This document summarizes an interactive workshop on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) design. It discusses technical components of VDI like where desktops are delivered from and run, as well as storage considerations. Key topics covered include IO dispersion across different types of storage, squeezing virtual machines onto hardware, and balancing persistent versus non-persistent desktops. The document also outlines several important considerations for a successful VDI implementation like whether to use a traditional or converged infrastructure, how to pilot VDI, scaling out cost effectively, and where to focus efforts.
1. Interactive VDI Design
1 Workshop
Team member 1, Team member 2
NutanixTeam
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2. 2 Session Interactivity
• If Tweeting about this session, please use
@Nutanix in your tweet.
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3. 3 VDI Technical Components
HOW THE DESKTOPS ARE DELIVERED
VDI
WHERE THE DESKTOPS RUN
COMPUTE
WHERE THE DESKTOPS LIVE STORAGE
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4. 4
4
STORAGE –
BUILDING THE BASE
FOR SUCCESS
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5. 5 The Biggest On-Going Lie
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6. 6 Storage Design
Infrastructure Gotcha's
Network Interconnect
Limited number of storage Controllers
Performance is King
Random steady state I/O attributes of Virtual Desktop (results in
excess spindle count)
Reads are Easy, Writes are Hard
Overprovisioning of storage required for acceptable performance
(expensive)
Network interconnect often becomes a bottleneck
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7. 7 IO Dispersion
Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are
broken down into the following six different types:
• Operating System Template
• Master Replica
• Parent Replica
• Linked Clone – Composed of Delta Footprint + Log + User Data Disk.
• Persistent Disk – Optional, and ideally not used for Stateless Desktop
• Disposable Disk
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8. 8 IO Dispersion
Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic
• Replica on SSD storage
• Offload operations
•C: - System disk
•Profile -View Virtual Profiles
•User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory
•Applications –Streamed ThinApp
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9. 9 IO Dispersion – XenDesktop
Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are
broken down into the following types:
Machine Creation Services Provisioning Services (PVS)
(MCS) • Master vDisk
• Master Image • Difference Disk
• Master Snapshot • Write Cache
• Host Snapshot • PvDisk – Optional
• Difference Disk Master vDisk
• ID Disk VM R/O Image
File
• PvDisk – Optional
VM Streamed
from PVS
Host
Read
Snapshot
Write
(R/O)
PVS Server/ VM
ID DIsk Difference
Write Cache
Disk
Compute Host
Compute Host
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10. 10 IO Dispersion
Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic
• Replica on SSD storage
• Offload operations
•C: - System disk
•Profile -View Virtual Profiles / Citrix UPM
•User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory
•Applications –Streamed ThinApp, Streamed XenApp, or Hosted
XenApp
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11. 11
COMPUTE –
Squeezing Them In
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12. 12 How Many VM’s Can Fit in this sucker?
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13. 13 How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker?
CPU
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14. 14 How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker?
RAM
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15. 15 Setting Memory Reservation
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16. 16 32 is the New 8
Cluster Size
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17. 17 Why Not 10,000 Users per vCenter?
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18. 18 Pods & Blocks
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19. 19 Pods & Blocks
Pods
• User/datacenter
• Security boundaries
• BCDR requirements
• Networking
• Stretching the StorageFailure domains
Blocks
• Pool Types
• Administration
• Operational Impactsizing
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20. 20 Brokers
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21. 21
21
Delivering the Desktop
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22. 22 Load Balancers
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23. 23 Networking
• Mark the Traffic
• WRED FTW!
• Scanvenger
• USB Traffic
• Stay under 80%
• 200kps for average user
• Application Streaming
• Subnet sizing
•/25 /24/ /23 /22
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24. Networking - Optimize your Protocol for your
24
Use Case
• Frame Rate
• Bandwidth Floor
• Min & Max Image Quality
• Audio Limit
• Group Policy
• Caching
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25. 25 Picking your ClientsEnd Point
• Managed Unmanaged
• Security
• Repurposing
• Future Plans Upgrades
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26. 26 Security Considerations
• vShield Manager
• App Zone
• Data Security
• EndPoint
• Certificates
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27. 27 Security Considerations – Authentication
• Password
• Smartcards
• Kiosk Mode
• Radius
• Copy and Paste
• USB – Allow or Disallow
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28. 28 Application Deployment
• Do What Works For You
• ThinApp, XenApp & App-V – The Bubble
• Stream or Not to Stream
• Compression
•ThinReg vs SDK
• Unidesk & Mirage – Layering
• ProfileUnity – GUI & Scripts
• Horizon
• All of the above will have impact on
storage & performance
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29. 29 User Personalization
• Test, Test, Test
• ViewPersona - RTO
• Unidesk & Mirage – Layering
• ProfileUnity
• All of the above will have impact on
storage & performance
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30. 30 Persistent vs Non-Persistent
Persistent Non-Persistent
• Quick logon • Delete instead of fix
• Like a regular desktop to maintain • Spare Pool
• Easier to find the desktop • Survival of ADAM errors
• Infrastructure people will love • Larger impact on IO
• Hardier recovery • Profile Management Needed
• InfoBlox
• Other considerations
• Pool Size
• Power On/Power Off
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31. 31 AD Blunders That Can Hurt You
• Configure all DC’s as Global Catalog Servers
• Missing Subnets in AD
• Closet Domain Controller
• DNS Aging & Scavenging
• Orphaned DC’s
http://carlwebster.com/briforum-2012-chicago
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32. 32
32
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
FOR SUCCESS
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34. 34 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
A massive strain on legacy traditional infrastructure
QuickTime™ and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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35. 35 The SSD Band-Aid
...that doesn’t solve the real problem
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36. 36 Nutanix Converged Virtualization Appliance
Dramatically Lower TCO with True Convergence
Built-In Enterprise-Grade Data Management
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38. 38 1) What gear for the Pilot?
OR
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39. 41 Rapid Desktop Program - for POC’s
• Only 85LBs per Nutanix appliance
• Hundreds of VMs
• Shrink from half-rack to
transit cases
• Turnkey with VDI
already installed*
*not available for secured enclaves
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47. 50 VDI Cost Breakdown: Traditional Architecture
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48. 53 VDI Cost Comparison: Scale-Out
inefficient
scale-out
additional costs
of entry
Virtual Desktop Users
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49. 54 Q&A - Next Steps
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Hinweis der Redaktion
20 IOPS is the big lie. If desktops needed only 20 IOPS we wouldn’t put SSD’s in our laptops! Thank god we have PCI-Flash! Operational they number is way higher. Recomposing, refreshes, updates, boot storms need to be accounted forPerformance fluctuations have high visibility and impact.
Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operations
Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operationsTalk Filers and Data movers being the bottle neck and yo-yoing the storage traffic
Talk about he different architectures of MCS vs PVS.
Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operationsTalk Filers and Data movers being the bottle neck and yo-yoing the storage traffic
Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operations
Reference states – 1 for XP , 2 is a must for most deploymentshypervisor is blind to is the type of workload that is being done , multimedia applications tend to struggle as physical cores become oversubscribed.Once you allocate 2 vCPU, your host hypervisor scalability will decrease because the CPU scheduler must do more work.
Large pages will be broken down if memory pressure occurs in the system. If no memory pressure is detected on the host, i.e the demand is lower than the memory available, the ESX host will try to leverage large pages to have the best performance. Just calculate how big the Translation lookaside Buffer (TLB)is when a 2GB virtual machine use small pages (2048MB/4KB=512.000) or when using large pages 2048MB/2.048MB =1000. The VMkernel need to traverse the TLB through all these pages. And this is only for one virtual machine, imagine if there are 50 VMs running on the host. There is operational impact with taking off large pagesUsing Large pages shows a different memory usage level, but there is nothing to worry about. If memory demand exceeds the availability of memory, the VMkernel will resort to share-before-swap and compress-before-swap. Resulting in collapsed pages and reducing the memory pressure.
Talk about the impact of setting a Memory Reservation
Talk about Cluster size moving up now that Vmware supports bigger cluster sizes due to vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)I will advise at keeping it at 8 for the sake of operations
Discussing Pod\\Block Design
Discussing Pod\\Block Design
Talk about the security servers in relation to connections serversTalk about the ADAM database and why it’s not like Normal Active DirectoryDoes anyone have something for Xen?
Talk namespace and geo-dispersed podsF5 can manage user sessions across Pods Currently, Cisco ACE will not manage session state across View Pods. Cisco is working on resolution, need to see if this fixed or notLoad Balancers used in DMZ or on the Internal Network need to be Session-Aware. Can it handle the portocol your trying to deliver
Talk namespace and geo-dispersed podsF5 can manage user sessions across Pods Currently, Cisco ACE will not manage session state across View Pods. Cisco is working on resolution, need to see if this fixed or notLoad Balancers used in DMZ or on the Internal Network need to be Session-Aware. Can it handle the portocol your trying to deliver
Can someone add HDX infor?
Zero Clients for the winSecurity impact of your decisionRepurposing is very hard for user adoptionHow flexible is your decision
Aging and scavenging must be enabled in four placesdns serverdns server properties forward lookup zones reverse lookup zones