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XtremIO X2 – the Fast Path to a Modern VDI Infrastructure

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VMworld 2017 kicks off this week in Las Vegas. VMware’s premier thought leadership and education destination for technology professionals. Back in May at Dell World, we proudly introduced XtremIO X2 – the second generation of Dell’s XtremIO All-Flash storage system to help customers modernize their datacenters and transform IT.

Just in time for VMworld, we are excited to announce the general availability of Dell XtremIO X2.  XtremIO X2 is the next generation of the Dell’s purpose-built All-Flash array and provides even more performance, agility, and simplicity. For IT departments deploying a VMware infrastructure, XtremIO X2 automates, modernizes and simplifies management and monitoring with its VMware vSphere plug-in and VMware vRealize Orchestration for VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) environments.

PERFORMANCE

XtremIO X2 delivers extreme performance with consistent sub-millisecond latency as low as 200 microseconds while hosting up to 4,000 virtual desktops. X2 delivers 80% better response times than the previous generation, and this performance is unaffected by boot storms, antivirus scans, suspend/resume operations, application peak demands, user activity, or other demands on the storage array’s resources. With XtremIO, VM cloning for VMware is a control plane operation making it extremely fast by leveraging the hypervisor’s copy offload capabilities like VAAI Copy Offload or X-COPY. In fact, a single XtremIO X2 X-Brick can host up to 4,000 virtual desktops[i] — that’s 1000 desktops per RU resulting in up to 33% lower cost per desktop than the previous generation XtremIO.[ii] The graph below demonstrates 4,000 knowledge workers.  You can also watch a video of this here as well.

LoginVSI benchmark demonstrating 4,000 active Knowledge Workers

DATA STORAGE EFFICIENCY

XtremIO’s always-on, real-time inline data reduction technology, including deduplication and compression, dramatically reduce the amount of data storage capacity required to support VDI environments. Data deduplication is always inline without affecting performance or consuming capacity.  Thousands of virtual desktops can be deployed with only a few terabytes of flash. Customer data has shown dedupe rates of 10:1 or higher for full clones and 3:1 for linked clones (see below).

What’s also exciting about our X2 announcement at VMWorld is we’ve proven it delivers 25% higher data reduction, 2X more copies per cluster for iCDM, while at the same time 4 X better rack density than the previous generation XtremIO platform.

XtremIO X2 used capacity for 4,000 VMs (full clones)

USER EXPERIENCE

With its massive I/O performance, virtual desktops running on XtremIO X2 respond instantly and consistently faster than those on physical desktops. This extreme performance ensures that every user is able to get their work done quickly and efficiently.  No more receiving calls about slow response times to mission-critical applications. In fact, XtremIO X2 is 25% faster booting virtual desktops as shown in the results below running identical tests on both XtremIO X2 and the previous generation of XtremIO.[iii]

INCREASED SCALE

With XtremIO X2, you can now scale-up as well as scale-out more flexibly. You can start with as few as 18 SSDs with 7TB capacity. Then as your VDI environment grows, you can simply add more SSDs (up to 138TB) to host more desktops on a single X-Brick. Once a single X-Brick reaches maximum desktop hosting capacity, you can then scale-out non-disruptively up to a total of 8 X-Bricks. Leveraging the embedded storage efficiency capabilities, X2 can scale to support up to 5.5PB of effective capacity. This new X2 capability dramatically improves and simplifies VDI deployments making online expansion completely transparent to both your IT applications and users, while also eliminating all storage planning complexity.

XtremIO X2 Scale Up and Scale Out Up to 5.5PB Effective Capacity

X2 has also been designed for higher density to pack more All-Flash capacity in a footprint that is 3X denser than the previous generation, a key improvement for many of our customers:

“As a service provider, the more capacity we can fit into a smaller footprint, the better it is for our business,” said Brady Snodgrass, Storage Architect at First National Technology Solutions.” XtremIO X2’s significantly improved density — with the capability of packing up to 72 SSDs into each X-Brick, nearly 3x the previous model — is a big advantage.”

SIMPLE STORAGE MANAGEMENT

Finally, XtremIO X2 offers a new HTML 5 management interface making it even simpler for storage administrators to quickly provision and view overall system status. With X2 there are no applications to install and management is done via a common web browser.  Key system metrics are front and center and displayed in an easy-to-read graphical dashboard.  Overall system health, performance and capacity metrics and graphs are right at your fingertips for quick checkups while graphical views of the array hardware and interfaces provide simple visuals for overall system performance.

XtremIO X2 HTML 5 Dashboard

XtremIO X2 management integration with VMware vSphere is just as exciting news for VMworld attendees. Dell Appsync integrates with VMware to easily and natively protect and restore datastores, virtual machines or files within VMs.   VSI integration with Appsync allows iCDM to be managed within vCenter directly.  While point in time recovery is possible using RecoverPoint and VMware SRM. A great demonstration of XtremIO X2 with VMware vSphere and Site Recover Manager integration can be found here.

If you’re already an XtremIO customer, hopefully I’ve piqued your interest in some of the new capabilities in performance, agility and ease-of use.  If you’re not already an XtremIO customer, but run a heavy VMware infrastructure, it’s worth your while checking out how XtremIO X2 can deliver peak results to your organization.  Check out a really great video or head on over to Dell.com to learn more about the new XtremIO X2.

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[i] Based on Dell internal testing using the LoginVSI VDI workload generator (knowledge worker profile) benchmark test, July 2017.

[ii] Based on Dell internal analysis, July 2017. Actual cost will vary.

[iii] Based on Dell internal testing, July 2017. Actual performance will vary.

Jeff Boudreau

About the Author: Jeff Boudreau

As chief AI officer at Dell Technologies, Jeff Boudreau leads the company’s AI and data strategy including accelerating AI-driven outcomes and scaling generative AI initiatives across the organization. Leaning on his versatility, deep engineering and infrastructure expertise, Jeff leads Dell’s Center for AI Innovation, a team which is responsible for enterprise-wide AI strategy, education, governance, and policies. This includes prioritizing and implementing domain-specific use cases, building, defining and standardizing architectures, integrating and embedding AI across Dell's product portfolio and core business operations – as well as cultivating strategic partnerships across the AI ecosystem. Tapping into the value inherent in data to drive progress is a passion of Jeff’s that has driven him during his more than 25 years at Dell Technologies. Prior to becoming chief AI officer in September 2023, Jeff spent four years serving as president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell. In this position he led a global team of over 23,000 innovators that accelerated data insights and helped Dell Technologies become the largest infrastructure provider in the world – across the data center, cloud and at the edge. He has held executive positions spanning engineering, operations, services, and business management with a passion for inspiring team members and driving real-world outcomes for customers. Jeff completed his undergraduate studies at Wentworth Institute of Technology and received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.