New customized workplaces available in minutes with UDS DaaS

• Name: IMDEA Materials Institute

• Sector: Public research center – Material Science

• Number of employees: 120

• Location: Getafe (Madrid, Spain)

The IMDEA Materials Institute is an internationally recognized public research center. Professionals from all over the world delve into Materials Science and Engineering to turn their knowledge into high value-added technologies that can be applied to the industrial sector to improve companies’ competitiveness. Its commitment to collaboration between researchers and its effort to attract new talents translates into users’ high rotation. A professional enrichment that was a major challenge for the IT team. They spent a great deal of time preparing new users’ workplaces and had to have several devices ready to be delivered. “To solve this problem, we decided to bet on virtual desktops as a service (DaaS) with UDS Enterprise. The dynamic sizing and the cloud infrastructure allow us to be fast and adapt to specific needs without having to make a high investment that would be difficult to face”, explains Raúl Merchán, IT Manager.

Now all departments work with this technology. “Its flexibility allows us to provide a customized solution for each employee: from a basic and temporary desktop for an administrative worker, to a calculation machine for atomistic simulations,” says Merchán.

All users enjoy the great advantage of having their work tools available whenever they need them. “With the simple fact of having a device connected to the internet, they can use a professional desktop 24×7, regardless of their operating system or local resources,” comments the IT Manager.

“The truth is that people are delighted. They are surprised to have their desktops available no matter where they are,” states Merchán. “Integration with our Active Directory makes their lives much easier. They only need a single username and password to work. Likewise, the IT department saves time; we no longer have to register/delete two credentials per user”.

“The key to making the exact software they need available to users in just minutes and with optimal performance lies in the use of template-based virtual desktops. UDS Enterprise allows them to configure different templates specially adapted for each use case, choosing from the operating system or the connection protocol that offers the best user experience to the specific software or applications they need. Whenever a new worker joins, with just a couple of clicks a desktop-based on a previously prepared template is served.

Velorcios Group, UDS Enterprise Gold Partner, is in charge of carrying out all these configurations and providing this managed service to IMDEA Materials. “We use our hyper-converged infrastructure to flexibly provision desktops to the customer based on their needs. We provide perimeter security so that the connectivity between the user and the desktop is carried out safely. The entire environment is redundant, ensuring the availability of the service permanently“, indicates José Izquierdo, Technical Director of this company.

HYBRID DaaS AND ON-PREMISE ENVIRONMENT

UDS Enterprise’s versatility has allowed Velorcios to design together with the client a hybrid infrastructure with desktops in DaaS format and on-premise, also adding the possibility of providing remote access to the office computers. “According to the requirements of each user, we grant them certain permissions so that when log into UDS Enterprise, they have access to the desktop environment in the managed cloud or to our on-premises platform, with the virtual desktops and applications they need,” says Merchán.

In this way, they ensure that each user has the appropriate resources to perform their work efficiently. “We have lightweight DaaS desktops with modest features and limited bandwidth, and more powerful on-premise desktops with no limitations. We also have virtual applications for occasional uses or for employees who do not need a full desktop. And for researchers who have workstations with high-end resources, we provide remote access to these devices”, he clarifies.

In IMDEA Materials, they already knew UDS Enterprise thanks to the RedIRIS community. “Several public centers and student institutions evaluated the different VDI proposals and positioned UDS Enterprise as the best alternative,” he ensures.

After its implementation, this research center has been able to verify why this VDI software is so highly valued. “I would recommend UDS Enterprise solutions for practically any company or organization mainly because of its simplicity and the use of resources. For the IT department, it is advantageous since it allows us to have great agility and focus on other tasks”.

VDI ON PREMISE, DaaS, vApp and REMOTE ACCESS INFRASTRUCTURE

• Broker: UDS Enterprise

• Hypervisor: Acropolis and vSphere

• Connection protocol: RDP

• Authenticator: Active Directory

• Hyper-converged platform: Nutanix

• VDI OS: Windows and Linux

• Windows and Linux virtualized applications accessible through HTML5

• Computers remotely accessible

• Access OS for VDI, vApp and physical devices: Any