Lea Artibai Ikastetxea: VDI in record time

• Client name: Lea Artibai Ikastetxea

• Sector: Education

• Number of students: 1,500

• Number of teachers & staff: 88

• Location: Markina-Xemein (Bizkaia, Spain)

After five years looking for a VDI solution that could be 100% adapted to their needs, last year, the Systems Department of Lea Artibai Ikastetxea discovered UDS Enterprise, and finally decided to start implementing desktop virtualization in their training centers.

“The implementation has been easy and not traumatic, and we are already saving costs and reducing IT work, which now has an easy and simple tool, especially when compared to other connection brokers in the market”, explains Iban Maruri, Head of the Systems Department of Lea Artibai Ikastetxea.

“In addition, end users are very satisfied, so our assessment is totally positive,” he says.

Today, all departments, including teachers and students, enjoy the advantages of VDI. “Users always have the same configurations and can access the programs they need for their work or studies 24×7 wherever they are, and IT administrators manage all the equipment in a centralized way with the consequent time savings, which is added to the savings in hardware thanks to the possibility of reusing existing computer equipment”, Maruri comments.

Lea Artibai has a VDI infrastructure with UDS Enterprise sized for 350 users backed by Nutanix hyper-converged hardware and with the Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV).

The binomial UDS Enterprise – Nutanix allows them to deploy VDI in a record time without the need to invest in additional hypervisors or broker licenses. Actually, AHV is integrated into the Nutanix hardware at no cost, and the Open Source UDS Enterprise software is capable of directly publishing a virtual desktop every three seconds on AHV.

Users authenticate through Active Directory and connect from Windows and Linux computers to Windows desktops through the RDP or HTML5 connection protocol, depending on client devices.

Seamless VDI installation with Lanmedia

Our Certified Partner Lanmedia Communications has been commissioned to perform the installation and help them put the project into production. “They have been very professional and they have helped us in everything we have needed”, the Systems Manager affirms.

Lanmedia recommends the use of VDI with UDS Enterprise to all its customers because “it entails strong savings in the management and administration of the microcomputer park,” says Patxi Lorenzo, Sales Manager.

Regarding the choice of the connection broker, they clearly state: “UDS Enterprise is much more versatile and open than other systems at both levels, technically and during the integration; it also has an unlimited subscription starting from 350 users, which provides economic viability to many projects. “, remarks Lorenzo.

In addition to VDI, this center of higher education uses UDS Enterprise to access physical computers and “soon we will implement application virtualization since the updates that the UDS Enterprise team has made in this technology are fully adapted to our requirements”, concludes Maruri.

VDI INFRASTRUCTURE

• Broker: UDS Enterprise

• Hypervisor: Nutanix Acropolis

• Connection protocol: RDP y HTML5

• Authenticator: Active Directory

• VDI OS: Windows

• Hyperconverged platform: Nutanix with four nodes NX-1065-G5. Each node has:

   2 x Intel Xeon Processor 2.1GHz 8-core Broadwell

   E5-2620 v4 20M Cache

   12 x 16GB DDR4 Memory Module

   2 x 2TB 3.5″ HDD

   1 x 800GB 3.5″ SSD

   1 x 10GbE Dual Base-T Network Adapter