Posted: September 9th, 2022

VandeVen Auto Services VNM Implementation

VandeVen Auto Services VM Implementation
Based on the business structure of VandeVen Auto Services, it is proposed that the company implements VMware virtualization to achieve both the current business objectives and its future goals. With the company planning to expand from its current locations in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama to an additional three 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. This 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.
Solution
VMware Horizon Suite is an application service hosted by 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. The VMware Horizon suite will be hosted on the VMware ESX Server on the company network. With VandeVen Auto Services planning to expand, the proposed VMware Horizon Suite is the solution for the expansion. The Horizon is associated with various expansion capabilities, including the on-premises Active Directory that would enable the IT administrators to expand the number of end-users to meet the expected growth of the organization’s employees. The future increment in numbers of employees would require high security as a priority in the company computing environment, which can be solved by Horizon (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 the company 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 includes the VMware ThinApp that can be utilized by administrators top package virtualized Windows applications to enhance users’ access to Office, adobe cs6, and Oracle software applications is a simple, secured and fast way. The access would be conducted through Web Access, whereby the users provide authentications to open the Active Directory groups that are linked to the ESX Server where the VM resides.
VMware Horizon Suite Features
Horizon Suite is comprised of a desktop-vitalization solution and new technologies that are specifically built to support the mobility of the workforce. It is also collaborative, thus enabling enterprises IT to utilize their current business environment, while securely incorporating emerging technological components to preserve a productive workforce within a highly secured business environment. 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 provides simplified management of the company resources, enhances 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. It 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 final feature included in the Horizon Suite is the VMware vCentral Operations Manager for Horizon View. It 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.
VMware Horizon also consists of the application manager, which 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. The company’s expansion plan will involve the incorporation of additional applications and users. All these components 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 is VMware ESX Server, which is a virtualization layer that runs on the physical servers of the company. The VMware ESX Server is used for the abstraction of the processor, storage, memory, and networking resources connected to the physical Server into multiple virtual machines. Another required infrastructure is the VirtualCenter Server. It 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 VMware VMotion, which will be used to conduct live the migration of virtual machines between physical machines while in operation. This will help in the avoidance of issues such as system downtime, thus ensuring that services remain available and that 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 include VMware High Availability (HA) HA ensures that applications are easily accessible and are highly available. Therefore, with the proposed infrastructure, VandeVen Auto Services will be able to deploy VMware Horizon Suite to 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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