College of Business at Oregon State University Implements VMware Virtual SAN to Deliver Easy to Manage, High-Performance Storage for VMware Horizon 6

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - April 30, 2015) - VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced that the College of Business at Oregon State University has deployed VMware Virtual SAN™ as a new storage tier to support their VMware Horizon® 6 environment. The use of VMware Virtual SAN has improved the performance of their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment, reduced the log-in times in classrooms to a minute, and saved the college two-thirds the cost of a new SAN. VMware Virtual SAN is a hyper-converged storage solution designed for VMware vSphere® environments.

"We were facing a few challenges with our VDI environment including high IOPS workloads and we did not have budget for a new traditional SAN," said Alan Sprague, senior system administrator, College of Business at Oregon State University. "VMware Virtual SAN™ was the right solution. It enabled us to take advantage of the server infrastructure we had already purchased and turn into a platform to increase the performance and stability of the VDI environment without spending more money on a new SAN."

VMware Virtual SAN Delivers High Performance and Scalable Storage for VMware Horizon 6
The College of Business, located in Corvallis, Ore., educates students for success in managing and developing sustainable, innovative enterprises in a dynamic economy. With strong graduate and undergraduate programs, internationally recognized scholarly research, and an emphasis on experiential learning, the college helps students and businesses succeed. In the fall of 2014, the college moved into Austin Hall, the 100,000 sq. ft. building, which features 10 state-of-the-art classrooms.

The College of Business features two new open-use computer labs running VMware Horizon 6 supporting a capacity of 170 users. The VDI environment offers students desktops featuring high IOPS intensive applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, Autodesk AutoCAD, and Microsoft Visual Studio, among others. Prior to VMware Virtual SAN, the VDI environment experienced latency issues and, at times, a loss in service during peak usage.

The IT staff for the College of Business selected VMware Virtual SAN in March 2014 to address the strain the workloads were placing on the VDI environment as well as eliminate manual workarounds. The IT department made the decision to go into production with VMware Virtual SAN the summer of 2014 to test and refine the system with lighter workloads before fall class sessions began. The IT staff completed the implementation of the new storage platform in three days in June 2014.

With VMware Virtual SAN now in place, students and faculty are able to enjoy uninterrupted access to virtual desktops with high performance even during peak load periods. According to the IT staff, log-in times for classrooms have dropped to a minute or less today. The college also reports benefitting from:

• Increased IT staff productivity as a result of automatic load balancing and simplified storage management
• Predictable, lower cost per desktop
• Easy scalability for VDI and storage environments

Looking forward, the college's IT staff is planning to provide 24/7 student access to the network so that users can access their virtual desktops off-site away from the labs. The scale-out capabilities of VMware Virtual SAN will help the IT staff to easily generate capacity to meet those needs.

Additional Resources

• View the Oregon State University College of Business video
• Read the Oregon State University College of Business case study
• Learn more about VMware Virtual SAN
• Learn more about VMware Horizon 6
• Download the VMware Horizon 6 and VMware Virtual SAN Reference Architecture
• Connect with VMware on Twitter and Facebook

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2014 revenues of $6 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, Horizon and Virtual SAN are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.