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Virtual desktop infrastructure storage and performance optimization specialist Atlantis Computing released ILIO Diskless VDI 3.2, which enables VMware View customers to deploy virtual desktops with no storage.
The platform complements VMwares View Storage Accelerator by extending it to provide continuous storage optimization and offload of write input/output traffic from storage. The VDI software complements View and Citrix XenDesktop VDI solutions to eliminate the use of storage for nonpersistent virtual desktop images.
The user profile, settings and data are streamed into the desktop over the network using Citrix, VMware or third-party profile and personal management tools located on a file share or network-based storage system. In addition, ILIO Diskless VDI integrates with blade or rack servers to provide a modular VDI server without the need for disk-based storage, which can save businesses money and reduce storage expansion requirements.
The platform includes advanced compression and Fast Cloning technologies for View 5.1. The combination of Atlantis ILIO inline de-duplication and compression technology reduces the amount of memory needed per virtual desktop image to around 500MB per desktop. In addition, Atlantis ILIO Fast Cloning has been integrated with Diskless VDI to clone virtual desktop images in five seconds per desktopthats equal to the deployment of 100 View 5.1 virtual desktops per server in about eight minutes, according to a company release.
With existing VDI solutions, virtual desktop images are stored on either shared storage-area network/network-attached storage (SAN/NAS) or local Serial Attached SCSI/solid-state disks (SAS/SSD), which are costly, have limited Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) for VDI workloads and can have short lifespans/warranties. The ILIO Diskless VDI is designed to help businesses reduce VDI costs to less than $200 per desktop and eliminates all storage-related expenditures. The software also boosts several aspects of desktop performance, including boot, log-in, application launches, patching and antivirus scanning.
The Colt office of the future program has created a flexible working environment and helped to increase productivity. Using traditional disk-based storage architectures for VDI proved to be costly and complex, Chris Hewertson, CIO of Colt Technology Services said in a statement. We therefore decided to take a new approach, running VMware View desktops with Atlantis ILIO on Cisco UCS servers without storage.
“All user profiles are kept on highly available EMC shared storage. With our completely stateless virtual desktops, EMC storage is critical for storing user-profile data, including documents and settings. Using Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI simplifies our VMware View deployment, reduces operational complexity and delivers both a vastly improved user experience and a much lower cost per desktop, Hewertson said.