LEOSTREAM 9 USE CASES
1. Connecting users to graphics-intense applications
Who are these people? Engineers, architects, designers, video editors. Generally, highly educated users doing complex tasks.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense
What technologies do they use? High-performance display protocols such as HP RGS and Remote Boost, Mechdyne TGX, or Teradici PCoIP. Applications often run on Linux. Operating system hosting the application is often installed directly on powerful workstations, racks or towers. If virtualization exists, it’s use to improve density if the workstations have a supported graphics card to enable GPU passthrough.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream is the only Connection Broker that supports HP RGS and Mechdyne TGX, and it supports collaboration for each of those protocols as well as connections through the Leostream Gateway. Leostream is well-suited for environments that do not include virtualization, as it can manage connections to any desktop joined to an Active Directory domain or with an installed Leostream Agent. In VMware environments utilizing GPU passthrough, Leostream can automatically vMotion stopped machines to a host with an available GPU, allowing virtual machines to be over-allocated on each host (For example, the host has 4 GPUs so supports only 4 running VMs, but two additional stopped VMs may be located on the host. Leostream will vMotion the stopped VM to a host with an available GPU before powering on the VM.)
2. Connecting users to high-compute environments
Who are these people? Engineers, architects, designers, video editors. Generally, highly educated users doing complex tasks.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense
What technologies do they use? Very powerful workstations or servers, or virtual machines with a large CPU. Probably working with large data sets that are hosted on another server. Engineers submit jobs that run on the compute servers. These users don’t necessarily need a high-performance display protocol and may just use VNC or SSH to connect to the desktop. Almost always, they are connecting to a Linux machine.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream’s VNC support and our ability to treat a Linux server as a multi-user center (similar to a Microsoft Remote Desktop Server / Terminal Server) Organizations can purchase a single, powerful workstation and connect multiple users to unique sessions, instead of managing individual desktops.
3. DevOps – Operations-focused management for developer environments
Who are these people? Organizations with operations teams (or others) who manage developer environments, including updating developer tools, managing Linux operations systems, monitoring resource usage, and maintaining adequate capacity.
What Industries are they in? Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Enterprise Software/Application Development, R&D, Retail, Government & Defense, Healthcare
What technologies do they use? Linux operating systems, containers, integrated developer environments (IDE), databases, source control repositories
How does Leostream help in these environments? Leostream’s pools and policies make it easy to ensure that developers always have access to the right tools, always updated to the latest versions. New developers can be immediately on-boarded, without acquiring or configuring additional laptops or hardware. Leostream’s ability to create and delete instances in OpenStack clouds allows developers to change their desktop’s performance to meet their needs, while the Leostream Gateway provides secure, in-browser SSH access to their development environment from any web browser. Leostream power plans manage desktop power state, and release plans monitor user idle-ness, so unused machines can be powered down to conserve resources for other developers.
4. Application Sharing
Who are these people? Enterprises that use applications with expensive licensing fees. Often, people doing either use case 1 or use case 2.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense – Think MediaComposer, Simulink/MATLAB, CAD, Schlumberger applications, etc.
What technologies do they use? Usually a mix of back end operating systems, as well as a mixture of display protocols and client devices. Applications may be cloud hosted or in their data center.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream pools allow organizations to create groups of desktops running shared applications. Release plans can then be designed to control how long a user maintains ownership of the application, for example based on if the user disconnects from the workstation, if the user’s session is idle, or if a certain amount of time as elapsed. Leostream reports and alerts on pool usage, so IT knows if their resources are under or over utilized, allowing them to either repurpose or purchase equipment, accordingly. In cloud environments, Leostream power control plans can automatically control the power state of the cloud instances, stopping instance when not in use in order to save on cloud compute costs.
5. Cloud migrations and/or expansions
Who are these people? Large enterprises with existing data center deployments who now want to burst or migrate into the cloud for certain workloads.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense
What technologies do they use? Azure and AWS
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream’s hybrid-cloud support allows organizations to manage their existing on-premises deployment in the same console as their cloud resources. That said, the customer we’ve seen do this are building a separate Leostream environment in the cloud. In that case, Leostream’s integrated support for Azure and AWS and our general support for any cloud enables the organization to choose the best cloud for their workload, based on corporate standards or available compute in the cloud. By using the Leostream Gateway, the customer can place the cloud-hosted desktops in a private network, and connect users via the Gateway using either a high-performance client-based protocol or using the built-in HTML5 client.
6. Application Hosting in the Cloud
Who are these people? Service providers who provide access to applications (like Pearson and their test taking app) or organizations with single-use applications (for example, Westat has a timesheet application running in the cloud.)
What Industries are they in? Hosting providers, MSPs, education
What technologies do they use? Azure or AWS. Maybe PCoIP/Cloud Access Software.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream’s support for a wide range of hosting platforms, back end operating systems, client types, and display protocols allows the organization to build the application hosting environment that best suits their needs. Leostream pools and plans then help the organization control, monitor, and manage the user’s connection, ensuring that only authorized users have access and that the appropriate actions are taken when the user finishes with the application, such as deleting the desktop and spinning up a clean desktop for the next user.
7. Hosted Linux, macOS, or mixed OS environments
Who are these people? Enterprises with applications that run on a range of operating systems. Typically, engineering applications run on Linux, while Media & Entertainment may use Windows or macOS.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense
What technologies do they use? Usually a mix of back end operating systems, as well as a mixture of display protocols and client devices.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream can manage and monitor connections to Windows, Linux, and macOS desktop, as well as multi-user Windows and Linux sessions. We support a wide range of display protocols and client devices. Organizations can design the environment that best suits their users’ needs while managing and accessing everything from a single portal. Leostream is uniquely suited for hosted macOS environments, supporting VNC and PCoIP connections.
8. Managing Connections to Hosted Hardware
Who are these people? Enterprises that are running workloads that require high-power, often GPU-enabled, workstations. Also, organizations of any size who are performing a data center refresh and adding new hardware form factors such as Moonshot or HP ZCentral.
What Industries are they in? Oil and Gas, Semiconductor design, Media and Entertainment, Automotive, Aerospace, Defense…in other words, our typical industries…
What technologies do they use? Little to no virtualization. HP ZCentral, HPE Moonshot. Dell Workstations. Amulet Hotkey devices. Typically, a high-performance protocol such as RGS, TGX, or PCoIP
How does Leostream help in these environments?
Leostream can manage connections to any machine with an installed Leostream Agent and has integrated support for HPE Moonshot Systems. Leostream also integrates with Active Directory to automatically discover new desktops as they join the domain (and can even perform the domain join. Desktops can be installed on any hardware type, and Leostream can manage the connection using a wide range of display protocols. Desktops can be persistently assigned or shared via a pool. If power consumption is a concern, desktops can be shutdown and restarted using Wake-on-LAN.
9.0 SMB, Distributed Enterprise, and Edge
Who are these people? Small VDI deployments, either at edge locations or globally distributed enterprise locations. The VDI environment may be managed by a small IT team.
What Industries are they in? Healthcare, Municipal Governments, Retail, Community Colleges or other small educational institutes
What technologies do they use? Scale Computing HC3 virtualization platform.
How does Leostream help in these environments?
The HC3 virtualization platform brings together servers, storage, virtualization, and disaster recovery into a single, feature-rick solution. Leostream makes it simple to provision pools of Windows and Linux desktops from a single master image designated in the Scale Computing environment. Leostream policies can be configurated to manage a wide range of business use cases, including persistent and non-persistent desktops, shared or personal desktops, and everything in between. Leostream allows organizations to ensure that the right users get access to the right resources, every time and from where ever they roam.