DVS Enterprise and Ivy Bridge take VDI from Good to Great

We have been talking for some time now about the benefits that organizations deploying desktop virtualization can enjoy including enhanced infrastructure security, greater user and network manageability and of course the cost benefits and ROI of using this model.  We work constantly on improving the delivery of these key focus areas in our technology, and we are pleased with some of the tests that we’ve recently run for DVS Enterprise, Dell’s end-to-end VDI offering based on an integrated stack of Dell servers, storage, networking, software and services, and Intel’s new Intel E5-2600 v2 Ivy Bridge chips.

You may have already started to hear how the new Ivy Bridge series processors have increased the efficiency and performance of Dell computing solutions. In fact, Dell PowerEdge servers powered by Ivy Bridge achieved world record power efficiency results.  Now, we would like to connect those dots for our desktop virtualization customers and show you the VDI-specific benefits of increased Ivy Bridge processing power.

We recently ran tests comparing the total user density per host of Dell PowerEdge M620, one of the possible server nodes in the Dell PowerEdge VRTX solutions platform, as well as the Dell PowerEdge M720 servers powered by the new Ivy Bridge processor versus the previous Sandy Bridge processor for Windows 7 and Windows 8 clients. The results varied depending on whether users were Basic, Standard or Premium level, but in any case our findings were significant. For Dell PowerEdge M620 the total density of number users increased by at least 36% (from 110 to 150 users per host) and in certain scenarios by up to 61% (from 90 to 145 users); whereas with the Dell PowerEdge R720, the total density of number users increased by at least 29% (from 116 users to 150 users), providing organizations with a range of choices to further consolidate the number of desktop virtualization workloads – regardless of whether they are Citrix, VMware or Microsoft – running on each server and reap cost savings in both equipment purchase and the management of the computing environment.

The bottom line is that with increased Ivy Bridge processing power, Dell DVS Enterprise now supports more users per virtual machine, considerably reducing the TCO per user. Factor that in with the reduced power consumption, and we can confidently say that our VDI customers have some serious and exciting savings to look forward to!

About the Author: Rafael Colorado

Rafael Colorado is a product director in Dell EMC’s Extreme Scale Infrastructure division. Rafael leads a group responsible for defining and managing products and solutions for scale-out markets that are rapidly shifting towards cloud-based architectures. Rafael earned an Industrial Engineering degree and holds an EMBA from the University of Illinois. His previous experience includes Motorola where he led a product marketing and strategy team and Colgate Palmolive in different marketing roles. He also funded a successful technology startup company.