NexentaVSA for View

NexentaVSA for VMware View is a purpose built storage appliance that simplifies the deployment and management of storage for VDI installations by integrating with VMware vSphere®, VMware vCenter™ Server, and Nexenta virtual storage appliances.

NexentaVSA for View provides comprehensive functionality, including inline data deduplication and inline compression, flexible back-up and restore, unlimited snapshots, metadata acceleration, and uniform IOPS at any scale. NV4V can dramatically reduce overall costs, which historically can run to more than 40% of VDI budget just for storage, while significantly improving end-user performance.

The Challenge

Today’s challenges relating to storage and legacy VDI vendors are three-fold:

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

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

The Solution

How it Works

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

NexentaVSA for View 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, NexentaVSA for View, utilizing ZFS technology, guarantees end-to-end, air tight data integrity (competitors use unproven Linux or other file systems).

Video: Walk-through of NexentaVSA for View.
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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 NexentaVSA for View helps leverage your existing investments in external storage hardware (be they NetApp, EMC, Compellent, or others) for dedicated desktops.

To deploy a pool of desktops, questions are presented as to which desktop template to use, how many desktops are desired for the pool, and which storage profile should be applied.

It’s as simple as that.

The Benefits

NexentaVSA for View 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 /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.

Feature Comparison

Features NexentaVSA for View NexentaStor™
System and storage configuration optimized for VDI Yes
(fully and automatically configured, with preconfigured profiles tuned for VDI deployments)		 No
(can be congifured manually)
Maximized efficiency of ESXi host local storage Yes No
Customizable storage profiles with easy graphical interface Yes No
Automation of all VDI deployment steps Yes No
Integrated VDI analytics Yes
(covers both the entire VDI storage and vSphere		 No
Management GUI Single-pane-of-glass Management
(includes: VDI deployment, desktop pool calibration, analytics, benchmarks, backup, disk replacement, replication and replicated HA)		 No

Screenshots & Diagrams

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