Guest blog by Seth Knox, VP Products, Atlantis Computing
With the release of VMware Horizon 6, VMware is delivering a unified platform for desktop and application virtualization that leverages the power and flexibility of the software-defined data center. By using Virtual SAN and Atlantis ILIO software-defined storage solutions, Horizon 6 significantly drives down the cost per desktop, while delivering an amazing user experience.
A joint solution with VMware Horizon 6, Virtual SAN and Atlantis ILIO delivers:
- Applications and desktops through a single platform – including VDI, RDS and even XenApps
- Hyper-converged architecture that leverages servers with local storage (even blades)
- Optimization with Atlantis ILIO In-Memory Storage technology with inline deduplication and compression to:
- Boost performance to improve user experience
- Reduce storage capacity requirements to lower infrastructure costs
- Pool storage resources across Virtual SAN and existing SAN/NAS/DAS to increase flexibility and drive up data center efficiency
Expanding on the joint solution that was launched in February 2014, Atlantis Computing and VMware have continued to work to provide a low cost, high-performance solution for our customers looking to start or expand their desktop virtualization journey. With the release of VMware Horizon 6 and the joint solution with Atlantis ILIO and VMware Virtual SAN, we are excited to help accelerate our customers’ journey to the software-defined data center.
The joint solution leverages Virtual SAN’s ability to pool local solid state drives (SSDs) and hard disk drives (HDDs) with Atlantis ILIO to extend and optimize Virtual SAN. Using Atlantis ILIO, IT organizations can pool Virtual SANs with existing shared SAN, NAS and All-Flash storage, while optimizing it with Atlantis ILIO In-Memory Storage technology to boost performance, reduce storage capacity and provide storage services such as high availability, fast cloning and unified management across all data center storage hardware.
To prove the joint solution, we did a series of benchmark tests including ioMeter, PassMark and a boot storm test of 375 desktops. Desktop virtualization workloads are traditionally very unpredictable and interactive in nature with high peaks and low averages. They are also write-intensive (80% write/ 20% read) and mostly random and small block sizes (4K). As a result, traditional storage technology finds desktop virtualization very difficult to handle and read caching technologies don’t provide the same benefits in terms of performance.
Our joint solution came out at the top in every single test that we ran. In fact, for PassMark, we are proud to announce that our joint solution achieved the 10th fastest result ever measured. We optimized Virtual SAN, to increase IOPS from 25,000 IOPS to deliver 117,000 IOPS with an average latency of 3.4 milliseconds. From our tests, it is clear that our joint solution delivers a faster performance than a MacBook Air with Apple SSD for a fraction of the cost. (To see the full test results, visit the Atlantis Computing Blog.)
As you can see, Atlantis ILIO provides tremendous value when used in combination with Virtual SAN to provide the storage for Horizon 6. The joint solution delivers high-performance virtual desktops that outperform physical PCs with SSDs, the ability to use local storage and blade servers reduces the total cost per desktop. The simplicity of both Virtual SAN (built into vSphere) and Atlantis ILIO, which deploys automatically as a VM, provides a compelling solution across VDI, XenApp and RDS desktop virtualization deployments.
To learn more about the joint solution with VMware Horizon 6 and Virtual SAN, watch the on-demand webinar.
