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Virsto
Company typePrivate
IndustrySoftware
Founded2007 (2007)
HeadquartersSunnyvale California
Key people
Mark Davis, CEO, Alex Miroshnichenko, CTO, Serge Pashenkov, VP of Engineering
ProductsVirsto VSI, Virsto VDI
Websitewww.virsto.com

Background

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Virsto is a software company that provides storage virtualization solutions for virtual machines.

Virsto addresses storage performance, utilization and management challenges with storage virtualization software for snapshots, clones, and thin provisioning for server virtualization, desktop virtualization, cloud computing and other enterprise initiatives. The company is privately funded and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

History

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Virsto was founded in 2007 by Mark Davis, CEO, former CEO of Creekpath Systems (acquired by Opsware, which was then acquired by HP); Alex Miroshnichenko, CTO, former CTO of Acronis, and former engineer at Veritas (acquired by Symantec; and Serge Pashenkov, VP of engineering, former senior director of software development at Powerfile and Veritas. In early 2010, Virsto introduced the first hypervisor-based storage virtualization solution built for virtual machines.

Virsto is privately funded by August Capital, Canaan Partners and InterWest Partners. In 2009, the company announced a $7 million series A funding round. In 2011, the company announced a $17 million series B funding round. Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan Partners, Vivek Mehra, general partner at August Capital, and Khaled Nasr, partner at InterWest Partners, are on Virsto’s board of directors. Advisors include Frank Artale, current VP of business development at Citrix, James Phillips, co-founder and former CEO of Akimbi (acquired by VMware) and Shaw Chuang, former R&D executive at VMware.

Partnerships

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Virsto is a Microsoft BizSpark One member, Microsoft Virtualization partner and Microsoft System Center Alliance partner. Virsto also provides support for Microsoft datacenter and infrastructure solutions: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 & System Center, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Virsto is part of the VDI Coalition led by Xiotech Corporation and includes Silver Peak Systems, Inc., GlassHouse Technologies, Inc. and Pano Logic. The objective of the coalition is to provide solution architectures and best practices for customers deploying desktop virtualization, also referred to as virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Virsto is a Citrix Ready Partner and a VMware TAP Elite Partner.

Awards

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Virsto was named a Best of Tech Ed 2010 award finalist at Microsoft Tech Ed North America. Virsto for VSI received the Virtual Intelligence Briefing 2011 Emerging Technology Excellence Award for Best Product of Spring 2011 Microsoft Hyper-V Ecosystem.

Products

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Virsto for VSI is a virtual storage solution designed for use in virtual server environments. Virsto for VSI uses the Virsto Virtual Storage Engine (VSE) to achieve performance gains and management benefits from a pure software-based solution that is designed to support heterogeneous, block based storage.

Virsto for VSI addresses storage performance through high performance, thin-provisioned virtual storage targets for virtual machines. Virsto software reduces storage capacity consumption using snapshot/clone technology to maximize utilization of existing storage capacity.

Virsto for VDI is a virtual storage solution designed for use in virtual desktop environments. Virtual desktop environments differ from virtual server environments with more random and write-intensive input/output or I/O patterns, creating more variability between peak and average IOPS requirements, and requiring scalable management and provisioning for more objects.

Virsto for VDI increases storage performance by 3x – 5x (IOPS/spindle), reduces storage capacity consumption by at least 90 percent, reduces time spent on provisioning tasks with cloning technology to reduce deployment times by up to 75 percent relative to native hypervisor options, reduces storage costs for VDI projects by 30-50 percent, and increases virtual desktop density per host to lower cost per virtual desktop.

Acquisitions

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EvoStor, June 2011

References

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1. CRN, June 21, 2010 [2010 Storage Superstars: 25 You Need To Know]

2. Virtual Strategy Magazine (podcast), February 16th 2010 [Optimizing Storage Management]

3. Dan Kusnetzky, ZDNet, April 21, 2011 [Virtual Storage for Virtual Environments]

4. George Crump, Storage Switzerland, April 22, 2011 [Bridging the VDI Storage ROI Gap]

5. Mike Vizard, CTOEdge, September 17, 2010 [Virtualization Makes Managing Storage Harder]

6. Mark Cox, eChannelLine, December 1, 2010 [VDI coalition formed to establish best practices]

7. Jacob Nthoiwa, ITWeb, September 28, 2010 [Virtualisation Top of SME IT Spend]

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