GreenBytes announces vIO 4.0 Virtual Storage

GreenBytes vIO 4.0 offers OEMs and service providers patented, high-performance virtual desktop deployment features, along with the flexibility required to cost effectively scale virtual desktop environments. With GreenBytes’ patented zero latency inline deduplication technology, OEMs are able to deliver cloud-scale, next-generation desktop virtualization solutions that enable full-featured persistent virtual desktops, providing end users with a superior virtual desktop experience that is similar to the physical desktop they are most familiar with, all with up to 98% less storage space required.
Featuring GreenBytes’ patented zero latency inline deduplication technology, vIO 4.0 was architected to enable OEMs to deliver cost effective, cloud-scale desktop virtualization. The GreenBytes vIO 4.0 virtual storage solution enables OEMs to quickly enter into the growing VDI market by creating customizable packages of high quality, ultra-performant, full-featured desktop virtualization solutions that are simple, easy to deploy, and scale from departmental to cloud, increasing customer time-to-value.

The vIO 4.0 diverts OS and swap disk activity away from primary storage (SAN) to high-speed flash, solving the performance and latency problems and poor user experience that occur during peak usage. By moving the virtual desktop datastores to the vIO, inconsistent performance and crippling congestion become a thing of the past. Deployed and ready to present storage locally or externally via iSCSI or NFS in less than five minutes, vIO-based OEM solutions can deliver persistent or non-persistent desktop images through their preferred desktop broker interface running on VMware hypervisors.

GreenBytes vIO 4.0 Features and Benefits Include:
• Optimized Deduplication Hashing Functions: The GreenBytes file system has modernized the ZFS platform, making significant improvements that increase performance and reliability. Compared to the generic ZFS hashing function, the vIO 4.0 platform provides up to 450% accelerated performance.
• Optimized Compression: Reducing the storage footprint is an essential requirement when planning for a large-scale VDI deployment. The GreenBytes vIO 4.0 provides ~50% faster compression rate, ~80% decompression rate, and ~10% better compression ratio over the previous version, which enables GreenBytes to reduce the storage required for virtual desktop initiatives by up to 98%.
• VDI Block Size Optimization: As the default cluster size for NTFS (New Technology File System) is 4K (up to 16TB volume), GreenBytes’ vIO 4.0 improves deduplication performance by 50% by using a 4K block size to align with Windows VDI workloads, which results in superior storage efficiency and a better user experience. Alternative technologies that use larger block sizes are unable to achieve the same level of deduplication percentages, which increases the storage cost.
• LUN-Based QOS (Quality of Service): Virtual desktop storage I/O varies widely based on user activity. Keeping storage I/O at levels that ensure all users are happy means being able to control the so-called "noisy neighbor" problem. The vIO 4.0 allows administrators to set a quota to limit the number of writes per second on a per LUN basis, which enables IT managers to control the impact that client VMs might have on each other, enabling a predictable user experience.
• Improved SNMP Reporting: The health of any mission-critical data center ingredient needs visibility to system administrators. The vIO 4.0 now features an expanded use of the SNMP interface to enable integration into third party dashboards, or via GreenBytes’ packaged monitoring virtual machine. Updates include expanded pool/LUN/network reporting, sending traps for error conditions, and a downloadable, preconfigured monitoring virtual machine console.
• NFS VAAI (VMware vStorage API for Array Integration): To achieve higher speed cloning of virtual machine images, which translates to faster time to deploy, GreenBytes leverages a feature in the VMware ESX hypervisor called VAAI. This feature enables cloning locally on the vIO instead of copying the data over the network, resulting in a 2x increase in cloning speed, as well as decreasing traffic on the network.

GreenBytes’ vIO 4.0 is cloud-scalable and can size to any desktop virtualization environment by deploying multiple vIO instances. A single vIO is designed to provide I/O offload for 100 or more persistent or non-persistent virtual desktops. Customers can also utilize the pre-configured IO Offload Engine hardware appliance that supports from 100 to 2,000+ persistent or non-persistent virtual desktops over 10GbE iSCSI or 8 or 16Gb Fibre Channel.