About Citrix XenDesktop

Citrix XenDesktop™ is a desktop virtualization and VDI solution that delivers a complete Windows desktop experience as an on-demand service to any user, anywhere. Whether users are task workers, knowledge workers or mobile workers, XenDesktop can quickly and securely deliver individual applications or complete desktops while providing a high-definition user experience.

Accelerate and Simplify Citrix XenDesktop Deployments

Atlantis ILIO enables IT organizations to accelerate and simplify environments delivering XenDesktop-based virtual desktops, regardless of the implementation architecture adopted. Regardless of the type of virtual desktop chosen or the application provisioning technique used, all architectures rely heavily on the data center storage fabric to deliver acceptable performance. Disk performance throughput is critical to delivering a quality desktop experience with performance that is faster than a PC. In a conventional shared storage environment, providing the storage throughput required to support many hundreds or thousands of desktops at a low cost per desktop is a significant challenge.

Top-of-Rack Deployment

Atlantis ILIO: Citrix XenDesktop Storage Reduction and Performance Acceleration

Atlantis ILIO accelerates Citrix XenDesktop deployments by lowering the cost of virtual desktops to below that of a PC, making virtual desktops perform faster than a PC and making it possible for customers to deploy VDI without compromising security. Atlantis ILIO is a unique and innovative VDI storage optimization solution that fundamentally changes the economics and performance characteristics of Citrix XenDesktop by intelligently optimizing how Microsoft Windows operating systems interact with VDI storage. With Atlantis ILIO, customers can simplify VDI enabling persistent or non-persistent desktops with up to 90% less storage and making it possible to use any type of storage for VDI including SAN, NAS, or local disk (SATA, SAS, SSD).

Simplify XenDesktop Architecture

The inherent flexibility of Citrix XenDesktop allows system architects to design solutions tailored to meet the needs of multiple distinct user communities. This flexibility is delivered at a cost of increased complexity, which can create operational challenges and slow deployment. Atlantis ILIO allows system architects to simplify XenDesktop deployments, without compromising performance and without increasing the cost of storage needed to support the environment. System architects can leverage ILIO’s advanced deduplication capabilities to create persistent desktops for all users with the same, or better, storage characteristics than can be achieved using pooled desktops.

Scaling XenDesktop Storage

Growing a conventional Citrix XenDesktop environment requires significant additional investment in storage. Citrix XenDesktop supports the use of OS streaming to provide personalized non-persistent virtual desktops based on a single master image, this significantly reduces the storage requirements compared to persistent virtual desktops but still generate a tremendous amount of IO traffic. Conventional SAN/NAS storage arrays can only deliver the data throughput (measured in IOPS) needed to support VDI by increasing storage drives and controllers well beyond that needed to deliver to the required disk space. More virtual desktops require more storage; it is as simple as that. 

With Atlantis ILIO, all duplicate data requests are served by the Atlantis ILIO software virtual appliance and are never seen by the storage infrastructure, eliminating the need to spend more on storage controllers and their associated disks. As more desktops are added to Atlantis ILIO, inline deduplication of data becomes more and more efficient, speeding up virtual desktops and decreasing the amount of storage capacity consumed per virtual desktop.

Integrating Atlantis ILIO into a Citrix XenDesktop Deployment

The Atlantis ILIO software virtual appliance may be deployed either “On Each Server” hosting Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktops or in a “Top-of-Rack” configuration where multiple virtual Citrix XenDesktop hosts connect to a single Atlantis ILIO virtual appliance. Atlantis ILIO scales out easily to add more desktop capacity by adding either an Atlantis ILIO virtual appliance to each virtual desktop host or an additional server appliance with every Citrix XenDesktop server rack that is deployed without the need to add any additional storage.

For more information on Atlantis ILIO Deployment Options, visit the Deployment Options Page

For information on Citrix verified, visit the Citrix Ready Product Profile for Atlantis ILIO