'Virtual' is NMCI's Increasing Reality
Published, July 6, 2012
Ask any IT systems manager what tops their network to-do list, and virtualization is likely to be in the first or second spot. The same is true for the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI), which begins a United States Navy only limited deployment of Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) seats this year. ...
HVD offers significant benefits to both the enterprise users and the system. A regular workstation's thick client profile that includes a memory-laden hard drive housing all of a user's applications and files, is replaced by a flash memory module containing a small, solid state drive, or 'zero client' presence. For a zero client workstation, a user's applications and files are stored on a server accessible via a secure Internet connection.
Paired with existing monitors, mouse units and Common Access Card enabled keyboards, the HVD solution has both high visibility with end users and supports their need for a more flexible and mobile computing environment. The Naval Enterprise Networks Program Office – the program management office for NMCI and Next Generation Enterprise Network – is deploying HVD to achieve a level of network agility never before experienced on NMCI.
NMCI isn't a stranger to virtualization. NMCI began its virtualization efforts in 2007 with email servers. Today, about 35 percent of all server functions in the environment are virtualized. It has provided enormous server management flexibility resulting in improved service availability. Putting it into perspective, NMCI has 4,000 servers, and without virtualization, that number would have exceeded 6,000 with the accompanying hardware footprint, power and administrative costs. NMCI anticipates even broader advantages by bringing virtualization to workstations.
For more Fast Facts, visit: www.doncio.navy.mil/contentview.aspx?id=3805