meeting these demands in a timely manner. Figure 1. Digital experience survey results

Technology tools and graphics-heavy applications create additional peformance demands. Many workers now use multimonitor workstations, and more than half of enterprise workers access at least one graphics-accelerated application to complete their tasks. Applications that require graphics have doubled since 2012. The migration to Windows 10 increases performance demands, because Windows 10 requires a 50 percent increase in CPU consumption compared to Windows 7.

Source: “Digital Employee Experience Global Commentary Report,” VMware, 2019

Want more emphasis on providing the

best tools

Seek improved ability to work

remotely

Use apps on a phone or tablet for tasks outside

of email

See challenges in delivering the optimal digital

experience

74% 75% 84%76%

IT departments must also meet management expectations. These can encompass security concerns, budget

compounded by desktop refresh cycles to accommodate aging PCs, migrating to new operating systems such asMicrosoft Windows 10, and increasing graphics demands from new productivity tools. For many organizations, the IT team needs to reimagine their deliver models for emerging mobile and cloud technologies.

constraints, data management, and asset management. IT must respond to individual and team requests for new tools, applications, or services; support multiple access scenarios; and provide business agility tools. These challenges are

Benefits

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y Save time and money, as the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) enables faster payback with the industry’s greatest virtual desktop density per server, fewer cables per server, and fewer ports required.

y Accelerate time to productivity and enhance business agility with a solution that meets the demands of today’s workers. Provision new desktops in seconds and scale seamlessly. The near-native end-user experience allows workers to be productive anytime, anywhere, from any device.

y Recover network connections across multiple platforms with VMware Horizon capabilities. If a connection unexpectedly ends, users can continue their sessions while the Horizon client works to reconnect to the network. IP roaming supports seamless switching to Wi-Fi if needed.

y Improve security with data and applications maintained centrally in the cloud, minimizing movement out of the data center. Users consistently have the most current anti-virus, anti-malware, and other security software.

y Access efficient, enterprise-grade storage that delivers consistent performance and scalability. The solution and multiple storage options are shown in Figure 2.

y Manage all software and hardware components across multiple chassis, servers, and thousands of virtual machines with Cisco UCS Manager.

Solution overviewCisco public

Solution components• Cisco UCS integrated infrastructure unites computing,

networking, and storage access into a converged infrastructure. The converged infrastructure is designed as a single virtual blade chassis that incorporates and scales across multiple blade chassis, rack servers, and racks. Tight integration with VMware vCenter creates a highly cohesive virtualization cluster that provides an excellent foundation for virtual desktop environments.

• Cisco UCS M5 Servers meet both current and future processing needs, with more cores to accelerate workloads, larger memory capacity, and higher memory bandwidth. Up to eight GPU accelerators help meet demanding workloads and provide a smooth user experience in virtual desktop environments.

• Cisco Nexus® 9000 series switches offer high performance, low density, low latency, and power efficiency. They offer options for unified fabric technology to identify and consolidate all network traffic onto a single, simplified, cost-effective architecture.

• High-performance storage options (depicted in Figure2) include IBM FlashSystem (VersaStack), NetAppAll Flash FAS (FlexPod), and Pure Storage FlashArray (FlashStack) and provide scalable storage that is fully tested in Cisco Validated Solutions to work with this VDI solution. They offer efficient, enterprise-grade storage with consistent performance.

• VMware Horizon is the desktop virtualizationfoundation of the VDI solution. IT departmentscan simultaneously deliver flexible end-usercomputing, high levels of desktop security, andsuperior scalability and management. VMwareHorizon simplifies the delivery, protection, andmanagement of virtual desktops and applications,including the migration to Windows 10 and itsassociated applications.

• Cisco UCS Manager, running on Cisco UCS FabricInterconnects on premises or on Cisco Intersight™from the cloud, provides unified, embeddedmanagement of all software and hardwarecomponents of Cisco UCS through an intuitiveGUI, a command-line interface, and an XMLAPI. The manager provides a centralized, unifiedmanagement domain that can control multiplechassis and thousands of virtual machines.

• NVIDIA GPU virtualization brings graphicsacceleration and a quality user experience toany device, giving virtual machines similar GPUbenefits as a physical desktop. GPU virtualizationalso helps organizations cost-effectively scalegeneral-purpose VDI, which is important, given theincreasing graphical requirements of Windows 10and modern productivity applications.

Figure 2. Cisco converged-infrastructure solutions for VDI with VMware Horizon

Task user

Microsoft Windows 10

Horizon agent

Application

Microsoft Windows 10

Horizon agent

Application

Microsoft Windows 10

Horizon agent

Application

Graphics workstation

Knowledge worker

LAN/WAN/wireless network infrastructure

Laptops

iPad and Android tablets

PCs and workstations

iPhone and Android phones

VMware Horizon

VMware ESXi + NVIDIA GPU, host drivers, and software

FlexPod VxBlockVersaStackFlashStack Custom solutions

Cisco UCS converged infrastructure solutions

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Solution overviewCisco public

• Educational institutions

• Influx of multiple technologies as students bring their own devices and teachers add new programs for class work

• Support for increasingly complex, graphics-intensive applications

• Ability to meet student expectations of applications working on any device, from multiple locations

• Continuous need to upgrade costly equipment in computer labs to remain current

• Meet demand for multimedia and video applications

• Range of graphics-heavy, complex applications to support students across disciplines: architecture, engineering, medical, finance, media and entertainment, and design

• VDI programs run modern productivity applications and operating systems.

Use casesDifferent types of workers, across a variety of industries, can use the Cisco VMware VDI converged-infrastructure solution. Flexible deployment, device, and location options provide workers with the tools and applications they need. Table 1 provides examples for different types of workers. Table 1. Use-case examples across worker types and industries

• Architecture, engineering, and construction

Creative and technical professionals across a wide range of industries:

• Supporting efficient work flows for building design activities

• Maintaining powerful workstations to support complex programs with large design file sizes

• Downloading files takes time and creates challenges for security, version control, and collaboration

• AutoCAD (Autodesk)• Revit (Autodesk)• MicroStation (Bentley Systems)• Civil 3D (Autodesk)• Allplan Architecture (Allplan) • Vectorworks design and modeling

software • Rhino 6 (McNeel) • Adobe Creative Suite• OpenBuildings Designer (Bentley

Systems)• Project Center (Newforma)• SketchUp (Trimble)• Navisworks (Autodesk)

Common applicationsType of worker Organizational concerns

Task workers, knowledge workers, and power users across all industries

• User experience and mobility• Data security• Simplified employee onboarding• Cost-effective migrations to new

operating systems (for example, Windows 10)

• ROI

• Common productivity tools, software, and web services, including:• Microsoft Office• Chrome, Internet Explorer, and

Safari• Video streaming services

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Solution overviewCisco public

• Geospatial, oil and gas

• Manufacturing • Shorten design cycles, speed time to market, and reduce unit costs to remain competitive

• Provide faster data access to remote workers, suppliers, and partners

• Support large 3D models, animation, math-intensive processes, and workstation performance across networks

• Protect intellectual property

• Use geospatial data to support answering a large variety of macro- and microscale geography-related questions

• See patterns, connections, and relationships

• Provide high-resolution 3D imaging to support exploration and production

• Provide decision support

• ANSYS Fluent and ANSYS Mechanical

• AutoCAD and Inventor (Autodesk)• CATIA (Dassault Systèmes)• Rhino 6 (McNeel) • Creo (PTC)• NX (Siemens)

• JewelSuite (Baker-Hughes)• ArcGIS (Esri)• Petrel, PetroMod, InterACT, and

ECLIPSE (Schlumberger) • DecisionSpace 365

(Halliburton-Landmark)• VoxelGeo (Paradigm)

Common applicationsType of worker Organizational concerns

• Healthcare • Adherence to rigorous standards and regulations, such as mandated use of electronic medical records

• Provide doctors and clinicians with access to large medical imaging files

• Incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) to help triage images, predict patient outcomes, and guide treatment

• Virtual EMR applications, such as Epic

• View and annotate complex medical images via PACS

• AI and ML applications used by academic medical centers

Common applicationsType of worker Organizational concerns

High-performance converged-infrastructure solutions for VDI as proven with CVDsThree Cisco Validated Design (CVD) storage options are available for this solution, along with many other storage options aside from the CVDs. These high-performing, flexible storage options can scale to meet demand, providing clients with excellent choices.

FlexPod, FlashStack, and VersaStack are documented with Cisco Validated Designs, and can be accessed on the Cisco website:

• FlexPod• FlashStack• VersaStack

They provide consistent performance and scalability, with sub-millisecond latency and 100 percent flash or NVME storage. Hundreds of enterprise-class applications can be consolidated in a single rack. Both options support continuous growth with multiple storage component deployments. Operators can upgrade and expand without downtime or performance loss.

These fully tested and validated storage options provide operational simplicity. The highly-available architectures have no single point of failure and do not require storage tuning or tiers. They provide low TCO, with dramatic savings in power, cooling, and space requirements. Highly available architectures deliver enterprise-grade resiliency, supporting nondisruptive operations with no downtime.

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Solution overviewCisco public

Cisco and VMware bring the benefits of their industry-leading products into this solution, creating a virtual desktop environment that meets both end user and organizational requirements. This solution drastically simplifies physical and virtual infrastructure and management associated with virtual desktop deployments. Robust features, radically simplified architectures, storage optimizations, and simplified management bring a level of performance and cost control to the corporate desktop environment that is unrealized with traditional solutions.

Customers can fully leverage key features of the VMware Horizon suite, depicted in Figure 3, including virtual applications, user experience management, Blast Extreme display protocol, smart policies, and the Horizon technologies such as App Volumes, Dynamic Environment Manager, and Instant Clones.

Figure 3. VMware Horizon key features

6© 2020 Cisco and/ or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/ or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: https://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)

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Cloud-scale elasticity

Smart policies

Blast Extremeexperience

Application lifecyclemanagement

Just-in-timedelivery

• Cisco Virtual Desktop Infrastructure• Cisco and VMware partner site• Cisco Validated Design Navigator

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