Atlantis Computing Revives VDI Deployment at UK Calor Gas

A project to deploy a VDI solution at Calor Gas Limited, a UK supplier of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) has gone live after Atlantis Computing, Inc. was able to deliver a 35% end user performance improvement over their existing storage solution.

The solution, running on the Citrix XenApp environment with Atlantis HyperScale and USX storage is also 28% cheaper than their existing solution.

Calor Gas is responsible for more than 900 office-based employees and remote workers, so both performance and reliability are critical for business operations. HyperScale and USX have been deployed to build, support and manage Calor Gas’ new virtualized IT environment.

In the initial project trials, Calor Gas evaluated the VDI deployment based on Citrix XenDesktop, but significant performance issues in its existing SAN arose. It needed a VDI solution to support resource-intensive applications and specialist software on a regular basis for remote development and external contractors, which would have required extending the SAN.

“We needed to increase our storage performance to cope with the bursty traffic that is typical in a VDI environment, but expanding our existing storage wasn’t cost effective at all,” says Andy Browne, infrastructure manager, Calor Gas. “We initially parked the entire VDI project as a result.“

Deploying HyperScale offered Calor Gas a solution which combines compute and storage into a single appliance, developed, supported and maintained by a single vendor.

“The Atlantis HyperScale appliance smooths out the peaks and gives the consistent performance needed in a VDI environment,” said Browne.

“An organization like Calor Gas requires constant high performance and reliability, and we are pleased Atlantis could play an important role in delivering this solution,” said Chris Plant, EMEA VP, Atlantis. “We continually look to transform user experience for customers working with Citrix. This achievement demonstrates how well these solutions can work together to increase business performance.“

Calor Gas installed a second Atlantis HyperScale appliance for the new virtual desktops to support the heavy workloads of power users. HyperScale works to provide performance in a VDI environment, which typically fluctuates in traffic.

Atlantis Computing designed a solution for Calor Gas that provides a redundant storage solution. Through continual replication of both HyperScale appliances to USX virtual platform, Calor Gas has a DR and BC solution along with a performing reliable VDI.