NexentaVSA for VDI is a purpose built storage appliance that provides advanced features and functionality suited to handle the demands of a virtual desktop environment. NV4VDI improves desktop / storage performance by providing better IOPS, latency, and boot storm response. NV4VDI can scale to thousands of machines without changing design or incurring cost overruns, thereby lowering the overall cost of deploying and managing a desktop.

NexentaVSA for View provides comprehensive functionality, including in-line data deduplication and in-line compression, flexible back-up and restore, unlimited snapshots, metadata acceleration, and uniform IOPS at any scale.

Features	NexentaVSA for VDI	NexentaStor™
System and storage configuration optimized for VDI	Yes (fully and automatically configured, with preconfigured profiles tuned for VDI deployments)	No (can be configured manually)
Maximized efficiency of ESXi host local storage	Yes	No
ZFS Metadata	Yes	No
NAS VAAI Integration	Yes	No
Tunable ZFS for VDI	Yes (covers both the entire VDI storage and vSphere	No

The Challenge

Basically stated, however, today’s challenges relating to storage and legacy VDI vendors are three-fold:

1. Storage is expensive
2. Storage does not scale, and
3. It's too complex to deploy.

The transition to VDI is much more complex than the transition to server virtualization. This is where NexentaVSA for VDI can help.

The Solution

How it Works

NexentaVSA for VDI’s software-only solution provides advanced features and functionality suited to handle the demands of a virtual desktop environment. By combining storage and computing, NV4VDI enables a complete ‘storage-in-a-box’ solution for both persistent and stateless desktops.

NexentaVSA for VDI leverages SSDs, which do not require you to keep your entire environment loaded in expensive and unsafe memory. SSDs provide benefits such as separating the read and write cache for the VDI workload and making the entire cache completely transparent to the end user. And for data security, NV4VDI, utilizing ZFS technology, guarantees end-to-end, air tight data integrity (competitors use unproven Linux or other file systems).

Initially, a virtual storage appliance is installed on the same hardware where the VDI virtual machines are installed. This dramatically improves storage performance for all VDI machines.

In addition, hardware-agnostic NV4VDI leverages your existing investments in external storage hardware (be they NetApp, EMC, Compellent, or others) for dedicated desktops.

Deployment for Your Specific Needs

Persistent (dedicated and Stateless/floating)

NexentaVSA for VDI is designed to be flexible—supporting both dedicated (persistent) and floating (stateless) desktops. The solution includes NexentaStor and HA Cluster already integrated into NV4VDI. Preset values for a tuned desktop environment initially are based on the Dedicated or Floating settings.

For floating desktops, NV4VDI integrates compute and storage. The virtual storage appliance is deployed on the same server as virtual machines for the desktop. Since NV4VDI is integrated with vCenter, customers can scale these multiple integrated (compute and storage) units in a highly available configuration.

For persistent desktops, local virtual storage appliances (see Item #2 in Figure 2, below) continue to provide the necessary IOPS required by the desktops. The local VSA can be complemented with an external storage appliance powered by NexentaStor. Customers get 16TB of NexentaStor license when they purchase NexentaVSA for VDI. User data can be retained in a highly available environment using this configuration.

As in Figure 3, customers can continue to use their choice of enterprise storage appliances, such as EMC, NetApp, or Dell. By using NV4VDI, they can offload the IOPS from the external storage appliance to the virtual storage appliance on the compute node.

Functionality of local Virtual Storage Appliance

NexentaVSA for VDI now offers a wide range of new features. Check out the following highlights!

• Flexible back-up & Restore: NV4VDI creates snapshots of desktop pools and simply rolls the entire pool back to a known good snapshot — or restores just a single desktop — at any frequency you desire. In addition, Replicated High Availability enables the VDI storage and host infrastructure to failover to a stand-by ESXi server within the ESXi cluster.
• NexentaZFS Metadata Acceleration: Significantly accelerates metadata operations by utilizing high-performance SSD storage for metadata operations, which represent a significant portion of the VDI workload.
• NAS-VAAI: Accelerates the provisioning and use of thick virtual disks in NFS environments, thereby decreasing deployment time.
• Inline Data Deduplication and Inline Native Compression: Inline deduplication and compression reduces use of primary storage.

The Benefits

NexentaVSA for VDI is optimized for the desktop workload:

• Enables burst isolation (using the hybrid caching technology of ZFS).
• Enables low latency by deploying a virtual storage appliance local to the compute node (where VDI virtual machines are deployed).
• Solves Boot Storm issues by offloading desktop clones through VMware NAS VAAI integration.
• Minimizes network traffic by using the virtual network between compute and storage.
• Eliminates the need for external network interfaces.
• Uniform IOPS per user at any scale: Eliminates the declining user experience on ramp up. Tight coupling of VDI and storage through an easy-to-use application.
• Scalable local write cache: Fast writes at any scale through the use of ZFS Intent logs.
• VDI Multi-tenancy: Even greater consolidation within your VDI environment, which helps drive down cost and improve your ROI.

When purchasing NexentaVSA for VDI, the package contains:

• Unlimited local storage: for the price of the solution, customers can deploy unlimited local storage (see Figure 2).
• 16 terabytes of external storage that can be used to meet the storage needs related to VDI projects (see Figure 3).
• NexentaVSA for VDI application: Complete package of everything you need. Easy to use for entire life cycle.

Fixed Unit (Desktop) Cost: NexentaVSA for VDI lowers the overall, long-term cost of deploying a desktop by providing a clear and fixed cost structure for scaling out as growth requirements are addressed, thereby avoiding the exponential (and usually unknown) costs of legacy solutions.

The price you pay for each desktop does not increase with expansion. Unlike legacy storage solutions, prices remain fixed as growth continues.

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