Product Brief: 200 desktops in a 1U device

Reps from a new company, V3 Systems, talked to me about their recently-announced StratoSphere VDI appliances. The appliances promise to provide up to 400 virtual desktops (in a 2U appliance).

Table from a V3 press release (PDF)

Peter Bookman, V3's CEO, and Rodney Rasmussen, its CFO told me that performance of the VMs is better than you'd get with physical machines, but that power usage is much, much lower—in their testing, the Strato-50i overloaded to run 100 power users consumed just over 300 watts at maximum.

While the appliances can work with other OSs, V3 told me they work best with Windows 7 virtual desktops. They can perform GPU-accelerated effects like Aero 3D and provide a good Windows 7 experience. Under the hood, the devices use VMware software to handle the virtualization. All their storage is SSD for better performance. All the storage, CPUs, RAM, and networking are built into the box—you don't use external storage.

500Prices for the appliances start at around $500 per desktop, including the VMware software—at least during a short-term discount offer. Visit the V3 website for pricing and other info.

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