Virsto for vSphere

There's no question about it, VMware vSphere has changed the way your enterprise manages virtualized servers, for the better. Right now, you're extracting far more performance per physical server than you used to. But storage? Just the opposite. Your IT organization is probably buying as much or more storage as ever, with up to 70% of total capacity sitting unused.

Why? Current best-practice for server virtualization is to allocate a dedicated amount of storage capacity per virtual machine, often through templates that reserve 50, 75, 100 Gb of capacity per VM. That's the rule of thumb for ensuring adequate VM performance for applications. But, the reality is that each VM actually consumes only a small fraction of its allocated storage. The rest sits idle. Multiplied across the enterprise, that adds up to a lot of wasted storage capacity that has been sacrificed to achieve adequate performance, and wasted storage budget.

The Virsto storage hypervisor for VMware vSphere eliminates all that waste by changing the economics of storage.

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View Virsto for vSphere, 2.0 Data Sheet >>

Virsto for vSphere features:

• Native support
  Virsto is a 100% software solution that installs as a virtual storage appliance, integrating seamlessly with VMware vCenter and View Manager.
• Bulk VM provisioning wizards
  Virsto integrates into existing management and provisioning workflows. With just one click from the integrated Virsto option within standard vCenter menus, you can provision high-performance, space-efficient virtual machines in just five seconds – not the 20 minutes that the usual manual provisioning process requires.
• Advanced data services 
  Only Virsto gives you a suite of capabilities that will fundamentally improve storage utilization and productivity, including VM storage self-provisioning, automated storage space reclamation and thin provisioning.
• A new snapshot option
  Virsto provides the industry’s most scalable, highest-performance snapshots and writable clones, giving you not just lightning-fast provisioning – but also a compelling new approach for granular backup and recovery.
• Software-based tiering
  Virsto supports up to four distinct storage tiers, giving you the most flexibility to manage storage priorities and costs.

Game-changing benefits:

• Exceptional storage performance
  Virsto creates a virtual storage layer that presents virtual hard disks to virtual machines running on ESX. Virsto vDisks look like native Eager Zeroed Thick (EZT) disks, but consume only a fraction of their physical storage space.
  
  Virsto vDisks are thin-provisioned, high-performance, cluster-aware, and support extremely scalable snapshot/clone technology – all at the same time. The result? Higher, far more predictable storage performance.
• 90% better storage utilization
  When deployed with Virsto, vSphere virtual server environments use up to 90% less storage capacity, with production-level VMDK performance.
• Snapshots and clones that perform like a pass-through disk
  If you’ve wanted to use snapshot/clone technology to make administration easier, but have experienced performance issues with array-based or native approaches, let Virsto help. Virsto vDisks and their snapshots/cones always deliver the same high performance as a pass-through disk.
  
  In other words, Virsto vDisks and their snapshot/clones always perform at the limit of the underlying storage hardware, no matter how many snapshots or clones each vDisk may have.
• Superior backup without sacrificing performance
  If you’re struggling with backup performance in failover cluster environments, Virsto vDisks are the answer. They’re fully cluster-aware and support the needs of clustered environments.
• Full support for vMotion
  Virsto is installed in the hypervisor of each physical host as a Virtual Storage Appliance. Once installed and the Virsto vPool is configured, Virsto maintains a map of every vDisk in the Virsto environment, and where each VM physically resides. If a virtual machine undergoes a vMotion from one physical host to another, Virsto seamlessly updates the mapping.

"Virsto’s automated provisioning workflow and seamless integration with VMware View provides the ability to rapidly provision hundreds of new desktops and automatically reclaim storage. We observed a marked improvement in desktop performance using Virsto, thus reducing our storage cost per desktop. Additionally, the ability to more easily manage a heterogeneous storage environment provides the option to choose purpose built hardware appliances to meet specific needs without increasing storage management overhead."

— Kyle Murley, Server, Desktop, and Web Services Team Lead
San Diego State University Library

View our vSphere Data Sheet >>