This document discusses the limitations of traditional hard disk drive (HDD) storage and introduces Whiptail's flash-based storage array, the XLR8r, as an alternative. It notes that HDD performance has not improved in over 10 years and is insufficient to meet the demands of modern high performance applications. The XLR8r uses solid state drives (SSDs) and proprietary software to deliver over 100x greater performance than HDDs while using 95% less power, space, and cooling. It is presented as solving challenges with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), databases, server virtualization, and other IO-intensive workloads. Several customer case studies show the XLR8r successfully accelerating performance for VDI

1. FLASH-BASED STORAGE ARRAY

2. ENTERPRISE STORAGE LANDSCAPE
Dominated by 15K RPM
Hard Disk Drives
No Performance Change
in over 10 Years
High Performance
Servers Starved for Data
2000 2005 2011

3. PERFORMANCE GAP HOT SPOTS
VDI Operating Systems
Database High IO Files
Server Virtualization
Exchange
OLTP & HPC
Search Indexing
Report Analysis
Code Development

4. DISK IS DEAD!!
• Can’t spin faster (200 IOPS/Drive)
• Can’t seek faster(6-8 ms latency)
• Only Performance Option is to
Overprovision
• Power, Cooling, & Rack-Space Waste
• ONLY solution is a DIFFERENT
persistent storage medium

5. THREE CHALLENGES FOR SOLID STATE
COST WRITE SPEED ENDURANCE

6. 3 COMMON APPROACHES TO SSD
Add SSDs to an Existing Array
Use Solid State as a Cache
Add SSDs Directly to Servers

7. 3 COMMON APPROACHES TO SSD
Add SSDs to an Existing Array
Tuned for HDD 1/5 Performance 5X the Cost
Use Solid State as a Cache
Doesn’t Solve Root Issue Expensive Poor Write Speed
Add SSDs Directly to Servers
Higher Cost Maintenance is Difficult Manageability?

8. WHIPTAIL’S APPROACH | UNIQUELY DIFFERENT
Completely Standard
Component Based
ISCSI FC SRP
Unified Transport
Easy to Understand
All IP is Software Hash engine
Alignment
Compression
Linearization Easy to Deploy
NV Ring buffer
Data integrity
Easy to Manage
SW RAID
A Servicable, Network
Attachable Storage Array

9. RACERUNNER OS | THE SECRET SAUCE
RaceRunner Operating System*
 Proprietary software to make MLC Flash Enterprise Ready 
Accelerates WRITE
Performance 250,000 WRITE IOs
Intelligent wear-
7 Year Guaranty on
leveling maximizes
Drive Wear
drive endurance
*patent pending

10. WHIPTAIL XLR8r | ADVANCED FEATURES
Web-Based GUI
Auto-Support
High Availability &
Disaster Recovery
Manageable - disk capacity
recognized as a standard
block-based device by server

11. WHIPTAIL XLR8r | SPECIFICATIONS
IOPS 250,000 WRITE*
Capacity 1.5TB, 3.0TB, 6.0TB, 12.0TB
Latency 0.1ms
Interfaces Ethernet: 10GbE and 1GbE
Fibre Channel: 8Gb and 4Gb
Infiniband: 40Gb
Bandwidth 1.9GB/s
Protocols Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS, FCoE, CIFS, QDR Infiniband
Drive Protection RAID 5 with Hot Spare
Size 2U
Power Consumption <200 W
Redundant Power Supply
*At 4K size for cryptologically random data

12. LONG LIVE SOLID STATE!!!
Performance (100x) Efficiency (95%)
• IOPS - (250,000/tray) • Zero Moving Parts
• Low Latency - (0.1 ms) • Less power - (180 watts)
• Throughput - (1.7 GB/s) • Less space - (99% less)

13. XLR8r | VIRTUAL DESKTOPS

14. VDI’s BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Each Virtual Desktop
NEEDS 20-40 IOs per user
Workload 80-90% WRITE
Problem not seen in POC
(50-100 users)
HDD = 200 IOs per drive
5,000 Users = >200,000 IOs = 1,000
HDDs

15. TCO-ROI | BROKEN
Traditional HDD Storage
• $400 per user for storage
• Enormous Power, Cooling &
Rack Space Requirements
• Limited Random Write
Capabilities
• Overprovision Larger Servers

16. TCO-ROI | FIXED
XLR8r TRADITIONAL STORAGE RACKS
vs.
$50-100 Per User
For Storage
250,000 IOPs WRITE
180 Watts
2U

17. XLR8r | DATABASES

18. XLR8r | ACCELERATES
Server Virtualization
Email Oracle
SQL OLTP
Search Reporting
Development

19. DATABASE ACCELERATION
ENABLE competitive advantage
and drive revenue with near ZERO
LATENCY database performance.
0.1 millisecond Reports in Consolidate
latency 250,000 IOPs minutes vs. storage
days footprint

20. ENTERPRISE STRATEGY GROUP| LAB VALIDATION
“A single XLR8r … delivered the
Write performance of multiple racks full of
power hungry disk drives.”
Read
*
0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000
4 KB Random IO's per second “Ten minutes and three mouse clicks
Read Write
after powering on the XLR8r, new capacity was
“The WhipTail architecture performs random recognized … and ready for use in a VDI
writes faster than random reads which is ideally
environment.”
suited to meet the demanding IO requirements of
a VDI environment.”
-Enterprise Strategy Group’s lab report & third-party validation of the XLR8r
*performance was host limited during ESG Lab testing

21. THREE YEARS | CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
1,000 XenDesktop Users Software Development Exchange 2010
VMware View
1,000 VDI Users
Oracle Database
Microsoft SQL
1,500 VDI Users
500 Xen Desktop Users
VMware ESX VDI & Server
2,500 VDI Users XenApp Virtualization Virtualization
200 VDI Users Microsoft SQL OLTP - 15M Hits Per Day
3,000 VDI Users
VDI DATABASE

22. CASE STUDY | INVENTIV HEALTH SAS
Using the XLR8r to Improve the Performance of Statistical
Analysis System (SAS) on a Citrix Environment
THE CHALLENGE SOLVED WITH XLR8r
• Deployed a 1.5 TB XLR8r
“We were experiencing • Virtual Environment running 4X
extremely long delays faster with XLR8r
when conducting • Improved performance gives
statistical analysis of competitive advantage
datasets.” • Statistical Analysis System
performance increased 10X
-Manager of Technical Services
• Dramatic decrease in help desk
inVentiv Health
calls & user complaints

23. CASE STUDY | OHIO.GOV
Using the XLR8r for Enterprise-Wide
VMware View Deployments
THE CHALLENGE SOLVED WITH XLR8r
“We assumed we • Deployed a 6.0 TB XLR8r
could do it through • VMware View virtual desktop
our original infrastructure deployed
SAN, which was a bad successfully & ahead of deadline
assumption.” • Centralized infrastructure quickly
-Kipp Bertke realized ROI & lowered TCO
Manager of Infrastructure • Increased user productivity via
The Ohio Department of
Developmental Disabilities
Windows 7 rollout

24. CASE STUDY | FINKELSTEIN & PARTNERS
Using the XLR8r for Virtual Desktops &
Demanding Applications such as Exchange
THE CHALLENGE SOLVED WITH XLR8r
“Virtualization is a beast on
hard-disk drive • Deployed a 1.5TB XLR8r
performance, and we didn’t
• Dramatic increase in
want to continue down the
Microsoft Exchange
road of spending a premium
performance
without seeing the results.”
-John Pasqualicchio • Cost-effective scalability
Senior Systems Administrator for virtual desktops
Finkelstein & Partners

25. WHIPTAIL XLR8r| STORAGE SUMMARY
95% less
100X
power, cooling,
Performance
& space
Racerunner Compelling Enterprise
OS TCO Class

26. CITRIX | EXECUTIVE BRIEFING CENTER
XLR8r being used within
Citrix Datacenter
Santa Clara, CA

27. WHIPTAIL XLR8r| NEXT STEPS
What’s Next?
Qualification Case Studies
Remote Demo On-site Eval

28. THANK YOU