Cirrity needed a new storage solution to support the performance requirements of their growing Desktop as a Service offering. Their existing infrastructure was not able to meet the needs of the more write-heavy VDI workload profile. After developing a workload profile and testing several vendors, they selected Tintri as the solution that best balanced storage capacity, performance, cost, ease of implementation and operational expenses. Tintri provided the scalability, performance, compatibility and manageability needed at a total cost of ownership 35% lower than competitors.

1. Tintri, Cirrity, and … The Three Bears
Tintricity Atlanta
Dan Timko
President & CTO, Cirrity

2. About Cirrity
• Channel-only cloud service provider
• Offering Infrastructure (IaaS), Disaster Recovery (DRaaS), and Hosted
Desktops (DaaS)
• Enable managed service providers (MSPs), value-added reseller (VARs)
and solution providers with differentiated cloud solutions
• Focus on regulated industries (healthcare/financial) and security-
conscious organizations
• Security certifications and attestations including SOC2, PCI Level 1, ISO
27001, HIPAA, CSA STAR

3. The Problem
• Increased success of Cirrity’s hosted VDI Desktop as a Service offering
• Determined our existing IaaS storage solution was not going to meet our
needs
• Needed to find a storage solution to meet performance requirements
while keeping the product price competitive

4. The Problem, in more detail
• VDI has been the poster child for ensuring the right storage solution
• Different workload profile than traditional virtualized servers (more
write-heavy).
• Performance problems are more noticeable to users given the
interactive nature

5. Now what?
• We realized we needed a different storage solution to solve this
problem
• Developed a workload profile for our service
• Selected a list of vendors to engage
• Began testing

6. The Testing Process
• Hard Requirements:
– Scalability to 10’s of thousands of desktops
– Sustain an average desktop load of 40 IOPs at 65% write
– Compatibility with existing infrastructure
– High availability
– Less than 5ms latency
– Specific cost metrics

7. The Line-up

8. And The Winner Is…
(Please act surprised)

9. Why Tintri?
• The Goldilocks Principle:
– The Goldilocks principle states that something must fall within certain margins,
as opposed to reaching extremes. When the effects of the principle are
observed, it is known as the Goldilocks effect.

10. Our “Just Right” Storage Solution
• Hardware evaluations are always a balancing act
• Factors we had to consider included:
– Storage capacity (usable)
– Performance
– Cost
– Ease of implementation
– Operational expense

11. With Tintri, we found…
• The best balance between storage, performance, and cost.
• “Ridiculously easy” management
• Scale-out through predictable building blocks
• Happy users who noticed the improvement upon migration immediately
• An account team that listened to our needs and was responsive
• Production ready in 85% less time
• Cost per desktop 35%+ less than competition

12. Questions?
Dan Timko
dtimko@cirrity.com