Unified Computing Blocks Offer Customer Choice of Server Hardware and SAN Vendors While Leveraging Standard Ethernet

Egenera Inc. has announced two new customer-proven reference architectures that enable companies to rapidly implement virtual desktop “blocks” in 1,000-seat increments, which include Egenera’s integrated HA, DR and scaling capabilities. The reference architectures are based on multiple real-world production deployments using Egenera’s open platform approach to converged infrastructure.

The architectures are based on Citrix desktop virtualization products, a choice of Dell or Fujitsu PRIMERGY blade servers, FiberChannel SANs from all major vendors, and inexpensive, industry-standard Ethernet components. Egenera’s PAN Manager Software provides integrated I/O virtualization, converged networking, load balancing, software provisioning and High Availability (HA) / Disaster Recovery (DR) for both physical and virtual services. PAN Manager Software was the first converged infrastructure software to be certified as Citrix Ready for Citrix XenServer, ensuring compatibility and stability.

“The simplicity offered by Egenera’s pre-architected, converged infrastructure is unrivaled. Our position goes against the one-vendor-fits-all, closed technology models on the market today, which ultimately result in vendor lock-in and intentionally high switching costs,” said Pete Manca, President and CEO of Egenera. “Our approach, in use with customers today, demonstrates that companies can indeed achieve both simplicity and choice. Further, our multi-vendor direction appeals to the channel whose relevance is being jeopardized by other pre-configured, unified computing vendors such as the VCE alliance.”

Egenera’s reference architectures, available immediately from here https://www.egenera.com/products-white-papers.htm, depict server, storage and network blocks that can be installed and configured simply and quickly.

“Citrix XenDesktop fulfills critical business objectives for disaster recovery by centralizing desktops in the datacenter and delivering them to users anywhere, on any device, whether a corporate issued laptop, a home PC, smartphone or tablet device. Citrix continues to work to create a broad ecosystem so our customers can leverage open, innovative solutions from our partners. Egenera’s unique features ensure that Citrix virtual desktops are protected with integral HA and DR,” said Natalie Lambert, director of product marketing, XenDesktop product group at Citrix.

“Egenera’s desktop virtualization architecture is an excellent example of Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Servers’ versatility,” said Jens-Peter Seick, senior vice president of the Datacenter Systems product division at Fujitsu Technology Solutions. “The platform offers end-to-end reliable, balanced performance, enabling optimal virtual machine deployment at an exceptional value point.”

“Virtual desktop solutions require well architected, yet easy to deploy solutions. Egenera pioneered the converged infrastructure space, and now delivers a customer-proven modular design that provides customers the flexibility of utilizing multiple platforms and cost savings with standard Ethernet,” said Stuart Miniman, Senior Analyst at The Wikibon Project. “Egenera has been at this for years, as evidenced by the maturity and functionality of their software.”

About Egenera PAN Manager Software
PAN Manager Software (based on Egenera’s Processing Area Network concept) combines the simplification benefits of unified computing with integrated high availability and disaster recovery services for physical and virtual servers. The software uses standard servers and Ethernet and creates server, I/O, networking and storage pools that can be easily re-allocated. The result is a business-critical infrastructure with massive hardware and operational efficiencies. With 10 years of rock-solid performance, PAN Manager is deployed at over 1,600 sites globally. The software currently supports hardware from Egenera, Dell and Fujitsu, and storage from 3Par, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and others.

About Egenera
Converge. Unify. Simplify.™ That’s how Egenera converged infrastructure and unified computing solutions have been transforming production data centers and service providers worldwide for over 10 years. The company’s production-proven PAN Manager™ Software leverages powerful I/O virtualization and converged network fabric to deliver quantifiable value such as high availability, disaster recovery, operational agility, and cloud computing infrastructures. Egenera software guarantees simple wire-once, always-on, physical / virtual infrastructure automation on standard volume platforms with significant savings every time. Headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., Egenera has offices globally. For more information visit https://www.egenera.com,