Nexenta Works with VMware to Simplify VDI Deployment

New NexentaVDI plug-in eliminates storage and system management complexity for VDI environments

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Oct 19, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Today at VMworld(R) 2011 Europe, Nexenta Systems, the world's leading provider of OpenStorage solutions, announced it has partnered with VMware to simplify VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) deployments.

At VMworld Europe 2011 (Bella Center in Copenhagen, Oct 18-20), Nexenta is demonstrating its 'NexentaVDI' provisioning and rapid deployment solution for VMware View(TM) 5. Also at the show Nexenta will be recruiting participants for its NexentaVDI beta programme.

The NexentaVDI solution simplifies storage and system management into just three simple steps. The NexentaVDI solution addresses the key challenges of VDI deployment through a single dashboard with real-time analytics. It offers rapid deployment of the NexentaStor OpenStorage VSA across the VMware vSphere(R) cluster based on simple user inputs such as Desktop Pool type, number of users, target performance levels and more. Each VSA is configured and tuned with the best mix of ZFS features and parameters based on key desktop pool attributes.

With NexentaVDI, managers simply name a desktop pool and indicate how many desktops are to be provisioned in that pool. NexentaVDI automatically sets up the underlying storage, VMware View desktop pool, and optimises the deployment to provide superior performance for the environment, transparently handling the disparate storage requirements of both persistent and non-persistent virtual desktops. "A process that used to take days and an army of storage and virtualisation specialists has been almost fully automated and now takes a matter of minutes," claims Jim Fitzgerald, vice president of business development at Nexenta.

"NexentaVDI takes advantage of the inherent flexibility of VSA storage, offering a purpose-built storage layer for the type of VDI pool being deployed," said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. "The NexentaVDI plug-in offers an improved level of simplicity, validated performance, and auto-optimisation. VMware is excited to see such integrated solutions coming to market."

Combining end-to-end automation with the sophisticated features of the ZFS file system, the NexentaVDI solution showcases the tiered storage features of VMware View 5, working in tandem with the VSA (Virtual Storage Appliance) configuration and tuning. Fitzgerald believes that the NexentaVDI solution can assist users looking to adopt the technology but concerned about the complexity and costs.

He said: "VMware View(TM) 5 provides a fantastically simple way to manage desktops and applications while increasing security and control for users. Users now want to see this
simplicity extend across all layers of the VDI stack, especially around the demands on storage. They also want to see the deployment and management costs driven right down. As a VMware partner, our goal for the NexentaVDI solution was to make it easier than ever before to realise the advantages of VDI made possible by VMware View 5 and NexentaStor 3.1."

NexentaStor is already a popular solution for many VMware View-based VDI environments. When coupled with VMware View tiered storage, the joint solution is capable of overcoming the performance and cost challenges associated with the unique I/O patterns generated by VDI workloads. This solution enables customers to easily utilise SSDs to improve the read and write performance, normalize the I/O pattern and cost effectively meet the high-performance requirements of a VDI environment.

Availability

NexentaVDI will be generally available in Q1 2012. Free trials of NexentaStor can be downloaded at: www.nexenta.com/freetrial

About Nexenta

Nexenta Systems is the leading supplier of OpenStorage solutions for the enterprise.
www.nexenta.com

Nexenta Creates Unprecedented Demand for OpenStorage Solutions

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - --(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 11, 2011-- Nexenta Systems, the world leader in OpenStorage solutions, today announced continued momentum, with 486 percent revenue growth in the first three quarters of 2011--highlighted by 100 percent quarter on quarter growth between the second and third quarters. In 2011, with the release of Namespace Cluster, NexentaStor emerged as the ideal back-end storage for cloud deployments and for virtualized and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments, as demonstrated by notable customers such as VMware for their Hands-on Labs at VMworld Las Vegas and its upcoming Copenhagen show and major VDI users such as VESK and Delano Regional Medical Center.

Nexenta’s growth is fueled by the enormous demand for cost-effective, enterprise-class storage that meets the exploding growth of data. Other factors include wide ranging dissatisfaction with the lock-in-based business models of monolithic storage providers, the unique capabilities of NexentaStor in cloud deployments and virtualized environments, and the growth in the Nexenta partner network which now includes 256 resellers selling NexentaStor-powered storage appliances.

Nexenta Announces the Following 2011 Growth Metrics:

Nexenta: Customers' Storage Choice for VDI:

Based on revolutionary ZFS technology, NexentaStor solves storage-related issues for VDI by offering systems that scale performance as needed to industry-leading levels and that include deduplication, compression, replication, unlimited snapshots, the use of linked clones and thin provisioning. By natively supporting hybrid storage pooling, NexentaStor overcomes the random IOPS issues associated with VDI and eradicates the difficulties associated with the very high percentage (as much as 80 percent) of writes in a VDI environment. By coupling NexentaStor with industry standard hardware, customers reduce VDI costs by 70 percent over a three year period compared to using a proprietary storage solution. Additionally, the NexentaStor Virtual Machine DataCenter (VMDC) plug-in is the only solution that supports storage for Citrix Xen, VMware, and Microsoft Hyper-V from one management console.

Delano Regional Medical Center: Delano Regional Medical Center (DRMC) is a full-service community and regional teaching hospital located outside of Bakersfield, California. DRMC faced increasing volumes of medical data and needed to update its data storage and recovery environment without exceeding its IT budget. The company was happy with VMware View, however as the deployment continued, end user productivity suffered thanks to storage that could not keep up with performance demands.

After deploying solutions from EMC and Netapp, DRMC chose NexentaStor to minimize storage costs and to better manage the technical hurdles. By switching to NexentaStor, DRMC served the random IOPS required, improved end user productivity, and accelerated VDI adoption and satisfaction--all while achieving greater flexibility and dramatically reducing current and future capital costs.

VESK: Founded in 2009,VESK is the fastest growing supplier of virtual desktops to companies ranging from small three-person operations to organizations with 500 users.For its back-end storage, VESK faced a challenge: in order to get its Citrix XenDesktop to work as efficiently as possible, it required bigger IOPS and higher availability and performance.

After weighing solutions from Dell and EqualLogic, VESK turned to NexentaStor to deliver the IOPS needed to support its VDI environment while delivering a meaningful ROI to justify it.

“We immediately saw the benefits of Nexenta as a key infrastructure technology supporting our business,” said James Mackie, technical director, VESK. “It enabled us to overcome the technology challenges and reduce the costs associated with rolling out VDI to our customers, which will help fuel our rapid growth in this market.”

VMworld Las Vegas: NexentaStor’s superior performance in virtualized and cloud environments recently was demonstrated as it played a critical role in supporting the Hands-on Labs at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas in August. Nexenta was chosen, along with NetApp and EMC, to power this important and unique element of the conference, which further solidified NexentaStor as the ideal OpenStorage solution for virtualized environments. Key accomplishments at the Hands-on Labs included:

“Our growth continues to accelerate because we’re at the forefront of a fundamental change in the storage industry. The lock-in based business models and legacy technologies of most storage vendors are in the way of progress in IT,” said Evan Powell, CEO, Nexenta Systems. “Whereas legacy vendors constrain choice, drive up costs, and fail to perform, we are thriving because we have better solutions especially for cloud and VDI environments and because we do not take advantage of our customers.”

Later this month, Nexenta Systems will host the second-annual OpenStorage Summit at the Wyndham Hotel in San Jose, Calif. October 26-27, 2011. The event is a must-attend for IT systems administrators, architects, CIOs and CTOs who are looking for low-cost, high-performance solutions to solve the most complex storage issues. The full agenda is available at: http://www.openstoragesummit.org/

About Nexenta Systems

Nexenta Systems is the world’s leading provider of enterprise-class OpenStorage solutions. The company’s flagship software-only platform, NexentaStor, delivers high-performance, ultra-scalable, cloud- and virtualization-optimized storage management. NexentaStor is a storage software solution built upon ZFS technology. It operates on industry standard x86 servers and
provides NAS and SAN capabilities, including support for CIFS, NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel storage access.

Running on any industry-standard hardware, NexentaStor eliminates vendor lock-in and provides open, unified storage management at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.

More information about Nexenta Systems, and free trials of the ZFS-based NexentaStor, can be found at www.nexenta.com or call (877) 862-7770.

CONTACT: Schwartz Communications
Merrill Freund, 415-512-0770
Nexenta@Schwartz-pr.com

Virtualising the Desktop with Open Source

Evan Powell asks how VARs can ensure VDI lives up to its promise

Enterprises turning to Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to centralise the desktop environment at the datacentre level have a nasty surprise in store: instead of decreasing IT and management costs, VDI can cost up to 20 per cent more to administer than traditional desktop architectures.

Consider this simple metaphor. In a VDI infrastructure the host server is your primary CPU/memory and your storage is your hard disk. In this context, it is easy to see how centralised storage becomes a critical (and with traditional enterprise storage, expensive) component in getting VDI to work properly.

The storage or hard disk on a PC has traditionally been treated as a commodity component, with the price per terabyte (TB) on a PC falling rapidly over the years. This is not true for centralised storage, however, where the price per TB on a SAN or a NAS is still very high.

The second difference is functionality. Centralised storage has different use and load patterns from a standalone PC. Disk I/O is not an issue for the PC because it is optimised for a single-user environment.

In a VDI environment, the increased volume of users results in a huge amount of random read-and-write access. This puts strain on the system and most of the storage design requirements will break if the peak and median I/O throughputs are not given due consideration.

The final difference is reliability – a key requirement when designing central storage for VDI. Ultimately, storage systems need to interface with hardware with physical moving parts that tend to break down over time. Any storage system assembled to support VDI should have an architecture that takes into account the fact that hardware will fail.

Enterprises are also finding VDI environments do not live up to their cost-saving promise. This is because leading storage vendors are still selling costly proprietary systems that lock customers into closed architectures. Vendors charge premium prices for the industry standard hardware they supply by locking in customers with their proprietary on-disk formats and file systems. But change is on the way, in my opinion.

Open storage promises to end vendor lock-in, return control to the channel and end users, while reduce the incredibly high cost of enterprise-class storage. And you can still earn good margins.

In much the same way that Linux and Intel commoditised the server market, open source-based storage software that runs on industry-standard hardware can slash IT spend without any compromise in performance. Such storage software can be based on the ZFS file system, meaning no special hardware is required.

ZFS uses its end-to-end check-sums to detect and correct silent data corruption. If a disk returns bad data transiently, ZFS will detect it and retry the read.

If the disk is part of a mirror or RAID-Z group, ZFS will detect and correct the error: it will use the check-sum to determine which copy is correct, provide good data to the application, and repair the damaged copy. There is no need to modify applications. The process is automatic and works with cheaper disks.

Hybrid storage infrastructure can manage data placement transparently, holding copies of frequently-used data in fast SSDs while storing less frequently accessed data in slower, cheaper mechanical disks. The application data set can be completely isolated from slower mechanical disk drives, promising improved performance and RoI. This helps address the I/O issues of VDI.

A VDI environment is often required to provide groups of users with the same type of profiled desktops. But open source-based storage software exists that can replicate virtual disks quickly without consuming disk space. Deploying hundreds of desktops can be achieved in minutes or a few hours rather than a couple of days or weeks. In my view, this is an opportunity for the channel – particularly because this feature cannot be matched by traditional storage vendors.

This can help VDI environments live up to the promise of lower costs and fewer headaches, in my opinion.

POGO LINUX LAUNCHES NEW STORAGE DIVISION, POGO STORAGE

Storage division dedicated to helping small and mid-sized companies implement cost-efficient emerging technologies

Redmond, WA (PRWEB) June 02, 2011 - Pogo Linux today announced that it has launched a separate storage division, Pogo Storage. Pogo Storage expands the company's storage offerings with cost-efficient, entry-level to mid-range enterprise solutions. The new division is dedicated to helping small- & mid-sized organizations implement emerging storage technologies and get the most from their storage budget.

Since launching as a open-source system integrator of pre-installed Linux servers and workstations in 1999, Pogo Linux has experienced exponential storage business growth. The new storage division will allow Pogo to develop sales and support resources for its storage customers, which include government, universities, media, and entertainment.

The move also allows Pogo Linux to better-position its managed solutions and appliances, including the StorageDirector Z Series line of entry-level enterprise SAN products based on the NexentaStor™ open storage platform with ZFS.

"Pogo Storage was created in response to the growing demand from our customers for specific storage solutions," said Erik Logan, President of Pogo Linux. "To best meet the needs of our end users, we developed Pogo Storage to focus specifically on our storage product and support offerings. We are very excited about what this new division means for our customers."

"The LSI channel portfolio provides compatibility with an extensive ecosystem of system and storage products, allowing system integrators like Pogo Linux to deliver integrated solutions that meet the needs of end users across a broad spectrum of market segments," said Brent Blanchard, director of worldwide channel sales and marketing, LSI Corporation. “We are excited about the launch of Pogo's new storage division and the prospects of an expanded focus on LSI® storage technologies, including LSI MegaRAID® CacheCade™ SSD caching software and the LSI WarpDrive™ solid state storage card, both built for database application acceleration."

"We are pleased to support Pogo's decision to focus a core of its business strategy on network storage to the enterprise market," said Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta. "As a valued technology partner, we will continue to work closely with Pogo to deliver integrated NexentaStor™ certified solutions which are superior open storage alternatives to proprietary and legacy technologies."

Pogo Storage offers network-attached storage (NAS), direct-attached storage (DAS), and expansion subsystems products, in addition to managed solutions and appliances (SAN/NAS). For learn more about Pogo Storage, please visit http://www.pogostorage.com.

About Pogo Storage

Pogo Storage is a division of Pogo Linux which focuses on open source network storage system integration. From digital archive for a large video collection to a highly-available SAN, Pogo Storage helps IT departments at small- & midsized organizations dramatically reduce storage costs with a hybrid storage approach and breakout technologies, like NexentaStor™ open storage platform with ZFS, and LSI WarpDrive SLP-300 PCIe solid-state storage card. For more information, please visit us online at http://www.pogostorage.com or call (888) 828-7646 (POGO) to speak with a trusted storage advisor.

LSI, the LSI & Design logo, CacheCade, MegaRAID and WarpDrive are trademarks or registered trademarks of LSI Corporation.

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