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.