emc infrastructure for virtual desktops - enabled by emc...

White Paper

EMC GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

Abstract

This white paper provides a detailed summary of the tests performed to validate an EMC infrastructure for virtual desktops enabled by VMware View™ 4.5, with an EMC® VNX5700™ unified storage platform. This paper focuses on sizing and scalability, and highlights new features introduced in EMC VNX™, VMware vSphere™, and VMware® View. EMC unified storage leverages advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize performance of the virtual desktop environment, helping to support service-level agreements. March 2011

EMC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR VIRTUAL DESKTOPS ENABLED BY EMC VNX, VMWARE vSPHERE 4.1, VMWARE VIEW 4.5, AND VMWARE VIEW COMPOSER 2.5 An Architectural Overview

EMC Infrastructure for Virtual Desktops Enabled by EMC VNX, VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware View 4.5, and VMware View Composer 2.5

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Copyright © 2011 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate of its publication date. The information is subject t o change without notice.

The information in this publication is provided “as is.” EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com.

VMware, ESX, vMotion, VMware vCenter, VMware View, and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

Part Number H8525


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Table of Contents

Executive summary ............................................................................................................ 6

Introduction to the VNX family of unified storage platforms ................................................ 6

Software suites available ............................................................................................... 7

Software packs available ................................................................................................ 7

Business case .................................................................................................................... 7

Solution overview ............................................................................................................... 8

Key results and recommendations ...................................................................................... 8

Introduction to the EMC VNX series ..................................................................................... 9

Overview ............................................................................................................................ 9

Purpose .............................................................................................................................. 9

Scope ............................................................................................................................... 10

Audience .......................................................................................................................... 10

Terminology ..................................................................................................................... 10

Technology overview ........................................................................................................ 12

Component list ................................................................................................................. 12

EMC VNX platform ............................................................................................................ 12

EMC Unisphere ................................................................................................................. 12

EMC FAST VP .................................................................................................................... 13

EMC FAST Cache ............................................................................................................... 13

Block Data Compression .................................................................................................. 14

Solution diagram ............................................................................................................. 14

Configuration .................................................................................................................. 15

Hardware resources .......................................................................................................... 15

Software resources ........................................................................................................... 16

VMware View infrastructure .............................................................................................. 17

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 17

VMware View components................................................................................................ 17

Hypervisor ........................................................................................................................ 18

VMware View Connection server ....................................................................................... 18

VMware vSphere vCenter/View Composer ........................................................................ 18

View Security server ......................................................................................................... 19

VMware View Transfer server ............................................................................................ 19

Database server ............................................................................................................... 19

VMware View Agent .......................................................................................................... 19

VMware View client .......................................................................................................... 20

VMware View Admin Console ........................................................................................... 20

VMware View PowerCLI ..................................................................................................... 20


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VMware ThinApp .............................................................................................................. 20

VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure ...................................................................... 21

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 21

Baseline ........................................................................................................................... 21

Processor ......................................................................................................................... 22

Memory ............................................................................................................................ 22

Network ............................................................................................................................ 23

Storage ............................................................................................................................ 23

vSphere 4.1 infrastructure ................................................................................................ 26

vSphere 4.1 overview ....................................................................................................... 26

vCenter Server cluster ....................................................................................................... 26

Windows infrastructure .................................................................................................... 28

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 28

Microsoft Active Directory ................................................................................................. 28

Microsoft SQL Server ........................................................................................................ 28

DNS Server ....................................................................................................................... 28

DHCP Server ..................................................................................................................... 29

Network design ............................................................................................................... 29

Overview .......................................................................................................................... 29

Considerations ................................................................................................................. 29

Physical design considerations .................................................................................... 29

Logical design considerations ...................................................................................... 29

Link aggregation ........................................................................................................... 29

VNX for file network configuration .................................................................................... 30

Data Mover ports .......................................................................................................... 30

LACP configuration on the Data Mover .......................................................................... 32

ESX network configuration ................................................................................................ 33

ESX NIC teaming ........................................................................................................... 33

Enterprise switch configuration ........................................................................................ 34

Cabling ......................................................................................................................... 34

Server uplinks .............................................................................................................. 34

Data Movers ................................................................................................................. 34

Fibre Channel network configuration ................................................................................ 36

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 36

Zone configuration ....................................................................................................... 37

Installation and configuration .......................................................................................... 38

Overview .......................................................................................................................... 38

VMware components ........................................................................................................ 38

VMware View installation overview ............................................................................... 38

VMware View setup ...................................................................................................... 38


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VMware View desktop pool configuration ..................................................................... 39

PowerPath Virtual Edition ............................................................................................. 46

Storage components ........................................................................................................ 47

Storage pools ............................................................................................................... 47

Enable FAST Cache ....................................................................................................... 49

Configure FAST VP ........................................................................................................ 51

VNX Home Directory feature ......................................................................................... 52

Testing and validation...................................................................................................... 54

Boot storm ....................................................................................................................... 54

Login VSI testing............................................................................................................... 56

Anti-virus scan ................................................................................................................. 60

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 62

Summary .......................................................................................................................... 62

Findings ........................................................................................................................... 62

References ...................................................................................................................... 63

White papers .................................................................................................................... 63

Other documentation ....................................................................................................... 63


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Executive summary

Introduction to the VNX family of unified storage platforms The EMC® VNX™ family delivers industry-leading innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a scalable, easy-to-use solution. This next-generation storage platform combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s enterprises.

All of this is available in a choice of systems ranging from affordable entry-level solutions to high-performance, petabyte-capacity configurations servicing the most demanding application requirements. The VNX family includes the VNXe™ series, purpose-built for the IT manager in entry-level environments, and the VNX series, designed to meet the high-performance, high-scalability requirements of midsize and large enterprises.

The VNX family includes two platform series:

The VNX series, delivering leadership performance, efficiency, and simplicity for demanding virtual application environments that includes VNX7500™, VNX5700™, VNX5500™, VNX5300™, and VNX5100™

The VNXe (entry) series with breakthrough simplicity for small and medium businesses that includes VNXe3300™ and VNXe3100™

Customers can benefit from new VNX features as follows:

Feature VNX series

VNXe series

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, and application-centric copies

High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

Automated tiering with FAST VP (Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools) and FAST Cache that can be optimized for the highest system performance and lowest storage cost simultaneously

Multiprotocol support for file and block protocols

Object access through Atmos™ Virtual Edition (Atmos VE)

Simplified management with EMC Unisphere™ for a single management framework for all NAS, SAN, and replication needs

Up to three times improvement in performance with the latest Intel multicore CPUs, optimized for Flash


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Note: VNXe does not support block compression.

EMC provides a single, unified storage plug-in to view, provision, and manage storage resources from VMware vSphere™ across EMC Symmetrix®, VNX family, CLARiiON®, and Celerra® storage systems, helping users to simplify and speed up VMware storage management tasks.

The VNX family includes five new software suites and three new software packs, making it easier and simpler to attain the maximum overall benefits.

Software suites available FAST Suite—Automatically optimizes for the highest system performance and the

lowest storage cost simultaneously (not available for the VNXe series or the VNX5100).

Local Protection Suite—Practices safe data protection and repurposing (not applicable to the VNXe3100 as this functionality is provided at no additional cost as part of the base software).

Remote Protection Suite—Protects data against localized failures, outages, and disasters.

Application Protection Suite—Automates application copies and proves compliance.

Security and Compliance Suite—Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious activity.

Software packs available Total Efficiency Pack—Includes all five software suites (not available for the VNX5100

and VNXe series).

Total Protection Pack—Includes local, remote, and application protection suites (not applicable to the VNXe3100).

Total Value Pack—Includes all three protection software suites and the Security and Compliance Suite (the VNX5100 and VNXe3100 exclusively support this package).

Business case Customers require a scalable, tiered, and highly available infrastructure on which to deploy their virtual desktop environment. There are several new technologies available to assist them in architecting a virtual desktop solution, but they need to know how to best use these technologies to maximize their investment, support service-level agreements, and reduce their desktop total cost of ownership (TCO).

The purpose of this solution is to build a replica of a common customer virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment and validate the environment for performance, scalability, and functionality. Customers will realize:

Increased control and security of their global, mobile desktop environment, typically their most at-risk environment

Better end-user productivity with a more consistent environment

Simplified management with the environment contained in the data center

Better support of service level agreements and compliance initiatives


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Lower operational and maintenance costs

Solution overview This solution provides a detailed summary and characterization of the tests performed to validate an EMC infrastructure for virtual desktops enabled by VMware View 4.5 on an EMC VNX series platform. It involves building a 2,000-seat VMware View 4.5 environment on the EMC unified storage platform and integrates the new features of each of these systems to provide a compelling, cost-effective VDI platform.

This solution incorporates the following components and the EMC VNX5700 platform:

2,000 Microsoft Windows 7 virtual desktops

VMware View Composer 2.5-based linked clones

Storage tiering (SAS and NL-SAS)

EMC FAST Cache

EMC FAST VP

Sizing and layout of the 2,000-seat VMware View 4.5 environment

Multipathing and load balancing by EMC PowerPath®/VE

User data on the CIFS share

Redundant View Connection Manager

Key results and recommendations VMware View 4.5 virtualization technology meets user and IT needs, providing compelling advantages compared to traditional physical desktops and terminal services.

EMC VNX5700 brings flexibility to multiprotocol environments. With EMC unified storage, you can connect to multiple storage networks using NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel SAN. EMC unified storage leverages advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize performance for the virtual desktop environment. EMC unified storage supports vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which were introduced in VMware vSphere 4.1. VAAI enables hosts to support more virtual machines per LUN and allows quicker virtual desktop provisioning. Zero paging recognition and transparent page sharing of vSphere 4.1 feature helps you save memory and thus allows you to host more virtual desktops per host.

Our team found the following key results during the testing of this solution:

By using FAST Cache and VAAI, the time to concurrently boot all 2,000 desktops to a usable start was significantly reduced by 25 percent.

By using a VAAI-enabled storage platform, we were able to store up to 512 virtual machines compared to 64 virtual machines per LUN.

With VMware transparent page sharing, we observed memory savings up to 92 GB on a host with 96 GB of RAM, and with less than 2 percent of it swapping to a FAST Cache-enabled LUN.

Using Flash as FAST Cache for the read and write I/O operations reduced the number of spindles needed to support the required IOPS.


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Introduction to the EMC VNX series The EMC VNX series delivers uncompromising scalability and flexibility for the midtier while providing market-leading simplicity and efficiency to minimize total cost of ownership. Customers can benefit from the new VNX features such as:

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

Extended cache using Flash drives with FAST Cache and Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) that can be optimized for the highest system performance and lowest storage cost simultaneously on both block and file.

Multiprotocol support for file, block, and object with object access through Atmos Virtual Edition (Atmos VE).

Simplified management with EMC Unisphere for a single management framework for all NAS, SAN, and replication needs.

Up to three times improvement in performance with the latest Intel multicore CPUs, optimized for Flash.

6 Gb/s SAS back end with the latest drive technologies supported:

3.5-inch 100 GB and 200 GB Flash, 3.5-inch 300 GB, and 600 GB 15k or 10k rpm SAS, and 3.5-inch 2 TB 7.2k rpm NL-SAS

2.5-inch 300 GB and 600 GB 10k rpm SAS

Expanded EMC UltraFlex™ I/O connectivity—Fibre Channel (FC), Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI), Common Internet File System (CIFS), Network File System (NFS) including parallel NFS (pNFS), Multi-Path File System (MPFS), and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for converged networking over Ethernet.

Overview This white paper provides a detailed summary of the tests performed to validate an EMC infrastructure for virtual desktops enabled by VMware View 4.5, with an EMC VNX5700 unified storage platform. It focuses on the sizing and scalability using features introduced in EMC’s VNX series, VMware vSphere 4.1, and VMware View 4.5. EMC unified storage leverages advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize the performance of a virtual desktop environment, helping to support service-level agreements.

By integrating EMC VNX unified storage and the new features available in EMC’s VNX series and VMware View 4.5, desktop administrators are able to reduce costs by simplifying storage management and increase capacity utilization.

Purpose The purpose of this use case is to provide a virtualized solution for virtual desktops that is powered by VMware View 4.5, View Composer 2.5, VMware vSphere 4.1, EMC VNX series, EMC VNX FAST VP, VNX FAST Cache, and storage pools.

This solution includes all the attributes required to run this environment, such as hardware and software and the required VMware View configuration.


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Information in this document can be used as the basis for a solution build, white paper, best practices document, or training. It can also be used by other EMC organizations (for example, the technical services or sales organizations) as the basis for producing documentation for a technical services or sales kit.

Scope The paper contains the results of testing the EMC Infrastructure for Virtual Desktops Enabled by EMC VNX Series, VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware View 4.5, and VMware View Composer 2.5 solution.

Throughout this white paper, we assume that you have some familiarity with the concepts and operations related to virtualization technologies and their use in information infrastructure.

This white paper discusses multiple EMC products as well as those from other vendors. Some general configuration and operational procedures are outlined. However, for detailed product installation information, refer to the user documentation for those products.

Audience The intended audience of this paper includes:

Customers

EMC partners

Internal EMC personnel

Terminology Table 1 provides terms frequently used in this paper.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Description

Block Data Compression

EMC unified storage introduces Block Data Compression, which allows customers to save and reclaim space anywhere in their production environment with no restrictions. This capability makes storage even more efficient by compressing data and reclaiming valuable storage capacity. Data compression works as a background task to minimize performance overhead. Block Data Compression also supports thin LUNs, and automatically migrates thick LUNs to thin during compression, freeing valuable storage capacity.

EMC FAST Cache This feature was introduced early with FLARE release 30 and allows customers to use Flash drives as an expanded cache layer for the array. FAST Cache is an array-wide feature that you can enable for any LUN or storage pool. FAST Cache provides read and write access to the array.

EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP)

EMC has enhanced its FAST technology to work at the sub-LUN level on both file and bock data. This feature works at the storage pool level, below the LUN abstraction. It supports scheduled migration of data to different storage tiers based on the performance requirements of individual 1 GB slices in a storage pool.


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Term Description

VMware Transparent Page Sharing

Transparent page sharing is a method by which redundant copies of memory pages are eliminated. Refer to http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021095 for more info.

Linked clone A virtual desktop created by VMware View Composer from a writeable snapshot paired with a read-only replica of a master image.

Login VSI A third-party benchmarking tool developed by Login Consultants that simulates a real-world VDI workload by using an AutoIT script and determines the maximum system capacity based on the response time of the users.

Replica A read-only copy of a master image used to deploy linked clones.

Unisphere The centralized interface of the unified storage platforms. Unisphere includes integration with data protection services, provides built-in online access to key support tools, and is fully integrated with VMware.

VDI platform Virtual desktop infrastructure. The server computing model enabling desktop virtualization, encompassing the hardware and software system required to support the virtualized environment.

Virtual desktop Desktop virtualization (sometimes called client virtualization), that separates a personal computer desktop environment from a physical machine using a client–server model of computing. The model stores the resulting "virtualized" desktop on a remote central server, instead of on the local storage of a remote client; thus, when users work from their remote desktop client, all of the programs, applications, processes, and data used are kept and run centrally. This scenario allows users to access their desktops on any capable device, such as a traditional personal computer, notebook computer, smartphone, or thin client.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021095


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Technology overview

Component list This section identifies and briefly describes the major components of the validated solution environment. The components are:

EMC VNX platform

EMC Unisphere

EMC FAST Cache

EMC FAST VP

Block Data Compression

EMC VNX platform EMC’s VNX platform brings flexibility to multiprotocol environments. With EMC unified storage, you can connect to multiple storage networks using NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel SAN. EMC unified storage leverages advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache on VNX OE for block to optimize performance for the virtual desktop environment, helping support service-level agreements. EMC unified storage supports vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which were introduced in VMware vSphere 4.1. VAAI enables quicker virtual desktop provisioning and start-up.

EMC Unisphere EMC Unisphere provides a flexible, integrated experience for managing CLARiiON, Celerra, and VNX platforms in a single pane of glass. This new approach to midtier storage management fosters simplicity, flexibility, and automation. Unisphere's unprecedented ease of use is reflected in intuitive task-based controls, customizable dashboards, and single-click access to real-time support tools and online customer communities.

Unisphere features include:

Task-based navigation and controls that offer an intuitive, context-based approach to configuring storage, creating replicas, monitoring the environment, managing host connections, and accessing the Unisphere support ecosystem.

A self-service Unisphere support ecosystem, accessible with one click from Unisphere, that provides users with quick access to real-time support tools, including live chat support, software downloads, product documentation, best practices, FAQs, online communities, ordering spares, and submitting service requests.

Customizable dashboard views and reporting capabilities that enable at-a-glance management by automatically presenting users with valuable information in terms of how they manage their storage. For example, customers can develop custom reports up to 18 times faster with EMC Unisphere.

Common management provides a single sign-on and integrated experience for managing both block and file features.


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Figure 1 provides an example of the Unisphere Summary page that gives administrators a wealth of detailed information on connected storage systems, from LUN pool and tiering summaries to physical capacity and RAID group information.

Figure 1. Unisphere Summary page

EMC FAST VP With EMC FAST VP, EMC has enhanced its FAST technology to be more automated with sub-LUN tiering and to support file as well as block. This feature works at the storage pool level, below the LUN abstraction. Where earlier versions of FAST VP operated above the LUN level, FAST VP now analyzes data patterns at a far more granular level. As an example, rather than move an 800 GB LUN to enterprise Flash drives, FAST VP now identifies and monitors the entire storage pool in 1 GB chunks. If data becomes active, then FAST VP automatically moves only these “hot” chunks to a higher tier like Flash. As data cools, FAST VP also correctly identifies which chunks to migrate to lower tiers and proactively moves them. With such granular tiering, it is now possible to reduce storage acquisition while at the same time improve performance and response time. And because FAST VP is fully automated and policy-driven, there is no manual intervention required to make this happen, so you save on operating costs as well.

EMC FAST Cache VNX FAST Cache, a part of the VNX FAST suite, enables Flash drives to be used as an expanded cache layer for the array. FAST Cache has array-wide features available for both file and block storage. FAST Cache works by examining 64 KB chunks of data in FAST Cache enabled objects on the array. Frequently accessed data is copied to the FAST Cache and subsequent accesses to that data chunk are serviced by FAST Cache. This allows immediate


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promotion of very active data to the Flash drives. This dramatically improves the response time for very active data and reduces the data hot spots that can occur within the LUN.

FAST Cache is an extended read/write cache that can absorb read-heavy activities such as boot storms and antivirus scans, and write-heavy workloads such as operating system patches and application updates

Block Data Compression EMC unified storage introduces block Data Compression, which allows customers to save and reclaim space anywhere in their production environment with no restrictions. This capability makes storage even more efficient by compressing data and reclaiming valuable storage capacity. Data Compression works as a background task to minimize performance overhead. Block Data Compression also supports thin LUNs, and automatically migrates thick LUNs to thin during compression, freeing valuable storage capacity.

Solution diagram Figure 2 depicts the logical architecture of this solution.

Figure 2. Solution architecture


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Configuration

Hardware resources Table 2 lists the hardware used for this solution

Table 2. Solution hardware

Hardware Quantity Configuration Notes

EMC VNX5700 1 DAEs configured with:

145 300 GB 15k rpm SAS disks

35 1 TB 7.2k near-line SAS disks

15 200 GB Flash drives

VNX shared storage providing block, file, FAST VP, and FAST Cache

Blade server 16 Two quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 Family

48 GB RAM

Converged network adapter

Two UCS chassis, each hosting 8 blades

8 servers per vSphere cluster. Two clusters, each hosting 500 Windows 7 virtual machines.

Blade server 8 Two quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 Family

96 GB RAM

Converged network adapter

One UCS chassis of 8 blades. For one ESX® cluster hosting 1,000 Windows 7 virtual machines.

Intel server 2 Two quad-core Intel 5400 Family

32 GB RAM

Gigabit quad-port Intel VT

Infrastructure virtual machines (VMware vCenter™, DNS, DHCP, Active Directory, MS SQL Server, View Connection server and Replica Servers)

Ethernet switch 1 Infrastructure Ethernet switch

SAN switch 2 For dual FC fabric

Windows 7 virtual desktops

Each 1 vCPU, 1.5 GB RAM, 20 GB VMDK, 1 NIC

Virtual desktops that are created for this solution


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Software resources Table 3 lists the software used with this solution

Table 3. Solution software

Software Configuration Notes

EMC VNX5700

VNX OE for block

Release 31 Operating environment for the block

EMC VNX5700

VNX OE for file

Release 7.0 Operating environment for the file

VMware vSphere ESX 4.1 Build 260247 Server hypervisor

EMC PowerPath Virtual Edition

5.4 SP2 Multipathing and load balancing for block access.

VMware vCenter Server 4.1 vSphere Management Server

VMware View Manager 4.5 Software hosting virtual desktops

VMware View Composer 2.5 View component that uses linked clone technology to reduce storage size

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database that hosts the tables for VMware vCenter, View Composer, and View Events

Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Operating system for the server environment

EMC Unisphere 1.0 Management tool for EMC VNX series

Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit RTM Operating system for the virtual desktops

VMware Tools 8.3.2 Enhancement tool for the virtual machine

Microsoft Office Office 2007 SP2 Used on the virtual desktops

UCS 1.2 Firmware, management software


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VMware View infrastructure

Introduction VMware View delivers rich and personalized virtual desktops as a managed service from a virtualization platform built to deliver the entire desktop, including the operating system, applications, and user data. VMware View 4.5 provides centralized automated management of these components with increased control and cost savings. VMware View 4.5 improves business agility while providing a flexible high-performance desktop experience for end users across a variety of network conditions.

VMware View components To provide a virtual desktop experience, VMware View uses various components, each with its own purpose. The components that make up the View Environment are:

Hypervisor

VMware View Connection server

VMware vSphere vCenter Server/View Composer

VMware View Security server

VMware View Transfer server

Supported database server like Microsoft SQL Server

VMware View Agent

VMware View client

VMware View Admin Console

View PowerCLI

ThinApp


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Figure 3 shows the VMware components described in the following sections.

Figure 3. VMware components

Hypervisor Hypervisor is used to host the virtual desktops. To get most of the features, we recommend that you use VMware vSphere 4. The vSphere 4 features such as vSphere API for Array Integration (VAAI), Memory Compression, and Ballooning help to host more virtual desktops on a host.

VMware View Connection server The VMware View Connection server hosts the LDAP directory and keeps the configuration information of the VMware View Desktop Pools, its associated virtual desktops, and VMware View. This data information can be replicated to other View Connection Replica servers. The Connection server also acts as a connection broker that maintains the desktop assignment. It supports an SSL connection to the desktop using RDP or PCoIP. It also supports RSA® SecurID® two-factor authentication and smart card authentication.

VMware vSphere vCenter/View Composer The VMware vSphere vCenter server helps you manage your virtual machines and vSphere ESX hosts and provides high availability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) clusters. VMware vCenter server hosts customization specification that permits cloned virtual machines to join the Active Directory (AD) domain. The View Composer service is installed on the vCenter server that provides storage savings by using linked clone technology to share the hard disk of parent virtual machine as shown in Figure 4.


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Figure 4. Linked clone

The operating system reads from the common read-only replica image and writes to the linked clone. Any unique data created by the virtual desktop is also stored in the linked clone. A logical representation of this relationship is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Linked clone virtual machine

View Security server The View Security server is a different type of View Connection server. It supports two network interfaces—one to a private enterprise network and another to the public network. It is typically used in a DMZ and enables users outside the organization to securely connect to their virtual desktops.

VMware View Transfer server The VMware View Transfer server is another type of View Connection server that is required when you use the local mode feature. The Transfer server can use the CIFS share on VNX files to store the published image. The local mode allows users to work on a virtual desktop disconnected from the network and later synchronizes the changes with the View environment.

Database server The VMware View supported database server is used to host the tables used by View Composer and can optionally store the VMware View events.

VMware View Agent VMware View Agent is installed on the virtual desktop template and is deployed to all the virtual desktops. It provides communication to the View Connection server and enables options for USB redirection, virtual printing, PCoIP server, and Smartcard over PCoIP.


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VMware View client VMware View Client software is used to connect to the virtual desktops using the connection broker. View Client allows users to print locally from their virtual desktop, and with the proper configuration, users can access USB devices locally.

VMware View Admin Console VMware View Admin Console is a browser-based administration tool for VMware View and is hosted on the View Connection server.

VMware View PowerCLI VMware View PowerCLI provides the basic management of VMware View using Windows Powershell. It allows administrators to script some basic VMware View operations and can be used along with other Powershell scripts.

VMware ThinApp VMware ThinApp is an application virtualization product for enterprise desktop administrators and application owners. It enables rapid deployment of applications to physical and virtual desktops. ThinApp links the application, the ThinApp runtime, the virtual file system, and the virtual registry into a single package. The CIFS share on EMC VNX file can be used as a repository and to deploy the ThinApp to the virtual desktops.


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VMware View virtual desktop infrastructure

Introduction This section provides information on how we designed our solution for hosting 2,000 users in a VMware View environment on EMC VNX series.

Baseline A Windows 7 desktop is loaded with the required applications and fine tuned for the virtual machine load. This includes removing unnecessary scheduled tasks, configurations, and services. For further details, refer http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf

The configuration of the Windows 7 virtual machine is defined in Table 4.

Table 4. Windows 7 configuration

Device Configuration Notes

Processor 1 vCPU

Memory 1.5 GB

Hard disk 20 GB Replica on Flash, delta on SAS. No FAST Cache. No disposable disk. 64 K allocation unit.

Network interface card 1 vNIC

We ran a medium workload on a single virtual machine using Login VSI and observed the workload with a two-second interval during the execution of the test as described in Table 5.

Table 5. Observed workload

Login VSI Test - Medium Workload

OS User data disk Virtual machine

Read IOPS

Write IOPS

Total IOPS

Read IOPS

Write IOPS

Total IOPS

Active RAM

% Processor run time

Network total MB/s

Average 5.41 2.89 8.3 0.07 3.55 3.62 454 9 0.73 95th percentile 17.44 9.87 27.31 0 15.19 15.19 537.6 34.33 5.36

Max 402.56 67.77 470.33 14.36 43.08 57.44 537.6 99.45 18.01

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf


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Processor The server used in this solution has two quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 processors. The average CPU load during the test is 9 percent. Therefore, we can run approximately 10 virtual machines per core. One host can run 2 × 4 × 10=80 virtual machines. The Intel Nehalem architecture is very efficient with hyper-threading and allows 50 to 80 percent more clients. This means it can run 1.5 × 80=120 to 1.8 × 80=144 virtual machines per host.

While using linked clones, up to eight hosts are allowed in a cluster. Leaving one node as failover capacity, with seven hosts, we can run 144 × 7=1008 virtual machines. One cluster can host 1,000 virtual desktops. Without considering the Intel Nehalem features, the cluster can host 80 × 7=560 virtual desktops. To host 2,000 virtual desktops, we need two to four clusters, which are about 128 to 256 processors in total. In a non-VDI environment, deploying 2,000 desktops would require 2,000 processors.

With hyperthreading, we are able to host 1,000 VMs per cluster and without hyper threading, we are able to host only 500 VMs per cluster. Thus, we are able to double the number of hosts per cluster when using hyper threading. In our solution, we use hyper threading with three clusters; one with 1,000 users and other two with 500 users each. The 500-user cluster has extra room for processor intensive workloads.

Table 6 provides a summary of virtual machines per core.

Table 6. Virtual machine per core

Case Complete Cluster Cluster with one node down

1000-user cluster 16 VMs per core 18 VMs per core

500-user cluster 8 VMs per core 9 VMs per core

Memory One Windows 7 virtual machine is assigned 1.5 GB of memory. Without using VMware vSphere 4.1 features, it would require at least 9×8×1.5=108 GB to 18×8×1.5= 216 GB per host. VMware vSphere 4.1 provides features such as Transparent Page Sharing, ballooning, compression, recognition of zeroed pages, and memory compression that enable us to allow over-committing the memory to obtain a better consolidation ratio.

During the baseline workload, we observed about 540 MB used in active memory. The memory overhead was 179 MB, the hypervisor used 578 MB for the 48 GB host and 990 MB for the 96 GB host, and the service console memory was 561 MB. Based on this workload, we require:

((9×8×(540+179) +578+561)/1024) = 52 GB to ((18×8×(540+179) +990+561)/1024) = 103 GB

VMware vSphere uses the above-mentioned features before it uses the swap memory. The FAST Cache on EMC’s VNX series storage platform does provide better response time compared to swapping the memory to SAS disks. Another option is to consider having SSD on each host to host the vSwap. This may impact vMotion and also adds complexity to the environment. It is, therefore, advantageous to have the swap served by the FAST Cache on the EMC array.


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Table 7 provides a summary of the memory required per host.

Table 7. Required memory per host

Case

RAM/host min required (Complete Cluster)

RAM / host min required (Cluster with one node down)

RAM/ host used on this solution

1000 User Cluster 91 GB 103 GB 96 GB

500 User Cluster 46 GB 52 GB 48 GB

We used 1,536 GB in total for hosting 2,000 virtual desktops. In a typical case, 1.5 GB per desktop will not be available and will be using 2 GB and it would require 4,000 GB in total. Still, virtual desktops can provide better bootup time compared to traditional PCs.

Network Based on the workload, we found one virtual machine requires approximately 18 Mb/s. So, a 100 Mb/s card can support five to six virtual machines per NIC, a 1 Gig NIC can support 50-60 virtual machine per NIC and a 10 Gig NIC can support 500-600 virtual machines per NIC. The Converged Network Adapter (CNA) running at 50 percent bandwidth can support 250-300 virtual machines per CNA.

Note: This is just a rough estimate and we must always watch for the network load and look for the percent packet drops. If the value is high, check the network configuration and it might be the time to consider adding another NIC. In our solution, we used two CNAs per host to provide fault tolerance. For 2,000 virtual desktops, we used 2×8×3= 48 NICs. In a traditional desktop scenario, 2,000 desktops require 2,000 network interface cards.

Storage The number of spindles required for hosting 2,000 user desktops is calculated using both the IOPS requirement and the capacity needed. Based on the workload, we observed 8.3 IOPS per virtual desktop on average. The maximum and 95th percentile is based on the time interval of the data. The sizing on the average IOPS can yield good performance for the virtual desktops operating in a steady state. However, this leaves insufficient headroom in the array to absorb high I/O peaks. To combat the issue of I/O storms, there should be two to three times the average to absorb that load. Table 8 details the IOPS requirement and Table 9 describes the disks needed by various RAID levels to meet that IOPS.

Table 8. IOPS requirement and disks needed (multiple RAID scenarios)

Item Value

Number of Windows 7 desktops 2,000

IOPS per Windows 7 virtual machines 9

Total host IOPS (HI) 18,000

% Read 65

% Write 35


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Table 9. Disks needed for RAID 5, RAID 10, RAID 6

Item Value

Total disk IOPS for RAID 5 (R5IO = HI × %R + HI×4×%W) 36,900

Number of SAS drives alone (R5IO/180) 205

Number of NL-SAS drives alone (R5IO/80) 462

Total disk IOPS for RAID 10 (R10IO = HI×%R + HI×2×%W)

24,300


Number of Flash drives alone (R10IO/2500) 10

Number of NL-SAS drives (R10IO/80) 304

Total Disk IOPS for RAID 6 (R6IO = HI×%R + HI×6×%W) 49,500


Number of NL-SAS drives alone (R6IO/80) 619

In keeping with the same IOPS and to increase performance or capacity, four SAS drives can be replaced with 9 NL-SAS, 125 SAS drives can be replaced with 9 Flash drives, and 125 NL-SAS drives can be replaced with 4 Flash drives. For a mix of 68% SAS, 1% NL-SAS, and 31% Flash, we need the disks as shown in Table 10 for various RAID options.

Table 10. Disks in storage tiering

Storage IOPS 36900 (RAID 5) 49500 (RAID 6) 24300 (RAID 10)

SAS drive count 140 192 92

NL SAS drive count 5 12 4

Flash drive count 6 8 4

When considering the storage size of virtual desktops, VMware View Composer reduces the size required by using linked clone technology. Linked clones are dependent virtual machines linked to the replica virtual machine. A replica virtual machine is a thin provisioned copy of the master virtual machine. We deployed a 20 GB hard disk for the operating system to the master virtual machine. The files occupy 13 GB and thus the replica virtual machine disk size is 13 GB.

In our desktop pool, we use a file share on the VNX array to host the user profile and data. A disposable disk that contains the temporary files and windows paging file is used to minimize the expansion of delta disks and thus reduces the refresh frequency to the virtual machine.

The size of a virtual desktop is the size of the delta disk + 2*memory size of the virtual machine + 2 MB for internal disk + disposable disk size + log size.


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Considering 1 GB for the delta disk, it requires approximately 6 GB for one linked clone.

VMware View 4.5 supports 512 linked clones from a single replica. To host 500 virtual desktops, we need 3 TB. With the current VMFS version, the maximum size that is supported is 2 TB-512 GB. This means that we need to split these into two datastores. To host 2,000 virtual desktops, we need eight datastores of 2 TB to allow additional space for growth. Thus, we need 16 TB in total for the linked clones.

If linked clones are not used, it requires 25 GB per virtual machine in thick format or 18 GB per virtual machine using thin disks.

This solution uses 200 GB Flash, 300 GB SAS, and 2 TB NL-SAS disks. The usable raw capacities are 180 GB Flash, 268 GB SAS, and 1.8 TB NL-SAS.

With four Flash drives in RAID 10, 360 GB is dedicated for the replica with a RAID 5 mix of SAS and NL-SAS, and it gives 37 TB. With a RAID 10 mix of SAS and NL-SAS, we have 16 TB. With RAID 10, we use fewer spindles and that data does not grow much compared to user data.

With a dedicated datastore for the replica, the space that is required on the replica LUN is approximately 39 GB for three virtual desktop pools. Any data accessed three times in a given period normally resides in FAST Cache. To maximize the use of Flash, we elected to use it as FAST Cache. Table 11 describes the drives used in this solution.

Table 11. Spindles used in this solution

Drive Linked clone – RAID 10

User data- RAID 6

Hot spare FAST Cache

Flash 0 0 1 14

NL-SAS 4 32 2 NA

SAS 92 48 5 NA

In a traditional desktop deployment, each machine would have a 20 GB hard disk for deploying 2,000 desktops; requiring 2,000 hard disks.


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vSphere 4.1 infrastructure

vSphere 4.1 overview VMware vSphere 4.1 is the market-leading virtualization hypervisor used across thousands of IT environments around the world. VMware vSphere 4.1 can transform or virtualize computer hardware resources, including CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller, to create a fully functional virtual machine that runs its own operating system and applications just like a physical computer.

The high-availability features in VMware vSphere 4.1 along with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Storage vMotion® enable seamless migration of virtual desktops from one ESX server to another with minimal or no impact to customer usage.

vCenter Server cluster Figure 6 shows the cluster configuration from vCenter Server. The clusters View-Cluster-1 and View-Cluster-2 host 500 virtual desktops, while View-Cluster-5 hosts 1,000 virtual desktops.

Figure 6. Cluster configuration from vCenter Server


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Figure 7 shows the virtual machines hosted on View-Cluster-2, its failover capacity, and its memory utilization.

Figure 7. Virtual machines hosted on View-Cluster-2

The infrastructure cluster hosts the SQL Server, vCenter, domain controller, and View Connection servers as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Infrastructure cluster


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Windows infrastructure

Introduction Microsoft Windows provides the infrastructure used to support the virtual desktops and includes the following components:

Microsoft Active Directory

Microsoft SQL Server

DNS Server

DHCP Server

Microsoft Active Directory The Windows domain controller runs the Active Directory service that provides the framework to manage and support the virtual desktop environment. Active Directory provides several functions to help you:

Manage the identities of users and their information

Apply group policy objects

Deploy software and updates

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS). SQL Server 2008 is used to provide the required databases to vCenter Server, View Composer, and View Events as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. SQL server databases

DNS Server DNS is the backbone of Active Directory and provides the primary name resolution mechanism of Windows servers and clients. In this solution, the DNS role is enabled on the domain controller.


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DHCP Server The DHCP Server provides the IP address, DNS Server name, gateway address, and other information to the virtual desktops. In this solution, we enabled the DHCP role on the domain controller.

Network design

Overview This section describes the network design used in this solution and contains the following topics:

Considerations

VNX for file network configuration

Enterprise switch configuration

Fibre Channel network configuration

Considerations

Physical design considerations EMC recommends that switches support gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connections and Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), and the ports on switches support copper-based media.

Logical design considerations This validated solution uses virtual local area networks (VLANs) to segregate network traffic of various types to improve throughput, manageability, application separation, high availability, and security.

The IP scheme for the virtual desktop network must be designed so that there are enough IP addresses in one or more subnets for the DHCP Server to assign them to each virtual desktop.

Link aggregation VNX platforms provide network high availability or redundancy by using link aggregation. This is one of the methods used to address the problem of link or switch failure.

Link aggregation is a high-availability feature that enables multiple active Ethernet connections to appear as a single link with a single MAC address and potentially multiple IP addresses.

In this solution, LACP is configured on VNX, which combines eight GbE ports into a single virtual device. If a link is lost in the Ethernet port, the link fails over to another port. All network traffic is distributed across the active links. Figure 10 shows the LACP configuration of the Data Mover ports on the Ethernet switch.


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Figure 10. LACP configuration of the Data Mover ports

VNX for file network configuration

Data Mover ports VNX5700 consists of two Data Movers, which can be configured in an active/active or active/passive configuration. In this solution, the Data Movers operate in the active/passive mode. In the active/passive configuration, the passive Data Mover serves as a failover device for the active Data Mover.

The VNX5700 Data Mover is configured with two UltraFlex™ I/O modules with each consisting of four 1 Gb interfaces. It is configured to use Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) with all Data Mover ports as shown in Figure 11.


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Figure 11. VNX5700 Data Mover configuration

The lacp0 device was used to support virtual machine traffic, home folder access, and external access for roaming profiles. The virtual interface devices were created on the same LACP for each VLAN that requires access to the Data Mover interfaces as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Virtual interface devices

Figure 13 shows the properties of a single interface where the VLAN ID and MTU are set.


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Figure 13. Interface properties

LACP configuration on the Data Mover The following command configures the link aggregation that uses cge-2-0 to cge-2-3 and cge-3-0 to cge-3-4 on server_2:

$ server_sysconfig server_2 -virtual -name <Device Name> -create trk

–option "device=cge-2-0,cge-2-1,cge-2-2,cge-2-3,cge-3-0,cge-3-1,cge-

3-2,cge-3-3 protocol=lacp"

To verify if the ports are channeled correctly, type the command shown in Figure 14:

Figure 14. Verify that the ports are channeled correctly

The remote group number must match for both the ports and the LACP status must be “up.” Verify that the appropriate speed and duplex are established as expected.


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ESX network configuration

ESX NIC teaming All network interfaces in this solution use 10 GbE connections. The server Ethernet ports on the switch are configured as trunk ports and use VLAN tagging at the port group to separate the network traffic between various port groups. Figure 15 shows the vSwitch configuration in vCenter Server.

Figure 15. vSwitch configuration in vCenter Server

Table 12 lists the configured port groups.

Table 12. Port groups

Configured port groups Used to

VM Network Provide external access for administrative virtual machines.

Service Console Manage public network administration traffic.

Desktop-Network Provide a network connection for virtual desktops and LAN traffic.

VMkernel-VMotion Communicate with vMotion.


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Enterprise switch configuration

Cabling In this solution, the ESX server and VNX Data Mover cabling are evenly spread across two line cards to provide redundancy and load balancing of the network traffic.

Server uplinks The server uplinks to the switch are configured in a port channel group to increase the utilization of server network resources and to provide redundancy. The vSwitches are configured to load balance the network traffic on the originating port ID.

We used the following configuration for one of the server ports in this solution:

switchport

switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q

switchport mode trunk

no ip address

spanning-tree portfast trunk

Data Movers The network ports for each VNX5700 Data Mover are connected to the Ethernet switch. The ports are configured with LACP, which provides redundancy in case of a NIC or port failure.


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Figure 16 shows an example of the switch configuration for one of the Data Mover ports:

Figure 16. Data Mover port switch configuration


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Fibre Channel network configuration

Introduction Enterprise-class FC switches are used to provide the storage network for this solution. The switches are configured in a SAN A/SAN B configuration to provide fully redundant fabrics.

Each server has a single connection to each fabric to provide load-balancing and failover capabilities. Each storage processor has two links to the SAN fabrics for a total of four available front-end ports. The zoning is configured so that each server has four available paths to the storage array. Figure 17 confirms that information from the vCenter interface.

Figure 17. Zoning configuration


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Zone configuration This solution uses single initiator and multiple target zoning. Each server initiator is zoned to two storage targets on the array. Figure 18 shows the zone configuration for the SAN B fabric.

Figure 18. Zone configuration for the SAN B fabric


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Installation and configuration

Overview This section describes how to configure both the VMware and storage components in this solution, including:

Desktop pools

Storage pools

FAST Cache

Auto-tiering (FAST VP)

VNX Home Directory

PowerPath/VE

The installation and configuration steps for the following components are available on the VMware website (www.vmware.com):

VMware View Connection Server

VMware View Composer 2.5

VMware ESX 4.1

VMware vSphere 4.1

The installation and configuration of the following components are not covered:

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

Microsoft Active Directory, DNS, and DHCP

vSphere and its components

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

VMware components

VMware View installation overview The VMware View Installation Guide available on the VMware website has detailed procedures to install View Connection Server and View Composer 2.5. There are no special configuration instructions required for this solution.

The ESX Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide available on the VMware website has detailed procedures to install vCenter Server and ESX and is not covered in further detail in this paper. There are no special configuration instructions required for this solution.

VMware View setup Before deploying the desktop pools, ensure that the following steps from the VMware View Installation Guide have been completed:

Prepare Active Directory


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Install View Composer 2.5 on vCenter Server

Install View Connection Server (standard and replica)

Add a vCenter Server instance to View Manager

VMware View desktop pool configuration One desktop pool is created for each vSphere cluster. Two pools will host 500 desktops and the other will host 1000 desktops. In this solution, persistent automated desktop pools were used as shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19. Persistent automated desktop pools

To create a persistent automated desktop pool as configured for this solution, complete the following steps:

1. Log in to the VMware View Administration page, which is located at https://server/admin, where “server” is the IP address or DNS name of the View Manager server.

2. Click the Pools link in the left pane.

3. Click Add under the Pools banner.

4. In the Type page, select Automated Pool as shown in Figure 20 and click Next.

https://server/admin


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Figure 20. Select Automated Pool

5. In the User assignment page, select Dedicated and select the Enable automatic assignment checkbox as shown in Figure 21 and click Next.

Figure 21. User assignment


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6. In the vCenter Server page, select View Composer linked clones and select a vCenter Server that supports View Composer, as shown in Figure 22. Click Next.

Figure 22. Select View Composer linked clones

7. In the Pool Identification page, enter the required information as shown in Figure 23 and click Next. The pool ID is used by the View Administrators and the Display name is what the users will see in the View Client.

Figure 23. Pool identification


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8. In the Pool Settings page, make any required changes as shown in Figure 24 and click Next.

Figure 24. Pool settings

9. In the View Composer Disks page, select Do not redirect Windows profile and click Next.

Figure 25. Select Do not redirect Windows profile


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10. In the Provisioning Settings page, select a name for the desktop pool and enter the number of desktops to provision, as shown in Figure 26. Click Next. {n:fixed=4} increments the desktop numbering with 4 digits padded. We used the pool ID at the end to easily associate the desktop name to its pool.

Figure 26. Provisioning settings

11. In the vCenter Settings page, browse to select a default image, a folder for the virtual machines, the cluster hosting the virtual desktops, the resource pool to hold the desktops, and the data stores that will be used to deploy the desktops as shown in Figure 27, and then click Next.


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Figure 27. vCenter settings

12. In the Select Datastores page, select the datastores for linked clone images, and then click OK. We used Aggressive as the Storage Overcommit option to allow more desktops per virtual provisioned datastore as shown in Figure 28.

Figure 28. Select the datastores for linked clone images


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13. In the Guest Customization page, select the domain and AD container, and then select Use a customization specification (Sysprep). Click Next.

Figure 29. Guest customization

14. In the Ready to Complete page (shown in Figure 30), verify the settings for the pool, and then click Finish to start the deployment of the virtual desktops.

Figure 30. Verify your settings


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PowerPath Virtual Edition PowerPath/VE 5.4.1 supports ESX 4.1. The EMC PowerPath/VE for VMware vSphere Installation and Administration Guide available on Powerlink provides the procedure to install and configure PowerPath/VE. There are no special configuration instructions required for this solution.

The PowerPath/VE binaries and support documentation are available on Powerlink®. Figure 31 shows that PowerPath is managing the block devices on the ESX host.

Figure 31. PowerPath as the owner for managing the path of block devices


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Storage components

Storage pools Storage pools in the EMC VNX OE support heterogeneous drive pools. In this solution, a 96-disk pool with RAID 10 was configured from 92 SAS disks and four near-line SAS drives. Eight thin LUNs, each 2,047 GB in size, were created from this storage pool, as shown in Figure 32.

Figure 32. Thin LUNs created


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For each LUN in the storage pool, the tiering policy is set to Auto Tiering as shown in Figure 33. As data ages and is used infrequently, it is moved to the near-line SAS drives in the pool.

Figure 33. Auto-Tiering


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Enable FAST Cache FAST Cache is enabled as an array-wide feature in the system properties of the array in Unisphere as shown in Figure 34.

Figure 34. Enabling FAST Cache


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From the Storage System Properties dialog box, click the FAST Cache tab, click Create, and then select the eligible Flash drives to create the FAST Cache as shown in Figure 35. There are no user-configurable parameters for the FAST Cache.

Figure 35. FAST Cache configuration

FAST Cache is enabled for all LUNs in this solution. The replica images are provisioned on all datastores allocated to that pool. But, as the data gets frequently accessed, it ends up in FAST Cache.


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Configure FAST VP To configure the FAST VP feature for a pool LUN, go to the properties for a pool LUN in Unisphere, click the Tiering tab, and set the tiering policy for the LUN as shown in Figure 36.

Figure 36. Configuring FAST


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VNX Home Directory feature The VNX Home Directory installer is available on the NAS Tools Website and the application CD for each VNX OE for file release. You can also download the software from Powerlink.

With this feature, you can create a unique share called “HOME,” redirect data to this path based on specific criteria, and provide the user with exclusive rights to the folder.

After installing the VNX Home Directory feature, use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in to configure the feature. Figure 37 shows a sample configuration.

Figure 37. Configure the VNX Home Directory feature

The sample configuration shown in Figure 38 shows how to automatically create a user Home Directory for any user in domain View45 in the Homedirs folder on the View45 file system.

\View45\Homedirs\<user>

For example, when user1 logs in, that user will see that \\VNXFILE\HOME points to \View45\Homedirs\User1 on the Data Mover. For user2, \\VNXFILE\Home points to \View45\Homedirs\User2.


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Figure 38. Sample Home Directory configuration


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Testing and validation

Boot storm Two thousand virtual machines are powered on using the vSphere client. The FAST Cache as shown in Figure 39 and Figure 40 services 95 percent read I/O and 64 percent write I/O

Figure 39. FAST Cache read I/O

0

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10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

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40000

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

FAST Cache read I/O

VDI - FAST Cache Read Hits/s VDI - FAST Cache Read Misses/s


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Figure 40. FAST Cache write I/O

0

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4000

6000

8000

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

FAST Cache write I/O

VDI - FAST Cache Write Hits/s VDI - FAST Cache Write Misses/s


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Login VSI testing While testing a medium workload of Login VSI testing, we noticed that the disk response time was below 4 ms as shown in Figure 41.

Figure 41. LUN IOPS and response time

0

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VSI testing - LUN IOPS and response time

ViewDS8 Read IOPS ViewDS8 Write IOPS ViewDS8 Response Time


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VSImax is reached when six consecutive average response times are higher than 1,000 ms, and six consecutive maximum response times are higher than 2,000 ms as shown in Figure 42.

Figure 42. Reaching VSImax


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The FAST Cache serviced more than 90 percent for read and write I/O as shown in Figure 43 .

Figure 43. FAST Cache hit ratio


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During steady state, the memory configuration of an ESX host from the ESXTOP is shown in Figure 44. We overcommitted the memory by 98 percent and saved 92,476 MB using transparent page sharing on a 96 GB machine. The swapping to FAST Cache-enabled disk is about 1 percent.

Figure 44. ESX host steady state memory configuration


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Anti-virus scan Using a McAfee Enterprise anti-virus scanner, we performed an “on demand” scan on a pool of 100, 200, and 300 virtual machines. The average times to perform the anti-virus scan are shown in Figure 45.

Figure 45. Average anti-virus scan time

0:10:34 0:11:03

0:07:56

0:00:00

0:01:26

0:02:53

0:04:19

0:05:46

0:07:12

0:08:38

0:10:05

0:11:31

0:12:58

300 Scan 200 Scan 100 Scan

Tim

e in

H:m

m:s

s

Average anti-virus scan time


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The FAST Cache hit ratios during the 100, 200, and 300 virtual machine data scans are provided in Figure 46.

Figure 46. FAST Cache hit ratio during anti-virus scan

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

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300 Scan 200 Scan 100 Scan

Anti-virus scan - FAST Cache hit ratio

VDI - FAST Cache Read Hit Ratio VDI - FAST Cache Write Hit Ratio


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Conclusion

Summary EMC’s VNX platform along with VMware View enables customers to host virtual desktops economically and minimize the risk of exposure of data. The presented solution highlights the design guidelines for hosting 2,000 users on EMC VNX5700 and uses advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize the performance for the virtual desktop environment.

Findings We confirmed the following key results during the testing of this solution:

By using FAST Cache and VAAI, the time to concurrently boot all 2,000 desktops to a usable start was reduced by 25 percent.

By using a VAAI-enabled storage platform, we are able to store up to 512 virtual machines compared to 64 virtual machines per LUN without VAAI-enabled storage.

Using Flash as FAST Cache for the read and write I/O operations reduced the number of spindles needed to support the required IOPS.


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References

White papers Refer to the following white papers, available on Powerlink, for information about solutions similar to the one described in this paper:

EMC Infrastructure for Virtual Desktops Enabled by EMC VNX Series, VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware View 4.5, and VMware View Composer 2.5—Reference Architecture

EMC Infrastructure for Virtual Desktops Enabled by EMC VNX Series, VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware View 4.5, and VMware View Composer 2.5—Proven Solution Guide

Deploying Microsoft Windows 7 Virtual Desktops with VMware View—Applied Best Practices Guide

EMC Performance Optimization for Microsoft Windows XP for the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure—Applied Best Practices

If you do not have access to the above content, contact your EMC representative.

Other documentation The following documents are available on the VMware website:

Introduction to VMware View Manager

VMware View Manager Administrator Guide

VMware View Architecture Planning Guide

VMware View Installation Guide

VMware View Integration Guide

VMware View Reference Architecture

Storage Deployment Guide for VMware View

VMware View Windows XP Deployment Guide

VMware View Guide to Profile Virtualization

emc infrastructure for virtual desktops - enabled by emc...

Documents