Dell unveils Precision Appliance for Wyse for turnkey virtual workstation deployment

Bundle includes everything needed to get started within five minutes, according to Dell

Dell has launched a virtual workstation package aimed at making it easier for customers to deploy a rack-mount system in the data centre configured for remote access by up to eight professionals, depending on the kind of workloads they are running.

Due to ship in the US and select countries around the world from May, the Dell Precision Appliance for Wyse is based on Dell's Precision R7910 rack-mount workstation with Nvidia Quadro and Grid GPU graphics options, and utilises VMware virtualisation.

The Precision R7910, launched last year, is a 2U chassis system with twin Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors, up to 1TB memory and up to eight 2.5in hard drives.

End users can access applications using a variety of endpoint options, including Dell Wyse thin and zero client devices with dual or quad displays or desktop or laptop PCs, using the Teradici PCoIP protocol.

Dell's solution supports multiple remote users in two ways; up to three users can each have a dedicated GPU to provide graphics acceleration for the virtual machine they are using. Alternatively, Nvidia's Grid technology virtualises the GPU resources across all users, supporting four to eight users, depending on workload.

Dell is pitching the Precision Appliance for Wyse as a turnkey end-to-end solution that can be deployed in just five minutes once powered on, and does not require IT staff with extensive virtualisation experience to manage it, the firm claimed.

"How people work today is rapidly changing," said Dell's executive director for Workstations, Andy Rhodes.

"Our customers are looking at ways to be more mobile and collaborative without sacrificing performance or user experience. The Dell Precision Appliance for Wyse combines our expertise in both high performance workstation capabilities and virtual desktop infrastructure to provide organisations that use the most demanding, graphics-rich applications with a compelling solution for flexible work environments."

Dell said it has worked with software vendors to validate and certify their software on the Dell Precision Appliance for Wyse, starting with Siemens PLM software. Other applications are expected to be certified in the coming months.

The move follows the launch this week of the Fujitsu Celsius C740, a similar rack-mount workstation with Nvidia Grid graphics to support multiple users, which fits into a compact 1U chassis.

Pricing for the Dell Precision Appliance for Wyse package has not been disclosed.