Xiotech ISE Storage Solves VDI Problems

Xiotech Corporation announced a set of products that take the power of the company’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) storage systems and tailor it for the internal enterprise service provider. The solution set includes the Emprise 9000, built on ISE technology, as well as ISE Manager software and ISE Analyzer software. Together, these solutions optimize performance-starved applications like VDI and offer service-level functionality, from service assurance to chargeback, across a fully shared data center infrastructure.

Many specialized applications today have their own dedicated storage infrastructures to reduce conflict, increase reliability and provide clear, line-of-sight management. This separation results in higher costs, lower efficiency and increased management complexity.  

Xiotech’s ISE-based approach changes
the planning, deployment,
and management equation, including:

• Scale out storage – Emprise 9000 storage and controllers can be added anywhere, whether in a rack or distributed across campus. This enables cost-effective, linear scaling from two to 12 controllers and up to 1.8 PB with the reliability and performance that are the hallmarks of ISE-based storage.
• Service level management – ISE Manager and ISE Analyzer provide the ability to forecast, provision, manage and measure all aspects of storage performance and utilization across any number of ISE units. ISE Manager enables users to deploy and provision storage as part of an internal storage cloud instead of individual devices, while ISE Analyzer reports, analyzes, streamlines and predicts storage performance and capacity.
• Application-centric storage control – Emprise 9000 offers flexible control, delivering powerful, controller-based access or direct ISE management access via the CorteX API.

"These new announcements from Xiotech extend the applicability of its underlying ISE architecture as well as improve overall storage management for users," said Mark Peters, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Making the advantages of ISE available in this way is perfect for extending Xiotech’s Intelligent Application Storage approach to support the demands of internal enterprise service providers, especially for applications – such as VDI – where consistent performance and top-notch reliability are crucial.’

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Unleashed
The extension of virtualization from servers to desktops holds great promise for IT businesses, yet storage costs are holding back broader adoption due largely to existing performance and reliability inefficiencies. The characteristics of ISE-based storage – augmented by the flexibility and granular visibility delivered in the products announced – make ISE the ideal platform for VDI. Predictable, linear scalability of performance and capacity, 100x reliability with a five-year, zero-touch warranty and the industry’s broadest integration with major virtualization solutions from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix drive tremendous performance and efficiency.

Xiotech’s own lab tests and a published report
from the Enterprise Strategy Group underscore
the gains in comparison to HP LeftHand, including:

• 200 percent increase in storage utilization
• 350 percent more VDI users supported
• 31 percent fewer watts consumed
• 37 percent fewer drives used

Xiotech is seeing similar gains in customer deployments. "VDI is a critical application platform for Campbell Union High School District, and it delivers significant benefits to our community, particularly as we drive new modes of education services," said Charles Kanavel, Director of Technology at Campbell Union High School District. "Since we deployed, we’ve cut our desktop and server refresh expenses significantly, which saves precious educational dollars in this tough budgetary climate. Our partnership with Xiotech has played a big role in that virtualization journey, as their ISE-based storage solutions are unmatched in their ability to cost-effectively power our applications."

"Xiotech continues to advance our ISE-based storage solutions, making them accessible to a broader range of customers and partners," said Xiotech President and CEO Alan Atkinson. "With today’s announcement, we’ve unlocked even greater value from our ISE technology, especially for VDI. Applications simply run better on ISE because of its industry-best balance of performance, capacity, reliability and cost."

The Next Step in ISE Evolution and Storage Migration
With the introduction of Emprise 9000, ISE Manager and ISE Analyzer, Xiotech has delivered more components and value within its Intelligent Application Storage architecture and provided for greater ease of migration from legacy storage concepts.

The Emprise 9000 is Xiotech’s next generation, scale-out storage controller, delivering to IT a unifying data center platform that offers the highest levels of advanced functionality, deployment/management flexibility and investment protection along with scale-out flexibility up to 12 controllers and 1.8PB.  

Representing a new control architecture,
Emprise 9000 offers the ability to:

• Control the Future – Unlike traditional arrays,Emprise 9000 allows advanced applications like VDI direct, high performance control of ISE storage resources – and development of additional apps and automated controls through CorteX.  It also allows customers to leverage the functionality they have come to expect in traditional storage array control – snapshots, thin provisioning, replication, cloning, etc. – to keep current applications running optimally.
• Protect the Past – Because it is an ISE-based platform, Emprise 9000 can be dropped into an environment with no changes required.  Because it can manage and control all ISE within the platform as well as integrate third-party storage, it can optimize data across service-oriented storage tiers and enable seamless, heterogeneous migration when the time is right.  Adding further value, Emprise 9000 offers two DataPacs within each ISE that can be mixed and matched.

ISE Manager, the next generation of Xiotech ICON Manager, provides a powerful yet simple management interface for simple, user-friendly storage and server administration that yields efficiencies and cost savings. ISE Manager enables complete storage management in a single internal storage cloud and greatly simplifies provisioning and capacity deployment. Whereas traditional storage provisioning requires a dozen or more steps across the storage system, the server and the virtual or physical machine, ISE Manager allows you to create new volumes with a simple three-click process via Virtual View and extensive support for third-party hypervisors.

Deployed as an appliance, ISE Analyzer provides an intuitive, graphical, browser-based resource manager for analyzing, streamlining and predicting storage capacity.

With real-time, granular ISE telemetry data
from ISE Manager, ISE Analyzer:

• Identifies usage patterns for more efficient storage allocation, leading to greater storage infrastructure yields and efficiencies.
• Maps performance to applications, allowing chargeback capabilities and better insight.
• Triggers informational alerts when intended changes are predicted to have adverse effects, ensuring stronger and more consistent storage performance.
• Tracks historical data, enabling better storage usage analysis and budget forecasts.
• Reclaims storage orphaned by dormant virtual machines, saving users more money.