MILPITAS, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/28/12 -- Virident Systems, a performance leader in flash-based storage-class memory (SCM) solutions, today announced the general availability and shipping of Virident FlashMAX II, the second generation of Virident's industry-leading PCIe solid-state drives (SSDs) for the enterprise. FlashMAX II supports Linux, Windows, and VMware ESXi and VDI environments for optimal performance of virtual machines and virtualized desktops. It features the highest capacity in a low-profile form factor, industry-leading unconditional performance and twice the performance density as the nearest competitor.

"The new Virident FlashMAX II provides even better performance, higher capacity and a nice Linux driver, so it definitely meets my expectations," said Kevin Kwast, chief data architect at Indeed. "Indeed.com is the number-one job site worldwide, so high performance and reliability is essential to us. Virident has become our preferred SSD vendor; we've been very happy with their performance, responsiveness and support."

Virident FlashMAX II includes these industry-leading features:

• Highest application performance in the industry
  • Sustained, predictable and consistent high levels of performance are achieved across a broad range of applications and workloads at all capacity utilization levels
  • Alleviates the severe I/O bottlenecks caused by boot storms and login storms
• Highest capacity in the industry
  • FlashMAX II can deliver 2.2 terabytes (TB) of capacity in a low-profile form factor
• Simplified management
  • Unlike competing solutions, 100 percent of the capacity available on a FlashMAX II card is available as a single host volume on the server, without having to leverage third-party software RAID products to stripe across multiple drives
• Global and local wear leveling
  • To maximize the lifetime of the flash media, whenever needed Virident FlashMAX II with vFAS software relocates data to areas of flash that are less used

"As organizations scale to hundreds and thousands of desktops, VDI workloads can overwhelm storage devices and cause severe performance degradation," said Shridar Subramanian, vice president, product marketing, Virident. "By provisioning virtual desktops on very high-performing FlashMAX II, many of the VDI storage bottlenecks can be eliminated. Now organizations implementing VDI can realize unprecedented gains with high performance, ease of deployment and scalability as well as a low cost of ownership."

There are many benefits in leveraging FlashMAX II flash storage for a VDI implementation using VMware View, compared to a traditional VDI implementation leveraging legacy storage arrays, including:

• Two times better VM density. Increased VM-density leads to much better cost per VM, a key metric in VDI deployments. For example, a modern two-socket Sandy Bridge server with 256GB of RAM was able to handle provisioning of 250 VMs with FlashMAX II compared with 120 VMs using external storage.
• Four to six times better provisioning/recompose times. With similar configurations, the provisioning times for 250 VMs took less than 40 minutes, compared with more than two hours with external storage. This improved provisioning/recompose times eliminates end-user downtime and ensures that users become productive quickly after these operations.
• Very fast application response times. The very high-performing FlashMAX II ensures that application response times are measured at far lower than 1ms. This means that end-users can get similar or better user experience compared to a physical desktop.

Pricing and Availability

Virident FlashMAX II starts at $6,000 (U.S.) and is available now by contacting sales@virident.com.

About Virident Systems
Virident Systems enterprise-class Storage Class Memory (SCM) solutions deliver unconditional, consistent performance that supports the most data-intensive content and applications. The inherent advantage associated with this disruptive technology revolutionizes computing by speeding application response time and optimizing datacenter efficiency for new levels of ROI. Virident Systems is backed by strategic investors, Intel®, Cisco® Systems and a storage solution provider, as well as Hercules Technology Growth Capital and venture investors Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, Mitsui Global Investments and Artiman Ventures. For more information, visit www.virident.com.

Virident, Virident FlashMAX, vFAS and the Virident logo are trademarks of Virident Systems. All other products and services listed herein are trademarks of their respective companies.