IPFS Selects Virident FlashMAX II PCIe SSD

Virident Systems, Inc. announced that IPFS Corp., provider of financing to insureds, insurance agents and brokers in the United States and Puerto Rico, has deployed its FlashMAX II SSD for a cost-effective solution to scale its business and increase performance of its VDI.

IPFS provides short-term loans for businesses and individuals to use specifically to pay for property and casualty insurance coverage. The company was adding employees and offices fast, and the performance of its existing storage solution could not keep up. With FlashMAX II, the company is able to speed response times, improve employee productivity and increase the number of supported VDI deployments from 100 to 1,000.

IPFS tried several storage solutions before selecting Virident’s FlashMAX II, implementing SANs, flash memory and flash memory inside a SAN, but none of these options performed as needed. With Virident, implementation was simple, and the solution is easy to manage and scalable. Two 550GB devices are used as datastores in each of three implemented virtualization hosts and address all the pain points that IPFS faced with respect to poor VDI performance.

"We were looking for a way to deploy desktops quickly and provide users a local computer experience. We needed the ability to update desktops and apps daily without interruption to the user," said Jason Walker, senior engineer, IPFS. "The addition of Virident FlashMAX II storage devices allows us to achieve a desktop experience far superior to even a local desktop environment. The density of desktops was more than five times anything else I tested flashMAX II is seamless for the users, IT administrators and staff. A real win for everyone involved."

The FlashMAX II device provides benefits for IT administrators by delivering performance that scales across diverse workloads. Using it enables IT professionals to make updates to existing desktops that are non-intrusive and faster to implement than with a traditional SAN. Bottlenecks caused by multiple high-intensity CPU activities, such as boot storms and recompose, are eliminated. Virident also reduces the number of virtualization hosts needed while increasing the capacity of VDIs and users.

"The business benefits of VDI are extremely compelling, but VDI consistently runs into performance bottlenecks," said Ken Grohe, VP WW customer operations, Virident. "FlashMAX II is able to provide the performance needed to meet peak I/O demands without the over-provisioning required by traditional storage. This improved performance enhances the user experience while providing the customized look and feel of a physical desktop."