Today WhipTail Tech, maker of high-performance, cost-effective solid-state based storage arrays,announced that Renasant Bank has chosen a 6TB WhipTail solid-state XLR8r array to bring its Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment to life.

"Our VDI deployment was at a standstill. We couldn't get our pilot group past a certain performance threshold because of the limitation of ourcurrent hardware infrastructure," said James Hayes, Senior Vice President and Network Operations Manager of Renasant Bank.

"Our peers were recommending we look into WhipTail's XLR8r - that with its performance, price and ease of use, it may be the missing link we were looking for. As it turns out, they were right." 

The WhipTail XLR8r is an SSD array that supports up to 12 TB of MLC flash in an industry standard rack-mounted 2U form factor. The XLR8r's patent-pending design overcomes the write performance and longevity challenges typically associated with cost-effective MLC flash technology. Not a caching appliance or PCIe card, the XLR8r is highly tuned for low latency, high IO environments; extends life of flash drives to beyond 7.5 years while optimizing the underlying flash architecture; and runs on less than 200 watts.  Download Enterprise Strategy Group's XLR8r Lab Validation Report, which explores the benefits of the XLR8r in more detail.

"A VDI environment offers many advantages, from data security to management, etc.; it's the process of actually deploying the underlying infrastructure that's emerged as the most significant problem. 80-90 percent of VDI's IO requirements are small, random WRITE IOPS - a requirement existing storage networks are simply not designed to fulfill," said Brian Feller, CMO and VP Strategic Alliances at WhipTail. "With the XLR8r, a company does not need to rip and replace anything; the XLR8r complements their existing storage vendor and the Citrix XenDesktop solution seamlessly. With its 250,000 WRITE IOPS, you could say the XLR8r was built for VDI."

Renasant Bank is owned by Renasant Corporation, a 107-year-old financial institution that operates over 75 banking and insurance offices within Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.