Virident Optimizes VMware Horizon View Environments

Virident Systems, Inc. announced simple, cost-efficient, accessible VDI solutions through flashMAX II, the second generation of its PCIe SSD storage-class memory for enterprise-grade VMware environments.

By deploying flashMAX II with vSphere, IT organizations can achieve performance of VMs and virtualized desktops. Benefits include rugged, predictable performance across various workloads; increased scalability; and 20 times the application performance of HDD systems at one-third the TCO.

"Where VDI deployments have relied on traditional ‘vanilla’ disk-based SAN or NAS infrastructures, there can be significant storage challenges," said Mark Peters, senior analyst at ESG. "As enterprises scale to hundreds or thousands of supported desktops and multiple applications, the VDI workloads can overwhelm such storage devices and cause severe performance degradation. To deliver a good, and consistent, end-user desktop experience, storage must be designed and built to accommodate peak I/O loads, not just average I/O loads, while achieving the required response times."

Virident flashMAX II delivers excellent application response times to desktops, resulting in a superior end-user experience and performance. The product also handles all updates and patches through a ‘recompose’ feature that is 10 times faster than that of legacy storage, thus reducing downtime and improving and automating the VDI user experience. VMware Horizon View can provide unified access to virtual desktops and applications that run in a central secure data center and are accessible from a variety of devices. Customers can leverage the joint solution to cost-effectively support both stateless and stateful desktops.

Together within a VDI environment, Virident and Horizon View enable IT to develop a high-throughput, low-latency solution that enhances end-user performance while driving down the TCO. Via a single pane of glass, administrators can get users up and running in minutes, entitle users and set policies. With vSphere, customers can scale to support thousands of concurrent users with active desktops running typical knowledge-worker workloads.

"Together, Virident and VMware are enabling end users to enjoy anytime, anywhere access to their desktops across devices while achieving the performance they require," said Shridar Subramanian, VP, product marketing, Virident. "flashMAX II provides numerous advantages compared to a traditional VDI implementation leveraging legacy storage arrays, including unprecedented unconditional performance and ease of deployment in a small footprint. Through tight integration and testing, we have driven the per-user cost at list price to $408.07 for datacenter hardware and software. This means that customers can deploy a VMware Horizon View environment at or below the cost of physical PCs."

"This is a fantastic addition to VMware vFast Track reference architectures. The price-to-performance ratios that can be achieved with this solution can accelerate customers’ ROI and pave the way for further adoption," said Mason Uyeda, director of technical marketing for end user computing, VMware. "Organizations can streamline desktop management by fast tracking their deployments, while delivering a rich user experience."

Costs cited have been validated by Principle Technologies and include the cost of one node of gear with a 550GB flashMAX II card, the HP DL380 G8 and Horizon View licenses. Per-user costs do not include Windows Server OS (VM to host vCenter). It is assumed that a 2vCPU/4GB vRAM Windows Server OS (VM) is available to host View Connection Server and that Windows Infrastructure exists (Active Directory, etc.) and is not part of the equation. Windows Desktop OS licenses, thin clients, PC hardware and peripherals are also not included as part of the per-user costs.

More on Virident flashMAX II and its compatibility with VMware