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File Services
File services are widely utilized and an important layer in VDI solution architectures.
File services have traditionally been provided by a NAS device or a Windows server
based device. This is presented as an SMB share that different services and guest OS
devices consume for shared or private access.
Within a VDI design there are typically several different requirements for file services.
Managing and capturing user profiles are important to provide a persistent user
experience and most profile management solutions store the data on SMB shares. It
is also very common to redirect folders as part of the user's profile to an SMB share.
And lastly the user created data, such as documents, media and images. are stored
on private or shared folders on SMB shares.
Nutanix File Services
Nutanix offers Nutanix Files as a native feature in the Nutanix cloud platform. Files is
an integrated scale-out file service platform that is managed from Prism along with all
other Nutanix functions. This allows for the simple 1-click deployments and non-disruptive
upgrades. This simplification allows for the possibility of allowing VDI teams to manage
more of the complete solution when desired.
Files provides a highly scalable architecture that allows for additional capacity to be
added to file services VMs with 1-click to allow for additional capacity or user connections.
Files instances can run in the same cluster and your server or VDI VMs or in a dedicated
cluster, if desired. To allow for flexibility in connectivity, Files supports SMB 2.1, SMB
3.0 as well as NFS V3 and V4 connections.
