San Diego University Opts for Virsto

Virsto Software Corporation
announced that San Diego State University (SDSU) Library has
deployed Virsto
for vSphere.

Recognized as a component to a major virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
initiative for the university, Virsto provides SDSU Library IT administrators
with improved virtual machine storage performance, capacity savings and
automated bulk provisioning. The combination of Virsto for vSphere and VMware
View provides students, faculty and staff with streamlined access to software
and applications anytime, anywhere.

SDSU serves 35,000 students and more than 5,000 faculty and staff.
The university provides open laboratories with upwards of 800 public access
computers available for research and general use. It prides itself on
offering technology that supports its academic mission by delivering students
and faculty 24/7 access to software and applications. Managing a
large number of end points in an efficient and cost effective manner was a key
challenge the SDSU Library IT team had identified as a priority
initiative.

Desktop virtualization represents the latest achievement in a
virtualization initiative that began in SDSU Library’s datacenter in 2009. Today SDSU Library’s datacenter is nearly 85 percent virtualized. SDSU began
researching multiple approaches and architectures to extend this virtualization
initiative to include desktop virtualization.

Virsto for vSphere:
Simplifying the Cost & Complexity of Storage
in VDI
SDSU created a VDI environment with VMware View and Dell EqualLogic
storage to evaluate products and develop a VDI reference architecture. After testing with multiple solutions, Virsto was selected for its ability
to maximize VDI host density and storage capacity utilization, improve desktop
performance and integrate with VMware View provisioning workflows to
deliver the lowest total cost per desktop.

Installation, configuration and testing were primarily wizard driven
and all of the software, installers and virtual appliances were easy to
download and integrate into SDSU’s current environment without disruption or
downtime. Because the university library’s IT staff includes multiple server
and desktop system administrators, Virsto’s management simplicity and
automation of storage provisioning were standout features, enabling these
groups to perform storage self-provisioning and bulk patching operations
without having to engage traditional storage teams for the day to day support of
VDI environments.

Virsto’s Storage Hypervisor addressed a problem SDSU was
experiencing in their current environment the complexity of managing storage
arrays as well as the challenge of how to best deploy costly SSD to boost performance. With Virsto’s scalable snapshots and writable clones, SDSU Library desktop administrators can provision virtual
desktops in bulk operations, utilizing a small amount of SSD capacity backed by
low-cost rotating disks managed by Virsto’s patent-pending
solution.

Key Virsto’s approach to storage virtualization
delivers performance, with storage thin provisioning and simplified, self-service bulk provisioning of VMs, all of which are managed through an integration with the VMware vCenter
management interface. This level of integration alleviated the headache of SDSU
having to manage multiple consoles.

Other benefits to SDSU include:

• 100 percent software solution, providing
  native hypervisor and block-based storage support
• VDI density per host increased by 2x with improved
  VDI endpoint performance
• Integration for existing
  VM management and provisioning workflows through VMware vCenter and View
  Manager
• Ease of use allowing
  less experienced system administrators to deploy virtual machine
  storage in VDI environments

"The cost, complexity,
and inflexibility of typical storage architectures are well known to have
limited the growth of the VDI market. Now, enterprises like SDSU are using
Virsto to deliver to their end users a great virtual desktop experience without
the cost, risk, and lock-in associated with traditional storage. The
transforming efficiency, cost savings and agility benefits of the Virsto
solution are allowing the savviest IT organizations to more rapidly deliver
superior VDI solutions at lower cost," said Mark Davis, CEO, Virsto
Software.

"Virsto’s innovative
software approach to storage met our immediate and future virtualization needs,
combining a strong engineering and technical team with implementation services
that took the time to really understand our environment and our ultimate
objectives for the project. As we deploy Virsto for vSphere, we have begun
receiving favorable feedback from other departments on campus and a high level
of interest in how the product makes VDI more accessible to other areas within
SDSU. We look forward to building upon our success with Virsto for vSphere with
VMware View and Dell EqualLogic,” said Kyle E. Murley, Lead of Library
Digital Technology Initiatives, San Diego State University.