PAETEC Communications is deploying 160 virtual desktops using Citrix XenDesktop on each of its Cisco B230 M2 blade systems using the Atlantis ILIO virtual appliance. Steve Bell, PAETEC's infrastructure systems architect, said the company will be able to deploy up to 6,400 virtual desktops in a single rack of Cisco UCS blade servers without the need to purchase any disk-based storage, SSDs, or PCI-based RAM drives for VDI.
"As a result of Atlantis ILIO and Cisco UCS, our virtual desktop solution costs less than a workstation or laptop, provides a better user experience, and was able to reduce or eliminate our storage, network, power, cooling, and rack space CAPEX and OPEX costs more so than any other VDI offering," Bell said in a statement. "From a storage perspective, we wanted to eliminate the reliance of VDI on SAN/NAS storage while at the same time not sacrificing -- and perhaps even improving -- overall user experience."
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com .
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