The Robust Virtualized Work Environment Amid COVID-19 Epidemic

By Matt Oostveen, Chief Technology Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage

Matt Oostveen, Chief Technology Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Pure Storage

The impact of the coronavirus COVID-19 has pushed forward the progress of business continuity planning. Some organizations adopt flexible working model by dividing employees into office-based and work-from-home. In order to support work environment of all types, organizations have to put in place an effective remote technology infrastructure and enable employees especially those teleworking employees to have seamless experience anywhere.

One of the technologies that facilitate teleworking is Desktop Virtualization which as its name implies virtualizes computing resources such that critical data remains on centralized data centers with employees accessing this data and other applications on a variety of devices either in the office or in remote locations.

The benefits of putting in place a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) include business continuity, rapid data recovery and enhanced security and data protection but these benefits are not guaranteed.

Some organizations find that their first attempt at virtualization causes as many problems as it solves, particularly when it comes to disappointing end-user performance, unexpected management complexity, and high costs. Or, VDI may function well at the start, but fails to scale larger over time. In many instances where the results from a VDI implementation are disappointing, there is a clearly identifiable cause – an inadequate storage system. Typically, this involves legacy spinning disk systems; but sometimes hybrid systems that combine hard disk and solid-state technologies are the culprit.

Undoubtedly, many of the related technologies such as hypervisors, networking, load balancers, and security have seen improvements but probably the most important element that has taken VDI to the next stage is the advent of reliable, flash-based storage.

The Ever-Evolving VDI Landscape

Previously, Pure Storage introduced the first all-flash enterprise storage array to market and VDI was among the best use-cases for all-flash storage. Enterprises could provide a fast and consistent VDI experience that their end-users literally raved over and VDI admins appreciated the simplicity to deploy and manage. Over the years, VDI hypervisors made significant improvements to their platforms including a richer user experience with graphics acceleration, new levels of security, seamless application integration, support for mobile devices, and much more.

On the storage side, Pure has continued to innovate, with modern, built-for flash, end-to-end NVMe platform along with optional NVMe over fabrics (NVMe-oF), and plug and play next-gen media, Storage Class Memory (SCM). NVMe is instrumental for increasing capacity density while keeping performance at ultra-low latency.

With teleworking in the spotlight, organizations should consider deploying an effective VDI infrastructure so as to ensure a smooth performance for all anytime and anywhere. The VDI solution from Pure Storage features high performance, ease of use and scalability, allowing businesses to minimize the risk in unexpected challenges such as data loss or the breach, and enable employees to work smoothly.