Enterprise Architecture Design for
VMware Horizon View 5.2
John Dodge (@vdiinfo)
Andre Leibovici (@andreleibovici)
EUC5434
#EUC5434
2
Agenda
Large scale administration features of Horizon View 5.2
Storage design considerations
Architecture best practices
3
Large Scale Administration
4
Overview
Benefits
OPEX savings with fewer pools to
manage in multi-thousand user
deployments.
No need to split pools on the basis of
insufficient host density, or insufficient IP
addresses in an address range.
Large Pool & Multi-Network Support
OPEX Savings with fewer pools to manage
Large Pools: Eliminate 8-host per pool
limit – now 32 hosts with latest View and
vSphere 5.1
Multi-Network: Network within a pool can
be split with multiple network labels.
Initially offered via powershell API.
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Overview
Benefits
OPEX savings less admin time spent on
common operations
Reduced complexity of architecture &
less scripting with image updates for
pools supporting 24-7 operations.
Accelerated View Admin Scale, Performance & Availability
OPEX savings as deployments grow large
Enhanced VC Scale: Deploy pods of up
to 10k desktops with a single VC!
Reduce Time: Data caching for fast
Admin-UI response with large lists of
desktops and sessions
Improve Availability: Rolling-Refit keeps
min # desktops available during
recompose, refresh & rebalance ops.
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One vCenter Server and 10,000 Desktops
vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
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P
vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
Powering on, provisioning, maintenance
8
Maintenance Operation with One vCenter Server
Maintenance window
vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
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Maintenance Operation with Multiple vCenter Servers
vCenter Server vCenter Server vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
Maintenance window
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Reduced Parallelism Across Desktop Pools
vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
View LDAP Configuration: Pool 1 Pool 2 Pool 3
Pool 1 Pool 2 Pool 3
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Powering on, provisioning, maintenance
vCenter Server vCenter Server vCenter Server
ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi ESXi
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
View Connection
Server
Desktop
VMS
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Storage Design Considerations
13 Confidential
Data Diversity
Templates
OS
Pagefiles
vSwap Files
User Data
User
Persona Corporate
Apps Anti-Virus
Definition Files
ThinApp
Packages
Parent
Snapshots
Master
Images
Full Clones
Replicas
Linked
Clones
App
Installers
User Installed
Apps
Security
Updates
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Storage Design Challenges
Improperly sized storage implementations are difficult to fix
Good user experience and user acceptance are critical for success
Balancing burst IOPS and footprint
Diversity of storage options make it difficult to make an
informed choice
ESXi host RAM Solid state disk SATA hard drive
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IOPS vs. Footprint: The Bell Curve
There is a dramatic difference between IOPS avg to IOPS peak
• Avg Win 7 IOPS ~20
• Avg Win 7 boot storm IOPS ~300
• Avg recompose IOPS per VM ~600
Avg IOPS If you design
for this
All of this IO is buried in
latency
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Coping with the Curve
Latency ruins user experience
Traditional storage architecture demands spindles
for performance, larger disks for footprint
The VDI challenge is small disks aren’t cost effective,
therefore a lot of footprint is wasted
Recognize that disk IO and footprint requirement vary
by the type of files or data stored
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Technical Details
View Storage Accelerator (aka CBRC)
Overview
• Use caution in memory overcommit
situations
• Uses digest files for vmdks for
metadata/hash information
• Disk sizing must include the digest files
• 5-12MB per GB of vmdk
• In-memory cache of common
block reads
• Applicable to all types of desktops
• Completely transparent to the guest
• 100% host based – Up to 2GB RAM
• Decrease Read IOPS by up to 60%
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0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
Peak IOPS Avg IOPS
IOP
S
IOPS
View StorageAccelerator Disabled
View StorageAccelerator Enabled
Validation Results: Windows 7 – Single Host Boot Storm
~80% reduction in peak IOPS
~45% reduction in average IOPS
~65% reduction in peak throughput
~25% reduction in average throughput
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Peak throughput Avg throughput
MB
ps
Bandwidth consumption
View StorageAccelerator Disabled
View StorageAccelerator Enabled
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Strategies for Burst Demands that Don’t Break the Bank
Acceleration products
Atlantis Software ILIO
Nexenta VSA for View (NV4V)
In-storage block tiering
EMC FAST Suite
NexentaStor
New storage technology
SSD
Flash drives (e.g., Fusion IO)
All-Flash arrays (EMC XtremIO)
VMware Virtual SAN
Outlier:
Converged
Appliances
All-in-one server,
storage, and
virtual file system
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Virtual SAN for Horizon View Desktops
Reduce storage TCO with a “virtual SAN” on local storage
Overview
Leverage new Software Defined Datacenter capability with Storage Virtualization
Uses local storage on ESXi hosts
Presents an abstracted data-store that spans multiple hosts for resiliency and removes single point of failure risks
Benefits
Reduce up front CAPEX costs of VDI
Easily scale up IOPs with compute
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Let’s Talk about Space
When using PCI Flash or SSD, Space becomes more of an issue
What things impact space?
• View Storage Accelerator (CBRC)
• Full clones / vs linked clones
• Linked Clone recompose frequency
• Memory reservations
• Persistent Disks
• Storage deduplication
View 5.2 / vSphere 5.1 SESparse Disks
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Overview
Benefits
Reduced storage capacity requirements
(lower CAPEX) for Persistent Desktops,
even on lower-tier hardware
View Composer can be used for
provisioning simplicity, even if recompose
is never used (e.g. knowledge workers)
Space Efficient Disk Utilization
More efficient use of storage capacity
Leverages new vSphere 5.1 capability…
A new disk format for VMs on VMFS
Reduces grain size & more efficiently
utilize every allocated block by filling it
with real data
Unused space is reclaimed and View
Composer desktops stay small
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Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
100MB
100MB
100MB
Things start out small with View
Composer and Linked Clone
Technology. You only have 1 copy of a
Windows base image (with the OS
and Apps) once for many desktops.
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Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
2GB
400MB
1GB
But the delta disks for each
desktop grow over time on VMFS
as Windows frees blocks which
the hypervisor is unaware of
With traditional virtual disks
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Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
100MB
100MB
100MB
Space is reclaimed when a View
Composer Recompose or Refresh is
performed, but this isn’t an option for
many user types (e.g. knowledge
workers with user installed apps)
Recompose
With traditional virtual disks
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40GB
40GB
Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
40GB
If no recompose or refresh is
performed, delta disks used to grow
substantially over time – eventually
as big as the logical size of the disk
Before Space Efficient Disks with this View Beta and vSphere 5.1,
this resulted in greater storage capacity costs for knowledge workers
With traditional virtual disks
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2GB
Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
400MB
1GB
With the new space efficient disk
format, delta disk still grow to hold
real data generated by the OS,
Apps & User
With Space Efficient Disks
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Space Efficient Disks Make Persistent Desktops Cost Less
Base
Image
Desktop A
Desktop B
Desktop C
(~10GB)
1GB
300MB
800GB
But a background space
reclamation process automatically
harvests unused blocks so the
disks are constantly shrunk back
to a minimal size
With Space Efficient Disks
Reclaim!
This allows you to use View Composer to provision VMs and save
storage capacity, but NEVER have to recompose or refresh
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What about VM Swap?
When creating virtual machines, there is an option to place
the virtual machine vswap file on local storage. The key
considerations are:
• Reduce the size of shared desktop datastores. For example, this can show
savings of between 94GB-366GB (1.5GB average memory and 64-250 virtual
machines per datastore) based on number of desktops per datastore and the
memory allocated to a virtual machine
• Removes the vSwap read/write I/O from the shared storage device, reducing
the overall I/O profile
• Slight impact on performance of vMotion and HA operations
• Slight increased CPU and memory requirement on the ESXi host
for vswap file I/O
• Local storage requirement for the ESXi
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3D in VMware Horizon View
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vSGA – Improved Shared 3D Graphics With Multiple Virtual Machines
Now with support for select AMD/ATI graphics cards with latest vSphere
Overview
vSphere in 2013 adds AMD/ATI Graphics Cards
Supports select NVIDIA & AMD/ATI Graphics Cards
Shared access to physical 3D graphics cards for high
performance graphical workloads
Desktops see abstracted VMware SVGA device for
maximum virtual machine compatibility & portability
Share single 3D graphics card with multiple VMs
Benefits
Expanded vendor choice for graphics acceleration
Enables truly high performance graphics
Cost effective with multiple VMs sharing single 3D
graphics card
Full compatibility with vMotion, DRS for hosts
lacking physical 3D graphics cards
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vDGA – Deliver Workstation Class 3D Graphics with VDI Desktops
Full workstation class user experience with dedicated NVIDIA graphics card
Overview
Dedicated access to physical GPU hardware for 3D
and high performance compute workloads.
Uses native NVIDIA drivers
CUDA and OpenCL compute APIs supported
Best for super high performance needs like design,
manufacturing, oil & gas
Benefits
Compliments vSGA cost/performance
True workstation replacement option
Full capabilities of physical NVIDIA GPUs
High performance compute GPU option
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Architecture Best Practices
Don’t treat desktop storage like server storage
Use storage tiering appropriately
Understand your desktop workload
Trust “industry numbers” but verify
Segregate your server and desktop workloads
Don’t try to deploy in strict accordance to a reference architecture guide
Evaluate the new SSD, flash, and VSA backed storage platforms
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Other VMware Activities Related to This Session
HOL:
HOL-MBL-1301
Horizon View from A to Z
Group Discussions:
EUC1001-GD, EUC1006-GD
View with Matt Coppinger or Andre Leibovici
THANK YOU
Enterprise Architecture Design for
VMware Horizon View 5.2
John Dodge, VMware
Andre Leibovici, VMware
EUC5434
#EUC5434
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