The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) is responsible for overseeing a statewide system of support and services for the more than 80,000 Ohioans with developmental disabilities and their families. The DODD was challenged with several independent but equally mission-critical projects concurrently. After fully architecting and integrating VMware’s server virtualization into their environment, CIO Bryant Young knew critical projects lay ahead.

“Most importantly, we identified the need to better secure and manage the way data was being delivered to our clients and internal employees. Overlaying that with our need to rollout Windows 7 and integrate a broader DR/BC plan, a virtual desktop infrastructure was a natural fit,” stated Bryant.

Selecting VMware’s View to enable his IT staff to change, update and provision applications rapidly, Kipp sees this shift to a virtualized desktop model as a key for business agility and enhanced data security. However, when they began their design and architecture of the 1,500-user VMware View environment, challenges surrounding the storage infrastructure appeared.

“We assumed we could do it through our original SAN, which was a bad assumption. Even if we could afford to expand our existing SAN, what happens if a production server or VDI users impact each other? We didn’t want to go down that road. We wanted an independent SAN appliance for the View environment,” noted Bryant. The DODD was not thrilled with the storage alternatives available. “We reviewed other storage options to support the View deployment. Our existing SAN vendor does support SSD as a cache, but when implementing VDI there are a lot of unknowns, especially on a broader scale such as ours which is in the thousands.”

With their IOPS per user landing somewhere in the 20-50 range, of which approximately 90% would be WRITE IOs, Bryant and his team were not afraid to look at a newer technology in the storage space. The poor response time typical of traditional storage removed it as an option.

With its incredible 250,000 WRITE IOPS and 95% savings on power, cooling and rack space the WHIPTAIL 2U solid-state solution became a focus for the DODD’s design.

“WHIPTAIL’s proprietary software spreads the writes around the complement of solid-state drives within its appliance. It’s actually built to accentuate SSDs and not just any array that has SSDs jammed into it. Their wear endurance software is a huge advantage and one of the single biggest reasons we went with WHIPTAIL . . . it’s purpose-built. Plain and simple.”

By offering 90% savings and immediate scalability when compared to their traditional storage arrays, Bryant added, “WHIPTAIL offered the opportunity for the DODD to accelerate the entire View deployment in this budget cycle. The existing SAN players are just not built this way. It’s like buying a series of minivans for capacity when what I really need is the performance of a Ferrari at the cost of a Honda.”

“We like companies that think outside the box and add business value to our enterprise. We are happy to jump on board with them and recognize that ROI and longterm, compelling TCO,” said Bryant.

The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities’ deployment of VMware’s View virtual desktop software is one of the largest known state and local government rollouts in the USA. “We would not have been successful without this elegant solid-state array.”

HIGHLIGHTS
• VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure deployed successfully and ahead of project deadline
• Centralized infrastructure quickly realized ROI and lowered TCO
• Increased user productivity via Windows 7 rollout