Desktop Virtualization Solutions

Business benefits of using F5 with your desktop virtualization solution include:

• Broad virtualization support.
  VDI is an emerging market with evolving solutions. It’s important to have a delivery infrastructure that works with various VDI solutions and access technologies. F5 provides a delivery infrastructure that works with VDI solutions from Citrix, VMware, Microsoft, and other vendors to support file, storage, server, or application virtualization technologies. Plus, F5’s unrivaled application fluency ensures that organizations can meet changing demands for desktop delivery and future integration with cloud services.
• Simplified infrastructure and reduced costs.
  Today, many VDI vendors are working to deliver applications in silos, with distinct and dedicated infrastructure components, which complicate the network architecture. F5’s unified VDI solution integrates authentication, directory services, high-speed SSL and DTLS, and SSL offloading throughout the virtual desktop infrastructure, so organizations can optimize virtual desktop delivery with fewer resources.
• Unified access control and security.
  F5’s unified access solution handles access and security policies centrally, enabling secure access to virtual desktops from remote and local access. From two-factor authentication to one-time password devices such as smart cards, F5 BIG-IP APM can provide security that determines access for a specific user, on a specific client device, for a specific resource. This gives IT unprecedented flexibility in meeting the needs of business users while keeping attackers at bay.
• Optimized user experience.
  F5 products securely transport and optimize the VDI underlying protocols, such as PCoIP and ICA, over the WAN to support remote offices without degrading performance. F5 helps organizations maintain a high-quality user experience by streamlining the authentication process for remote users into a single step. Users can enjoy virtual desktop access from the device of their choice, whether it is an iPad, iPhone, or Android. The F5 solution also reduces the bandwidth required and costs.
• High availability and scalability.
  Major hurdles for VDI deployments have been scaling up to meet the demands of large-scale and distributed deployments and providing reliable, transparent disaster recovery across data centers. Through intelligent global and local load balancing, sophisticated health monitoring, and SSL offload, F5 improves the availability of your VDI implementation and ensures your enterprise can scale to meet the demands of large, distributed deployments.

You can take the trial and error out of deploying virtualization technologies by using F5’s validated, step-by-step deployment guides for VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix solutions. In addition, with F5 iApps, which have configurations tested specifically for each VDI, you can get VDI deployments up and running quickly. F5 engineers have also developed guides for deploying F5 solutions with a wide variety of applications that may be hosted on virtual desktop infrastructures. You can find forums, procedures, tips, and more on DevCentral, F5's online developer community.

F5 helps you realize the benefits of desktop virtualization by giving you the necessary building blocks to deploy, manage, and support virtualization in the infrastructure for all users.