The Importance of Storage Tiers in VDI

I have implemented many VDI solutions and what is apparent is the importance of a flexible storage solution.  In the early days storage was a consideration mainly from a cost perspective; How do we justify a SAN solution for storing our virtual desktops?  iSCSI became an effective way of mitigating this while the vendors introduced or acquired technology to assist like VMware View Composer and Citrix’s Provisioning Server.  As we assist more of our customers in scaling VDI we are looking at NAS as a core piece.  NAS has traditionally been used for windows shares so it is not necessarily a new piece of the puzzle.  With appliance based NAS solutions that are loaded with cache NAS is providing an even cheaper tier for storing virtual desktops.  In addition as it is already incorporated for storing User and Group data it is likely that the customer has incorporated NAS in the environment already.  Another important use of NAS storage is for redirected user data or profiles.  One thing that customers should be aware of is that there is a direct link between redirecting user data and the ability to use some of the advanced image management solutions like Composer or Provisioning server.  So if redirecting user data is not part of the current physical desktop strategy it needs to be considered when scaling VDI technology.  Thoroughly reviewing your current storage solution so that you have incorporated different storage technologies like iSCSI and NAS will ensure that you have an environment that will scale but at a reasonable cost.