Citrix WorkspacePod Powered by DataON Storage and HGST SAS SSDs

DataON Storage unveils the next generation hyper-converged Cluster-in-a-Box (CiB) appliance, featuring the HGST Ultrastar family of 12Gb SAS SSDs, to power the Citrix WorkspacePod -a pre-defined software stack on validated platforms for delivering workspace services including apps, desktops and data.

DataON CiB-9224 V12 Cluster-in-a-Box

In collaboration with technology partners, Citrix is developing turnkey appliances that include integrated compute, storage and hyper-resiliency to reduce the cost and complexity for deploying virtualization infrastructures. The CiB-9224 V12 Cluster-in-a-Box is tan end-to-end 12Gb SAS WorkspacePod available in the mobile desktop marketplace, leveraging the reliable and performance SAS SSDs from HGST, Inc.

This growth oriented architecture integrates Citrix workspace infrastructure software with Cluster-in-a-Box platform to deliver rich apps and desktops with price, performance and flexibility. Company’s performance-tuned dual-node appliance can be deployed as standalone single WorkspacePod appliance furnishing beyond 150 XenDesktop or 750 XenApp sessions. As growth occurs, the WorkspacePod can be stacked with additional units via 12Gb SAS interconnects to provide linear scale-out growth exceeding 750 XenDesktop or 3,750 XenApp sessions, while offering terabytes of tiered scalable shared storage.

“As the market leader in VDI, we’ve taken the reins to simplify session, app and desktop delivery management. With WorkspacePod we’re helping the market reduce the infrastructure cost and complexity for workspace delivery,” said Eva Helen, senior director of business development, storage technologies, Citrix Systems, Inc. “The Citrix WorkspacePod powered by DataON offers an easy to scale modular footprint that is well-suited to accelerate workspace deployments and bring unfettered performance metrics in excess of 2.5 million IO/s at a very attractive per-user price.”

As server and software licensing costs are well documented, one remaining barrier for VDI and application delivery adoption is storage due to its cost and complexity of deployment. The Citrix WorkspacePod addresses this issue by validating a simplified scalable converged infrastructure at a low price per user ratio in the mobile workspace market, consolidating existing on-premise or cloud storage infrastructure and reducing the time-to-value for workspace deployments.

“The Citrix WorkspacePod architecture answers the challenge of nebulous disjoined virtual desktop deployments by delivering a vetted and validated complete turnkey appliance while taming storage cost overruns prevalent in hyper-converged infrastructures,” states Trenton R. Baker, VP, business development, DataON Storage. “As a Citrix Ready partner, DataON Storage is pleased to furnish the Cluster-in-a-Box hyper-resilient storage appliance featuring HGST flash storage for WorkspacePod deployments. Our solution provides the building block required to build a highly resilient and cost-efficient software-defined data center.“

HGST was selected as the flash storage building block to help drive the performance, capacity and reliability in the Citrix WorkspacePod powered by DataON. The enterprise Ultrastar SSDs deliver cutting-edge technology yielding predictable and sustained performance necessary to deploy workspace solutions scaling to thousands of users.

“As the global leader in enterprise HDD and SSD, we are pleased to be included as the de facto drive platform for the Citrix WorkspacePod powered by DataON,” said Ulrich Hansen, VP, product marketing, HGST. “We have had a long history with DataON and with the development of the pre-integrated WorkspacePod appliance for VDIs, HGST and DataON can enable CIOs to quickly embrace the benefits of Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp deployments, while leveraging the most advanced SAS SSDs for enterprise infrastructure.”

Citrix WorkspacePod powered by DataON will be available through Citrix channel partners and will be shipping in 2H 2015, targeting branch and regional office deployments with plans of scaling into 1,000s of VDI and application deployments without cost constraints.