After introducing the Avnet Accelerator earlier this year, the partners have introduced a reference architecture and validated solution designed to cost effectively scale virtual desktop infrastructure environments.
Brocade and Avnet Technology Solutions gave entered a partnership under which the two companies work together to develop marketing and support services for a new set of multi-vendor, pre-tested and configured virtualization solutions to help resellers partners to deploy open and scalable virtualization solutions.
According to joint press release submitted to Channel Pro-SMB, the Brocade-Avnet effort will focus on building virtual compute blocks, which are integrated, tested and validated solution bundles comprised of server, virtualization, networking, and storage resources, and an integral element of the Brocade †CloudPlex architecture.
Earlier this year, Brocade and Avnet introduced Avnet Accelerator, an invitation-only program designed to help resellers tap into Ethernet fabric technologies to assist SMBs in simplifying their network architectures and managing the growth of server virtualization and virtual machines inside their data centers.
“This open, extensible architectural framework will help end-user organizations and solutions integrators build the next generation of distributed and virtualized data centers in a simple, evolutionary way,” the press release states. “Avnet will be providing integration services for these solutions, as well as other channel enablement and sales support.”
VMWORLD DEBUT
At VMworld last month, Brocade introduced the first fruits of the joint development efforts with Avnet: a reference architecture and validated solution designed to cost effectively scale virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments to support thousands of clients (or desktops) per solution bundle.
“VDI technology offers IT managers a simple and highly effective way to manage operating system and application updates throughout their enterprise,” Brocade stated in an event announcement at the time. “However, to scale properly, enterprise-wide VDI deployments should be built on top of an open, multi-vendor-based architecture that can scale easily and quickly migrate desktops and user data between data centers when needed, all while simplifying the management and configuration processes.”
VIRTUALIZATION COLLABORATION
The virtualization solutions from Brocade and Avnet combine Brocade and VMware networking and hypervisor technologies in conjunction with a number of compute and storage platforms. The virtualization solutions are qualified through a multistage validation process.
As the use of virtualization technology becomes increasingly prevalent, Brocade and Avnet are banking that SMBs are looking to the reseller community to provide guidance and expertise about deploying and integrating virtualization technology into their operations. The creation of fully validated, pre-configured, open standards-based virtualization technologies are meant to provide VARs with a value proposition.
“While virtualization and cloud computing presents a world of opportunities to reseller partners, it also introduces new levels of complexity into their business and operations,” explains Scott Look, Avnet’s vice president and general manager technology infrastructure solutions.
The latest Brocade/VMware VDI solution will be available to U.S. and Canada resellers through Avnet this November. Additional multi-vendor, open standards-based virtualization solutions will be available in the following months.
