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38 End-User Computing For Dummies, Nutanix Special Edition These materials are © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Integrating Third-Party Services in a DaaS Scenario If you're running desktops in the cloud or even on-premises, you may want to avoid having to provide storage beyond what you need to operate those local desktop virtual machines. To this end, DaaS services such as Xi Frame offer the ability to integrate with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box. This feature can be a performance boon, too. Cloud-based desktops and those running inside local DaaS clusters generally have far more Internet band- width than you have at home or at the coffee shop. Since those desktops are just streaming screen to your device, your workloads get to enjoy the benefits of incredible bandwidth no matter where you are. These providers can be used as native storage providers from inside the DaaS service. Of course, you can also integrate Xi Frame desktops with your Active Directory environment or Azure AD, with single sign on (SSO) applications and more. Accelerating Workloads with GPUs in DaaS As I explain in Chapter 2,GPU acceleration is available in VDI envi- ronments, but many DaaS providers also offer it. The best part is that you don't have to configure anything beyond enabling GPU capabilities as a part of your desktop deployment process. To be clear, GPU is not free. Including GPU acceleration in desk- top deployments carries additional hardware and software cost for the provider, so you should expect that the monthly price tag will bump up a bit. Xi Frame's session settings allow you to choose a maximum frame rate, as shown in Figure 3-1. When you're accelerating with a GPU, Xi Frame has no trouble keeping up with what you're doing, making it suitable for graphics-intensive workloads.