Astute Networks has announced findings from a North American survey on the dynamics influencing the adoption rate of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The findings revealed a strong interest in solid state flash-based storage as a critical solution to overcome key VDI implementation challenges including cost, complexity, and performance.

The survey, which was conducted in December 2012 and was anonymous to the respondents, found that as many as 86 percent of respondents that plan to implement VDI in the next year were considering storage systems that either fully or partially rely on solid state flash-based technology as a central part of their infrastructure to support their VDI deployments. This move is influenced strongly by the benefits flash technology can offer to overcome the barriers impacting the speed of VDI adoption.

Findings of the survey for those organizations that have implemented VDI included:

• 63 percent identified ensuring a good end-user experience as one of their top two biggest challenges
• 40 percent identified ensuring that storage systems could support performance requirements as one of their top 2 biggest challenges
• 57 percent equally recognized three benefits of VDI for their organization including centralized control of their desktop community, better user experience and lower desktop support costs

Findings of the survey for those organizations that have not yet implemented VDI included:

• 47 percent couldn't see a way that virtual desktops would be cost-competitive with real desktops and laptops
• 60 percent were concerned about potential VDI performance issues and the user experience

The findings underline the performance challenges and user experience challenges that are impacting VDI as network and storage resources are pushed to their limits. As a result, enterprises are addressing the problem by overprovisioning storage resources to gain more throughput or they simply don't virtualize their desktops.

The Astute ViSX performance storage appliance was purpose-built to address I/O-intensive applications such as VDI and End User Computing (EUC). ViSX incorporates the patented DataPump Engine processor that completely offloads and dramatically accelerates network and storage protocol processing. The combination of a network-optimized flash and an advanced protocol processor eliminates all critical I/O bottlenecks that affect application and VDI performance and delivers unprecedented random IOPS performance and IOPS per dollar. The solution works seamlessly with all virtualization platforms including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Red Hat RHEV by complementing existing SAN or NAS environments with a non-disruptive, highly optimized flash-based storage tier.

"These results were not surprising as VDI is a very I/O intensive application with demanding performance characteristics that legacy storage architectures and hybrids simply can't handle," said Len Rosenthal, senior vice president of marketing, Astute Networks. "To overcome the cost and performance challenges associated with VDI, and its potentially negative impact on the user experience, IT organizations need to take a fresh look at next generation storage technologies including flash-based storage appliances that can function as a high performance shared resource for hundreds and even thousands of VDI users.   ViSX is the one performance storage solution that can truly meet these requirements."