LSI has announced a collaboration with EMC, Mellanox and Supermicro to offer a high-performance virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) appliance for VMware Horizon View deployments.
The appliance combines storage, compute and networking hardware in a single box to deliver a scalable hyper-converged system to meet the growing customer demand for desktop virtualisation.
The solution is designed to provide customers starting out with a few servers and a few hundred desktops with the ability to simply and efficiently scale-out VDI environments to meet business requirements as they progress with the company.
The joint solution features LSI Nytro 3.2TB PCIe flash accelerator cards, Mellanox’s end-to-end 40GbE interconnect solution, and Supermicro servers powered by EMC ScaleIO software. Together, they create an affordable hyper-converged appliance that allows for simple linear expansion of both capacity and performance.
The appliance is designed to accelerate VDI deployments, increase desktop performance and maximise VDI density per node while reducing costs and the complexity associated with traditional SAN-based storage infrastructures.
To demonstrate the benefits of the solution, the widely accepted Login VSI benchmark was used to create the actual workload of simulated users. Internal test results showed key customer benefits, including:
Ultrabook-like user experience – support for 1,000 desktops with average user response times of <1 second
Rapid desktop provisioning – deployment of 1,000 virtual desktops in 1 hour, 28 minutes
High performance – simultaneously boots 1,000 virtual desktops in 12 minutes
Linear scalability and easy sizing – supports up to 167 desktops per server node
Affordable flash solution – price per desktop of an entry-level business PC
Reduced TCO – low-cost project implementation and efficient management and maintenance.
