back to article Another day, another VDI appliance: ScaleIO intros Nytro-driven kit

VDI is becoming a vendor obsession. Just days after Fusion-io's ioVDI product we have an another VDI appliance using EMC's ScaleIO technology with LSI flash, Supermicro servers and Mellanox networking which they claim can boot 1,000 virtual desktops in 12 minutes at a price per desktop of an entry-level business PC. EMC bought …

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  1. Jim O'Reilly

    Is this one a bit slow

    The performance numbers seem a bit on the low side. 12 minutes to boot my desktop is a long time to wait, given it takes 30 seconds off my (inexpensive) SSD.

    1. Dave Nicholson

      Re: Is this one a bit slow

      Slight correction.

      That is the time to boot ONE THOUSAND desktops.

      More info can be found here:

      http://storagepirates.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/scaleio-at-vmware-partner-exchange.html

      It should help clear things up.

    2. Dave Nicholson

      Re: Is this one a bit slow

      ...So at 30 seconds per host you would be at 8.3 hours versus our 12 minutes.

      :-)

      1. Michael Duke

        Re: Is this one a bit slow

        Except that if you issued a PxE boot message to 1000 desktops they would be booted in 30-60 seconds from a SATA magnetic disk and 10-20 seconds from low cost consumer SSD's.

        Ahhh parallelism.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Is this one a bit slow

          Yeah, 1000 VDI instances in 10 minutes doesn't impress me at all. There's something wrong with their config. They should be able to get better than that from a Nytro backend if they were using any form of host-based flash caching whatsoever. Proximal Data front-ending a CacheCade array could do better, for cheaper. Atlantis' ILIO would fucking destroy that figure with room to spare. To say nothing about ILIO USX!

          Why is this considered special, other than that it looks like yet another mediocre attempt by VMware to rip off the ideas of a partner? It looks like they've done what VMware always do and rip the ideas off badly and then charge $virgins.

          Guess it's aimed at those with sloped foreheads who buy based only on brand.

        2. Dave Nicholson

          Re: Is this one a bit slow

          12 minutes is 720 seconds. So we are talking about .72 of a second per host.

          Ahhh PCIe Flash AND parallelism.

          You guys are hilarious. We can argue that booting in the blink of an eye isn't important, but you can't argue that this isn't fast.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Is this one a bit slow

            .72 seconds if they are booting sequentially. Not if they are booting in parallel. Booting sequentially? Impressive. In parallel? Not.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Smells like Nutanix

    Looks like EMC's Scaleio is being pitched as a Nutanix competitor rather than a VMware VSAN competitor.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Smells like Nutanix

      If that were the case, VMware and EMC would have done something underhanded, like telling Nutanix they weren't welcome at PEX in order to kneecap competition and attempt to prevent them from responding questions about direct comparisons. Oh, they did? Hmm.

      Well, then I think it's safe to conclude that VMware has decided to once again rip off ideas and intellectual property from their own partners then proceed to act in an anti-compeitive manner and otherwise be complete fuckbags. Shocked? Less and less every day...

    2. Dave Nicholson

      Re: Smells like Nutanix

      An alternative to Nutanix, absolutely. But very different. This is very disruptive to Nutanix and puts them as the high cost, "closed" end of the Server SAN spectrum, ironically. Disrupted before you even get off the ground. Our business is getting harder every day.

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