Tintri VDI Reference Architecture for Horizon View 5.2

Tintri, Inc. announced a reference architecture to deliver a high-performance, low-cost infrastructure for VMware Horizon View 5.2.

Testing at VMware labs validated the reference architecture for 1,000 simultaneous VDI users at "Ultrabook" level performance from a single Tintri storage appliance. The results delivered performance, while operating at a low cost. With no tuning or special configuration, the storage platform went from power-on to storing the first VM in eight minutes and 1,000 desktops were fully deployed in only one hour and two minutes.

The reference architecture validation tests were conducted with a single Tintri VMstore T540 and enough server and network infrastructure to support 1,000 concurrent desktops. Testing utilized the Horizon View planner tool for simulated end-user desktop activity and yielded a Horizon View planner score indicative of what an end-user on a local "Ultrabook" would experience.

"VDI projects can become challenged when scaled up deployments do not meet performance expectations when using traditional storage," said Kieran Harty, Tintri CEO. "Tintri, with a purpose-built VM-aware file system, solves these issues in a storage platform that is simple to deploy, requires absolutely no tuning or special configuration and has been proven in testing and at customer sites to meet the performance needs for large-scale VDI deployments."

"We are pleased to be working with Tintri to help deliver simplicity and ease of use to VMware Horizon View environments," said Mason Uyeda, director, technical marketing, VMware. "Tintri’s reference architecture can provide virtual desktop scale and high performance that is predictable and linear at a very low cost per desktop."

Highlights of the Reference Architecture Testing

• Tintri storage ready for first VM within eight minutes of power-on;
• No special tuning or configuration settings required for full reference architecture testing;
• New standard for VDI deployment: 1,000 VCAI clones were deployed in 1 hour, 2 minutes, 1,000 VCAI clones recomposed in 1 hour, 56 minutes
• Support for VAAI and VCAI enables cloning to be offloaded to the storage platform, yielding high-performance, space-efficient clones;
• Virtual desktop user experience equivalent to local "Ultrabook" level performance;
• Both desktop VMs and server VMs hosted on same Tintri datastore.

Tintri and VMware’s joint customers have deployed Horizon View and Tintri storage for their VDI projects.

One customer, a large financial institution, is currently supporting a mix of 350 desktop and server VMs on a single storage node, while eliminating storage-related performance problems that plagued earlier trials using legacy storage.

Another customer, Swisslos Interkantonale Landeslotterie, the Swiss lottery operator, currently has more than 400 virtual desktops running on the joint Tintri, Horizon View solution.

"We chose Tintri and VMware Horizon View for our VDI deployment because of the exceptional desktop performance we could provide to all of our users at a very cost-effective price," said Ramon Garay, manager IT service desk and client server at Swisslos. "Not only are our users happy, but we’ve also reduced the amount of setup, tuning and ongoing management time required to keep the infrastructure running at peak performance."

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