VandeVen Auto Services VM Implementation
Based on the business structure of VandeVen Auto Services, it is proposed for the company to implement the VMWare virtualization to attain both current business objectives and goals and its future plans. With the company planning to expand from its current three locations of operations in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama to additional three locations in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, it will require a VM environment scalable to handle significant software updates and an increment of users by 5,000 employees compared to current 3,000. Therefore, this paper proposes the VMware Horizon suite for VandeVen Auto Services operations. The paper provides significant aspects concerning the VMware Horizon Suite, including its features, pros, cons, and infrastructure required by the company for the effective deployment of VMware solutions.
VMware Horizon Suite
The VMware Horizon Suite is an application service that is hosted through virtualization technology to enable companies to manage central provision, access, and usage of cloud services, ThinApp-virtualized windows, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. With VandeVen Auto Services planning to expand in the future, the proposed VMware Horizon suite tends to be the most suitable for the company considering VMware Horizon suite enables the IT departments of organizations to cover on-premises Active Directory personalities to meet the end-user demands through the public cloud. The Horizon Suite has the capability of delivering services to the end-users devices in all office locations while providing a secure, easily managed, and compliance with security policies computing environment at a lower capital investment (VMware, 2013a). Horizon Suite includes an identity-as-service hub that enables administrators to extend the existing identity of the users in systems such as Microsoft Active Directory into the cloud. The procedure ensures that the separated users’ identities across multiple applications are collapsed into a single identity capable of securing the access of users for enterprise resources on a private and public cloud. With the company planning to expand its users to 8,000 employees, the identity-as-a-service will enable the control and management of users centrally and also increases all company assets accountability. The Horizon Suite also provides end-users with an on-demand self-access to all applications through the company’s application catalog, including Office, adobe cs6, and Oracle software. However, the users will be grouped based on the location of work, which means the employees in a specific location can only access matching Active Directory groups that they have been assigned via Web-based workspace and one secure login. The Horizon Suite also includes the VMware ThinApp that can be utilized by administrators top package virtualized Windows applications to enhance users’ access to all their applications is a simple, secured, and fast way.
VMware Horizon Suite Features
Horizon Suite is comprised of a desktop-vitalization solution, and new technologies specifically built for supporting the workforce mobility and collaborative, that enables enterprises IT to utilize its current business environment, while securely incorporating emerging technological components to preserve a productive workforce within a business environment that is highly secured. VandeVen Auto Services can optimize various features of VMware Horizon Suite to increase its workforce while maintaining a secure working environment. The features included in Horizon Suite include VMware Horizon View, which involves the provision of simplified management of the company resource usage by users, enhance desktop security and control while delivering desktop services characterized with the highest-fidelity experience both for devices and company networks (VMware, 2013b). Another feature included in the Horizon Suite is the VMware Horizon Mirage, which provides a centralized physical desktops management for the IT administrators, as the employees retain local exaction power of desktops services for controlling office-related applications for managing business functions. VMware Horizon Workspace a feature of Horizontal Suite, which is used in providing secure application and data access on the company computers and mobile devices. The feature reduces the costs associated with management while enhancing the end-user experience. The last significant feature included in the Horizon Suite is the VMware vCentral Operations Manager for Horizon View, which is used to provide comprehensive visibility that is used by the IT administrators in the virtual desktop infrastructure monitoring process that includes its performance, health, and working efficiency.
The VMware Horizon also consists of the application manager, which is an essential element that makes Horizon Suite suitable for VandeVen Auto Services. Horizon application manager comprises of four components that can be applied across the current company office locations and also expanded to include the other expected additional. The components include the Horizon Service, which is made up of the administration portal, which would be located at VandeVen headquarters at Marietta GA, and the users’ portal that would be located at each location of the company. The users, applications, and groups would be managed at the administration portal, while the users’ portals will be used for accessing ThinApp packages and other applications via Application Catalog (VMware, 2013a). The second component of the Horizon application manager is the Horizon Connector, which will be installed at each location to synchronize users’ and groups’ information from AD to the Horizon services. The metadata of ThinApp packages will also be synchronized from the Windows application share to Horizon services. The third component of the Horizon application manager is the Windows Application Share, which stores the ThinApp packages that are converted from Windows applications such as Office, adobe cs6, and Oracle software to manage business functions. The Horizon Agent is the last component of the Horizon application manager, which is stored on users’ devices to enable the users to open the ThinApp packages on desktops for usage. The ThinApp packages can utilize a disk space of 50 gigabits, a RAM of 4 gigabits, and can run on a multicore processor, archiving the requirements of each employee’s work desktop. With the components of Horizon application manager, the company can deploy as many users as possible, both linked to the user portal that is controlled locally via the VMware Horizon application manager located at the company headquarter.
Pros and Cons of VMware Horizon Suite
Several advantages are associated with VMware Horizon Suite, including the ability to provide a robust and secure desktop enterprise environment capable of accessing all resources within the company’s internal environment. Another advantage of Horizon is that it addresses the data security and compliance issues since all the data is stored within the company’s internal network. Access to company data does not involve traversing through a VPN to a local desktop, which could create an opportunity for attacks (VMware, 2020). The VMware Horizon Suite also eliminates the need for installing, configuring, and maintaining applications on local desktops. The other notable advantage provided by the Horizon Suite is that it reduces the control and management costs by dynamically allocating resources with virtual compute, virtual storage, and virtual networking, allowing the company to extend its devices and users through a data center virtualization. With the incorporation of the VMware ThinApp, the Horizon poses more additional advantages offered through the ThinApp capabilities (VirtualizationWorks, 2020). The benefits held by ThinApp in the Horizon Suite include eliminating application conflicts, reducing the costs associated with desktop IT support and help, increasing workforce mobility, streamlining management of applications, and strengthening the endpoint security.
However, several disadvantages have been noted for VMware Horizon Suite. They include the relatively high price compared to other VMware such as Chrome Remote Desktop and TeamViewer. The other con of Horizon Suite is that it does provide clear steps on components that should be upgraded during the increment of applications and users (TrustRadius, 2020). Horizon Suite is also considered to move away from Adobe Flash version in UI compared to other VMware, and its ability to speed the booting processes during the server maintenance process tends to affect the ability of administrators to conduct effective server maintenance in the VM environment. Despite the few disadvantages associated with VMware Horizontal Suite, it is still considered the most suitable for VandeVen Auto Services, considering the company expansion plan that would involve additional applications and users, which can be controlled and managed effectively through the Horizon Suite features.
VMware Infrastructure Required
The VMware infrastructure required for the implementation of the VMware Horizontal Suite in the VandeVen Auto Services VM environment includes several components. The components are used to virtualize and aggregate the physical resources across the company multiple systems and providing support to the distributed services in the datacenter that enable the IT administrators to provide policy-driven, high availability, and fine-grain resource allocation to its users (VMware, 2009). The required VMware infrastructures include VMware ESX Server, which is a virtualization layer that runs on the physical servers of the company. The VMware ESX Server is used for abstracting the processor, storage, memory, and networking resources connected to the physical Server into multiple virtual machines. Another required infrastructure is the VirtualCenter Server, which is used by IT administrators as the central point to configure, provide, and manage a virtualized IT environment. VI Client (VMware Infrastructure Client is required for creating remote connectivity of users using Windows PC to VirtualCenter Servers or the office ESX Servers.
The other essential infrastructure in the implementation of the VMware Horizontal Suite is the VI Web Access (VMware Infrastructure Web Access), which is a web-based interface that enables the management of VM and remote console access. The ESX Server will require a VMFS (VMware Virtual Machine File System), which is a cluster file system that supports for supporting ESX Server high performance. The VMware will also require the VMware VMotion that will be used in conducting live migration of virtual machines between physical machines while running, which helps in the avoidance of system downtime issues, thus ensuring services remained available and transaction integrity is achieved (VMware, 2009). Another infrastructure required in the virtual machine migration is the VMware Storage VMotion that is used for the migration of files between data-stores without interrupting the provision of services. The infrastructures for supporting application usage that is required include VMware High Availability (HA), which ensures that applications are easily accessible and highly available. In the event of server failure, the HA automatically restarts the affected VM on other servers with spare capacity to ensure continuous application availability and access. Therefore, with the provided infrastructure in place, the VandeVen Auto Services would be able to deploy the VMware Horizon Suite that would accommodate the current business processes and the expected expansion of the company.
References
TrustRadius. (2020). VMware Horizon vs VMware ThinApp. Reprieved from https://www.trustradius.com/compare-products/vmware-horizon-vs-vmware-thinapp
VirtualizationWorks. (2020). VMware ThinApp: Application Virtualization Made Simple. Retrieved from https://www.virtualizationworks.com/VMware-ThinApp.asp
VMware (2020). VMware Horizon 7. Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/products/horizon.html
VMware (2013a). Using VMware Horizon Application Manager to Manage Deployment and Entitlement of ThinApp Packages. Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/pdf/thinapp47-horizon-integration-guide.pdf
VMware (2013b). VMware Horizon Suite: Your Cloud, Your Policy, Your Choice. Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/products/horizon-suite/vmware-horizon-suite-datasheet.pdf
VMware. (2009). Introduction to VMware Infrastructure. Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_intro_vi.pdf

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