The rush to virtualize the entire data center continues unabated. Having moved past the initial benefits of consolidation and cost savings, companies are now doubling down with investments that are paying off with greater agility, new IT capabilities, and new business models. Virtualization is also a critical technology in the development and adoption of cloud computing.

Server virtualization technology got off to a head start relative to comparable technology on the storage side of the data center. Storage and software vendors are scrambling to innovate and close this ‘server-storage virtualization gap’. Compounding this problem is the storage I/O bottleneck associated with multiple VM’s per physical server accessing shared storage. Virtualization, both server-based and virtual desktops (VDI), places an enormous strain on the storage infrastructure – traditional disk-based storage can’t keep pace. Storage architects find themselves throwing excess hardware at the problem, or worse, delaying virtualization projects.

Accelerating Virtual Server Environments
Violin Memory Arrays eliminate the storage roadblocks to server virtualization deployments. A single 10TB array can deliver 250,000 IOPS with latency under 0.1 msec (100 µsec). VMs experience nearly instantaneous access to data without stalling due to the I/O bottleneck, boosting application performance. This also enables consolidation of more VMs per server, reducing both CAPEX and OPEX.  Benefits include:

• Increase VM performance
• Consolidate more VMs per physical server
• Lower power, cooling and floor space costs
• No changes to existing applications

Accelerating Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Virtual Desktop environments present several challenges directly related to storage. Scalability is important so large groups of users can be supported with room for growth. Performance is critical to maintain a high quality end-user experience even during times of heavy load. VDI deployment also need to account for large and sustained traffic spikes – the ‘I/O storm’ resulting from events like booting, login/logoff, and patching that can last for hours. Violin Memory Arrays deliver the latency and IOPS performance ideal for VDI. Benefits include:

• Scale to a large number of simultaneous users
• Consistent low latency performance even during I/O storms
• Consolidate more VMs per physical server
• Higher end-user productivity and satisfaction

For more information please see the VDI Reference Architecture white paper. Force3 developed and tested this architecture that integrates technology from VMware, Cisco, FalconStor and Violin Memory.

Violin Memory in Action: Large VDI Training Deployment
This Violin customer needed to support a training environment with over 500 workstations in forty classrooms. Productivity was suffering from slow workstation boot times of over sixty seconds, application load times of several minutes, and balky audio/video content streaming. The customer was using high performance 15k RPM disk drives and had even ‘short-stroked’ them all.

The introduction of Violin flash Memory Arrays reduced boot time to nine seconds and application load to less than 30 seconds. Audio and video streamed smoothly. They were able to repurpose the existing SAN for an archiving application and the Violin deployment lowered power consumption by 90% and freed up 60 RU of rack space.

Read more: Violin customer case studies