Violin: We know VDI scares you, biz boss... But what if it was cheap?

Flash array biz Violin Memory claims it has found the lowest cost virtual desktops in the industry in Atlantis Computing.

It's partnering with Atlantis Computing to deliver its ILIO virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) software running on Violin's flash arrays and says this provides the lowest total cost of ownership for virtual desktops.

Traditionally ILIO gets its VDI speed by running in a host server's RAM at a cost of less than $300/desktop.

The cost/desktop with ILIO using Violin Memory arrays has not been released. It ought to be less than that, and may well be slower than all-RAM-based ILIO. But we'd expect the Violin Memory flash array use would scale to a higher number of desktops. Figures to verify this are not available.

Violin claims the joint ILIO/Violin system features:

• Scalability to 1,000s of desktops
• A 3-4x reduction in boot and login times
• Consistently superior end-user experience at any scale, rendering boot, login and logoff storms transparent to the user
• Lowered storage capital expenses by up to 50 per cent and operational expenses by 80 per cent. In-line deduplication plays a role here
• Reduced risk and complexity through automatic virtual desktop provisioning

The ESG research agency found sustained low application access times, at less than five seconds, with 10,000 virtual desktops, and boot up completed in 36 seconds when testing a Violin Memory 6000 array.

A Violin document (PDF) discusses use of Violin's 6232 array but doesn't reveal cost details. There's a Violin white paper about VDI here (registration required). ®