Gridstore Supporting Graphics-Intensive Virtual Desktop Workloads

Gridstore, Inc. announced the availability of their All-Flash Graphics Node (FGN) as an option within the HyperConverged All-Flash Infrastructure (HCI).

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The FGN provides superior performance for demanding graphics workloads such as in medical imaging or CAD environments in a VDI.

“Our VDI deployment requires support for intensive medical imaging capabilities,” said Michael Dutcher, manager, IT, Columbia Basin Hospital. “We expect Gridstore’s HCI with the Graphics Node will give us the performance we need. Along with Unidesk for easy delivery of our demanding applications as virtual disk layers, we will have a superior VDI solution at an amazing price.“

With this announcement, HCI includes the ability to offload graphics processing from the CPU to the GPU in virtualized environments. VDI users get the high performance with low latency graphic rendering they need resulting in higher productivity and end user satisfaction.

“Unidesk is proven to make the delivery of ArcGIS, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, imaging systems, and other complex, graphics-intensive apps simple,” said Samantha Foster, VP, channel and business development, Unidesk Corporation. “The new Gridstore Graphics Node solves the other half of the problem — how to deliver a high performance VDI user experience with these apps. At less than $600 per desktop, our joint VDI solution gives customers simpler management and greater performance than a physical PC, at lower cost.“

Gridstore Hyperconverged Appliance

Each HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) can support all-flash HyperConverged Nodes (FCN), all-flash Storage-only Nodes (FSN), all-flash Graphics Nodes (FGN), or any combination of these. There are three GPUs to choose from in the FGN which can be paired with any of the supported CPUs in the company’s product line. The FGNs are:

• FGN1 with four Kepler GPUs

• FGN2 with two high-end Kepler GPUs

• FGNT60 with two GM204 GPUs

The company provides the performance leading HCI that is easy to deploy and manage making it ideal for today’s changing business needs, particularly in VDI deployments including those with graphic intensive applications. Additionally, the benefits of the new company’s Graphics Node include:

• Ability to mix and match FGN, FCN and FSN nodes to create the optimal price/performance combination

• Three optional GPUs based on the number of graphics users and performance needs

• All-flash high performance I/O

“We are excited to provide high performance graphics processing as part of the Gridstore HCI solution,” said Ajay Nilaver, VP, engineering and product management, Gridstore. “Today’s graphic-rich applications are pushing IT managers to optimize their infrastructure and Gridstore HCI is the perfect solution, offering major benefits to users.“

Gridstore Storage Node

Company’s HCI delivers compute, storage, and storage networking in a single appliance that offers market leading price/performance, efficient scaling, and scale-to-fit design. The HCI is easy to deploy and reduces management time and effort. Leveraging its patented technology, a HCI delivers the same performance and VM density as traditional converged solutions with 75% less physical infrastructure and a 65% lower price-per-VM. The HyperConverged Appliance is a platform for infrastructure refreshes and specific workloads such as VDI, SQL Server, Dev/Test, and ROBO.

The FGNs are available starting at $19,125 MSRP.