Security breaches from lost laptops, consumerization of enterprise IT, and a slowed economy have all been factors forcing current CIOs and IT staffs to find ways to cut costs and increase efficiencies. Virtual desktops while often one of my primary topics has become just one of the many pieces of the puzzle. The others include but are certainly not limited to the server infrastructure, networking equipment, enterprise storage and all the components that allow them to run, both physically with cabling, cooling and power, but also virtually, with management consoles and user interfaces.
Over the past two years, almost every major vendor in the IT industry has come up with a new fancy name to say that they are combining all the components needed to run your enterprise. Acadia was a collaboration from EMC, VMware and Cisco which later became VCE, Netapp was soon to follow with the Flexpod. Both of these are great solutions and are clearly geared at the large enterprise that buys in bulk. They both allow you to control the storage as part of a solution that includes the servers and even includes hooks into the virtual infrastructure. However, they also come with a cost, and a large one since you have to buy the units as a full configuration all at once. Continue reading
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