Case Study: NHS Lothian achieves sub‑minute virtual desktop logins and 220+ desktops per server with SanDisk

Nhs British Healthcare Agency Makes Virtual Desktops Faster Than Physical Desktops

NHS West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit (CSU) needed to replace aging PCs and centralize management for 5,500 doctors and staff across more than 110 sites, but an initial disk-based virtual desktop proof of concept delivered poor performance — logins could take up to 20 minutes and sessions froze — so the IT team sought a simple, scalable VDI architecture that would cut login times, support hundreds of desktops per server, and reduce rack space and power.

The CSU deployed 25 servers each fitted with SanDisk Fusion ioMemory ioDrive2 cards and VMware Horizon/ESXi, enabling linked‑clone virtual desktops. The result: most users now boot and log in in under a minute (about a 20x improvement), the trust supports over 220 desktops per server, application responsiveness and resilience improved, and the solution reduced rack space, power and operating costs while allowing straightforward, linear scaling for future growth.

NHS Lothian

Martin Powis

Manager of IT