One of the major reasons that virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has become a major challenge to sell is because it effectively raises the total cost of enterprise IT. While the cost of managing the overall desktop environment drops, the pressure that VDI puts on networks and storage increases dramatically. That pressure frequently leads to upgrade costs that customers find objectionable enough to not proceed with VDI.

But the folks at Virtso Software, which just launched a new global channel program, think they have solved the storage issue, which in turn should also relieve the pressure on the network.

Virsto Software has launched a hypervisor-based storage system for Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenDesktop environments running on release two of the Windows Server 2008 platform.

According to Gregg Holtzrichter, Virsto Software vice president of marketing, the Virtso approach works by logically tying each virtual machine to a virtual storage object in the Virtso software.  The core problem with virtualization storage in general is the random nature of the I/O requests created by each virtual machine, which becomes especially acute in VDI deployments involving hundreds of virtual machines. By linking each virtual machine to its own storage object, the Virsto software eliminates the randomness of the storage I/O requests being passed on to the underlying storage infrastructure.

For solution providers in the channel VDI has frequently proved to be an elusive opportunity. And while the bulk of that opportunity is currently tied to VMware, many of the VDI opportunities in the future will be tied more closely to Windows and existing Citrix environments. But before those opportunities ever move into a production environment, solution providers are going to have to solve the storage I/O problem.

Pricing for Virsto VDI is $2,800 per host, with 1 TB of logical storage per license.