Virsto One Accelerates Hyper-V Storage Access

One of the most interesting meetings I had at this year’s VMworld 2010 conference was with Mark Davis CEO of Virsto Software. Virsto Software is new company that specializes in optimizing the way Hyper-V uses storage. Virsto One both speeds up the I/O for Hyper-V VMs as well as reducing the storage required by virtual machine VHD files.

Mark explained that adding VMs to a Hyper-V server results in decreased performance for those VMs because the host’s I/O subsystem has to perform more random I/O requests. Mark referred to this as the VM Random I/O blender effect.  Virsto One works to seamlessly solve this problem by consolidating the I/O requests from each VM allowing the host’s I/O subsystem to access storage more effectively. Mark stated that Virsto One has been shown to provide up to a 3X improvement in I/O performance. In addition, Virsto One also reduces storage requirements for VHDs by sharing common storage between those VHDs. Mark said, that Virsto One can provide up to 90% saving in VHD storage requirements. This type of saving is particularly important in VDI infrastructures where there are many virtual machines and VHD images.

Virsto One is scheduled for a review by Windows IT Pro Magazine for later this year. In the meantime you can find out more about Virsto One and download a trial copy at: http://www.virsto.com/