Paper: Reference Architecture on VDI with Egenera PAN Manager and Citrix XenDesktop

Egenera, the company which provides cloud-computing-in-a-box software called PAN Manager has released two whitepapers detailing a reference architecture for a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) running on top of Dell or Fujitsu hardware.

PAN Manager is software which pools server, network, and storage resources providing management capabilities by virtualizing I/O and networking and providing simplified server re-configuration, availability and disaster recovery services. The solution provides what Egenera calls a Processing Area Network (PAN). PAN Manager is Citrix Ready validated and is offered on three platforms: Dell blade servers, Fujitsu Primergy servers and Egeneras own BladeFrame systems.

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The first whitepaper is titled: Reference Architecture for Desktop Virtualisation & Converged Infrastructure Using Citrix XenDesktop & Egenera PAN Manager Implemented on Dell PowerEdge Hardware Platform and contains 58 pages. The second whitepaper is called: Reference Architecture for Desktop Virtualisation & Converged Infrastructure Using Citrix XenDesktop & Egenera PAN Manager Implemented on Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Hardware Platform and contains 57 pages.

Both documents provide a reference architecture for a PAN Manager infrastructure which provides virtual desktops running on Citrix XenDesktop, running on top of Dell/Fujitsu hardware. The reference architecture is designed to provide up to 1000 users, running Windows XP professional and MS Office 2007, provided by Citrix XenServer, XenDesktop and Provisioning Server.

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Covered sections:

  • Desktop Virtualisation and PAN Manager, which details what desktop virtualization is, what PAN Manager is and how it integrates.
  • An Overview of the Solution Components, detailing the PAN Manager hardware requirements, the hardware models from Dell/Fujitsu used, and details about XenDesktop.
  • Sizing Guidelines for the Reference Architecture, which provides guidelines to sizing the VDI environment. Depening on the type of user: Light, Medium, Heavy or very Heavy guidelines are provided for Memory, Host Server Sizing and SAN.
  • Reference Architecture, providing a solution that can support up to 1000 users desktops as VMs, with High Availability and Disaster Recovery included.
  • Ordering Guide, which gives an overview of the used hardware for reference when this hardware needs to be ordered.
  • Dell/Fujitsu PAN System Compatibility, detailing the supported Operating Systems and Storage Systems.