VDI Technology Challenges

Desktop virtualization and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) have the potential to revolutionize enterprise desktop computing by lowering the total cost of desktop computing, increasing security and making desktop computing more agile. At the same time, desktop virtualization brings with it a number of challenges of its own. Chief among these is addressing the requirement to provide data center storage with the right performance characteristics needed to support desktop virtualization at the cost comparable to a physical PC.

The Microsoft Windows desktop operating systems and the applications and services that run on them were designed to operate with dedicated physical hardware including CPU, memory and a high-performance, low latency hard drive. In a VDI environment, the memory and processor remains on the physical hardware, close coupled to the virtual desktop; however, data storage is relocated to centralized storage fabric (SAN or NAS) which in comparative terms has significantly higher latency and lower bandwidth than a dedicated local hard disk. As VDI deployments move from pilot to production, unpredictable and volatile virtual desktop workloads can overwhelm storage services and cause severe performance degradation during times of peak IO traffic.

Atlantis Computing Technology Solutions

Atlantis ILIO Storage Optimization technology works at the Windows NTFS protocol layer to offload virtual desktop IO traffic before it impacts storage. When the Microsoft Windows operating system and applications send IO traffic to storage, Atlantis ILIO intercepts and intelligently deduplicates all traffic before it reaches storage, locally processing up to 90% of all Windows IO requests in RAM, delivering a VDI solution with storage characteristics similar to a local desktop PC using solid state storage (SSD). The result is a VDI environment requires up to 90% less storage to deliver better desktop performance than a physical PC.