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White Paper

EMC GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

Abstract

This white paper provides a detailed summary of the tests performedto validate an EMC infrastructure for virtual desktops enabled byVMware View™ 4.5, with an EMC® VNX5700™ unified storageplatform. This paper focuses on sizing and scalability, and highlightsnew features introduced in EMC VNX™, VMware vSphere™, and

VMware®

View. EMC unified storage leverages advanced technologieslike EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize performance of thevirtual desktop environment, helping to support service-levelagreements.

March 2011

EMC INFRASTRUCTURE FORVIRTUAL 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 itspublication date. The information is subject t o change without notice.

The information in this publication is provided “as is.” EMCCorporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind withrespect to the information in this publication, and specificallydisclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for aparticular purpose.

Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in thispublication 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 VMwarevSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. inthe 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-generationstorage 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 tohigh-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 businessesthat includes VNXe3300™ and VNXe3100™

Customers can benefit from new VNX features as follows:

Feature VNXseries

VNXeseries

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualizedapplications

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

High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

Automated tiering with FAST VP (Fully Automated StorageTiering for Virtual Pools) and FAST Cache that can beoptimized for the highest system performance and loweststorage cost simultaneously

Multiprotocol support for file and block protocols

Object access through Atmos™ Virtual Edition (Atmos VE)

Simplified management with EMC Unisphere™ for a singlemanagement framework for all NAS, SAN, and replicationneeds

Up to three times improvement in performance with thelatest 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 storageresources from VMware vSphere™ across EMC Symmetrix®, VNX family, CLARiiON®, andCelerra® storage systems, helping users to simplify and speed up VMware storagemanagement tasks.

The VNX family includes five new software suites and three new software packs, making iteasier 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 applicableto the VNXe3100 as this functionality is provided at no additional cost as part of thebase software).

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

Application Protection Suite—Automates application copies and proves compliance.

Security and Compliance Suite—Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, andmalicious 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 (notapplicable to the VNXe3100).

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

Business case

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

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

Increased control and security of their global, mobile desktop environment, typicallytheir 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 tovalidate an EMC infrastructure for virtual desktops enabled by VMware View 4.5 on an EMCVNX series platform. It involves building a 2,000-seat VMware View 4.5 environment on theEMC unified storage platform and integrates the new features of each of these systems toprovide 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 environmentMultipathing 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, youcan connect to multiple storage networks using NAS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel SAN. EMCunified storage leverages advanced technologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache tooptimize performance for the virtual desktop environment. EMC unified storage supportsvStorage 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 virtualdesktop provisioning. Zero paging recognition and transparent page sharing of vSphere 4.1feature 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 ausable start was significantly reduced by 25 percent.

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

With VMware transparent page sharing, we observed memory savings up to 92 GB on ahost 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 seriesThe EMC VNX series delivers uncompromising scalability and flexibility for the midtier whileproviding 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 StorageTiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) that can be optimized for the highest systemperformance and lowest storage cost simultaneously on both block and file.

Multiprotocol support for file, block, and object with object access through AtmosVirtual 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 rpmSAS, 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 SmallComputer System Interface (iSCSI), Common Internet File System (CIFS), Network FileSystem (NFS) including parallel NFS (pNFS), Multi-Path File System (MPFS), and FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for converged networking over Ethernet.

Overview

This white paper provides a detailed summary of the tests performed to validate an EMCinfrastructure for virtual desktops enabled by VMware View 4.5, with an EMC VNX5700unified storage platform. It focuses on the sizing and scalability using features introduced inEMC’s VNX series, VMware vSphere 4.1, and VMware View 4.5. EMC unified storage leveragesadvanced 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 seriesand VMware View 4.5, desktop administrators are able to reduce costs by simplifying storagemanagement and increase capacity utilization.

Purpose

The purpose of this use case is to provide a virtualized solution for virtual desktops that ispowered 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 hardwareand 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, bestpractices 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 atechnical services or sales kit.

Scope

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

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

This white paper discusses multiple EMC products as well as those from other vendors. Somegeneral configuration and operational procedures are outlined. However, for detailed productinstallation 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 DataCompression

EMC unified storage introduces Block Data Compression, which allowscustomers to save and reclaim space anywhere in their productionenvironment with no restrictions. This capability makes storage evenmore efficient by compressing data and reclaiming valuable storagecapacity. Data compression works as a background task to minimizeperformance overhead. Block Data Compression also supports thinLUNs, 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 allowscustomers 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 FullyAutomated StorageTiering for VirtualPools (FAST VP)

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





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Term Description

VMwareTransparent PageSharing

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

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

Login VSI A third-party benchmarking tool developed by Login Consultants thatsimulates a real-world VDI workload by using an AutoIT script anddetermines the maximum system capacity based on the response timeof 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. Unisphereincludes integration with data protection services, provides built-inonline 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), thatseparates a personal computer desktop environment from a physicalmachine using a client–server model of computing. The model stores theresulting "virtualized" desktop on a remote central server, instead of onthe local storage of a remote client; thus, when users work from their remote desktop client, all of the programs, applications, processes, anddata used are kept and run centrally. This scenario allows users toaccess their desktops on any capable device, such as a traditionalpersonal 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 solutionenvironment. 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 unifiedstorage, 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 storagemanagement fosters simplicity, flexibility, and automation. Unisphere's unprecedented easeof 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 toconfiguring storage, creating replicas, monitoring the environment, managing hostconnections, 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 chatsupport, software downloads, product documentation, best practices, FAQs, onlinecommunities, 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 reportsup 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 awealth 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 thanmove an 800 GB LUN to enterprise Flash drives, FAST VP now identifies and monitors theentire storage pool in 1 GB chunks. If data becomes active, then FAST VP automatically movesonly these “hot” chunks to a higher tier like Flash. As data cools, FAST VP also correctlyidentifies which chunks to migrate to lower tiers and proactively moves them. With suchgranular tiering, it is now possible to reduce storage acquisition while at the same timeimprove 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 onoperating costs as well.

EMC FAST Cache

VNX FAST Cache, a part of the VNX FAST suite, enables Flash drives to be used as anexpanded cache layer for the array. FAST Cache has array-wide features available for both fileand block storage. FAST Cache works by examining 64 KB chunks of data in FAST Cacheenabled objects on the array. Frequently accessed data is copied to the FAST Cache andsubsequent 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 responsetime 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 asboot storms and antivirus scans, and write-heavy workloads such as operating systempatches and application updates

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

Solution diagramFigure 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 hardwareHardware 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 5500Family

48 GB RAM

Converged network adapter

Two UCS chassis, each hosting 8blades

8 servers per vSphere cluster.Two clusters, each hosting 500

Windows 7 virtual machines.

Blade server 8 Two quad-core Intel Xeon 5500Family

96 GB RAM

Converged network adapter

One UCS chassis of 8 blades. For one ESX® cluster hosting 1,000Windows 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 andReplica Servers)

Ethernet switch 1 Infrastructure Ethernet switch

SAN switch 2 For dual FC fabric

Windows 7 virtualdesktops

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

Virtual desktops that are createdfor 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 VirtualEdition

5.4 SP2 Multipathing and loadbalancing for block access.

VMware vCenter Server 4.1 vSphere Management Server

VMware View Manager 4.5 Software hosting virtual

desktopsVMware View Composer 2.5 View component that uses

linked clone technology toreduce storage size

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database that hosts thetables for VMware vCenter,View Composer, and ViewEvents

Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Operating system for theserver environment

EMC Unisphere 1.0 Management tool for EMCVNX series

Microsoft Windows 7 64 bit RTM Operating system for thevirtual desktops

VMware Tools 8.3.2 Enhancement tool for thevirtual machine

Microsoft Office Office 2007 SP2 Used on the virtual desktops

UCS 1.2 Firmware, managementsoftware





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VMware View infrastructure

Introduction

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

VMware View components

To provide a virtual desktop experience, VMware View uses various components, each withits 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 recommendthat you use VMware vSphere 4. The vSphere 4 features such as vSphere API for ArrayIntegration (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 configurationinformation of the VMware View Desktop Pools, its associated virtual desktops, and VMwareView. This data information can be replicated to other View Connection Replica servers. TheConnection server also acts as a connection broker that maintains the desktop assignment. Itsupports 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 vSphereESX hosts and provides high availability (HA) and Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS)clusters. VMware vCenter server hosts customization specification that permits cloned virtualmachines to join the Active Directory (AD) domain. The View Composer service is installed onthe vCenter server that provides storage savings by using linked clone technology to sharethe 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 thelinked clone. Any unique data created by the virtual desktop is also stored in the linkedclone. 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 networkinterfaces—one to a private enterprise network and another to the public network. It istypically used in a DMZ and enables users outside the organization to securely connect totheir virtual desktops.

VMware View Transfer server

The VMware View Transfer server is another type of View Connection server that is requiredwhen you use the local mode feature. The Transfer server can use the CIFS share on VNX filesto store the published image. The local mode allows users to work on a virtual desktopdisconnected from the network and later synchronizes the changes with the Viewenvironment.

Database server

The VMware View supported database server is used to host the tables used by ViewComposer 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 thevirtual desktops. It provides communication to the View Connection server and enablesoptions 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 connectionbroker. 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 ishosted on the View Connection server.

VMware View PowerCLI

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

VMware ThinApp

VMware ThinApp is an application virtualization product for enterprise desktopadministrators and application owners. It enables rapid deployment of applications to

physical and virtual desktops. ThinApp links the application, the ThinApp runtime, the virtualfile system, and the virtual registry into a single package. The CIFS share on EMC VNX file canbe 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 virtualmachine load. This includes removing unnecessary scheduled tasks, configurations, andservices. 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 NotesProcessor 1 vCPU

Memory 1.5 GB

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

Network interface card 1 vNIC

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

Table 5. Observed workload

Login VSITest -MediumWorkload

OS User data disk Virtual machine

ReadIOPS

WriteIOPS

TotalIOPS

ReadIOPS

WriteIOPS

TotalIOPS

ActiveRAM

%Processor run time

NetwortotalMB/s

Average 5.41 2.89 8.3 0.07 3.55 3.62 454 9 0.7395thpercentile 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










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Processor

The server used in this solution has two quad-core Intel Xeon 5500 processors. The averageCPU load during the test is 9 percent. Therefore, we can run approximately 10 virtualmachines per core. One host can run 2 × 4 × 10=80 virtual machines. The Intel Nehalemarchitecture 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 asfailover 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 withthree 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 VMwarevSphere 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 allowover-committing the memory to obtain a better consolidation ratio.

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

((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. TheFAST Cache on EMC’s VNX series storage platform does provide better response timecompared to swapping the memory to SAS disks. Another option is to consider having SSD oneach host to host the vSwap. This may impact vMotion and also adds complexity to theenvironment. It is, therefore, advantageous to have the swap served by the FAST Cache on theEMC 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 minrequired(CompleteCluster)

RAM / host minrequired (Clusterwith one nodedown)

RAM/ host usedon 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, a100 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. TheConverged Network Adapter (CNA) running at 50 percent bandwidth can support 250-300virtual machines per CNA.

Note: This is just a rough estimate and we must always watch for the network load and lookfor the percent packet drops. If the value is high, check the network configuration and it mightbe the time to consider adding another NIC. In our solution, we used two CNAs per host toprovide fault tolerance. For 2,000 virtual desktops, we used 2×8×3= 48 NICs. In a traditionaldesktop 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 theIOPS requirement and the capacity needed. Based on the workload, we observed 8.3 IOPSper virtual desktop on average. The maximum and 95th percentile is based on the timeinterval of the data. The sizing on the average IOPS can yield good performance for the virtualdesktops operating in a steady state. However, this leaves insufficient headroom in the arrayto absorb high I/O peaks. To combat the issue of I/O storms, there should be two to threetimes the average to absorb that load. Table 8 details the IOPS requirement and Table 9describes 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 canbe 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 thesize required by using linked clone technology. Linked clones are dependent virtual machineslinked 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 themaster virtual machine. The files occupy 13 GB and thus the replica virtual machine disk sizeis 13 GB.

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

The size of a virtual desktop is the size of the delta disk + 2*memory size of the virtualmachine + 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 virtualdesktops, we need 3 TB. With the current VMFS version, the maximum size that is supportedis 2 TB-512 GB. This means that we need to split these into two datastores. To host 2,000virtual 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 GBper virtual machine using thin disks.

This solution uses 200 GB Flash, 300 GB SAS, and 2 TB NL-SAS disks. The usable rawcapacities 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 SASand NL-SAS, and it gives 37 TB. With a RAID 10 mix of SAS and NL-SAS, we have 16 TB. WithRAID 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 isapproximately 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 asFAST Cache. Table 11 describes the drives used in this solution.

Table 11. Spindles used in this solution

DriveLinked 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 fullyfunctional virtual machine that runs its own operating system and applications just like aphysical computer.

The high-availability features in VMware vSphere 4.1 along with VMware Distributed ResourceScheduler (DRS) and Storage vMotion® enable seamless migration of virtual desktops fromone 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 andView-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 itsmemory utilization.

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

The infrastructure cluster hosts the SQL Server, vCenter, domain controller, and ViewConnection 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 andincludes 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 frameworkto manage and support the virtual desktop environment. Active Directory provides severalfunctions 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 2008is used to provide the required databases to vCenter Server, View Composer, and View Eventsas shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. SQL server databases

DNS Server

DNS is the backbone of Active Directory and provides the primary name resolutionmechanism of Windows servers and clients. In this solution, the DNS role is enabled on thedomain 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 domaincontroller.

Network designOverview

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 considerationsEMC recommends that switches support gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connections and LinkAggregation Control Protocol (LACP), and the ports on switches support copper-based media.

Logical design considerationsThis 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 aggregationVNX platforms provide network high availability or redundancy by using link aggregation. Thisis 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 Ethernetconnections to appear as a single link with a single MAC address and potentially multiple IPaddresses.

In this solution, LACP is configured on VNX, which combines eight GbE ports into a singlevirtual 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 configurationof 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 portsVNX5700 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/passivemode. In the active/passive configuration, the passive Data Mover serves as a failover devicefor 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 allData 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, andexternal access for roaming profiles. The virtual interface devices were created on the sameLACP 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 MoverThe 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 teamingAll network interfaces in this solution use 10 GbE connections. The server Ethernet ports onthe switch are configured as trunk ports and use VLAN tagging at the port group to separatethe network traffic between various port groups. Figure 15 shows the vSwitch configuration invCenter 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 virtualmachines.

Service Console Manage public network administration traffic.

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

VMkernel-VMotion Communicate with vMotion.





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Enterprise switch configuration

CablingIn this solution, the ESX server and VNX Data Mover cabling are evenly spread across two linecards 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 theutilization of server network resources and to provide redundancy. The vSwitches areconfigured 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 MoversThe network ports for each VNX5700 Data Mover are connected to the Ethernet switch. Theports 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

IntroductionEnterprise-class FC switches are used to provide the storage network for this solution. Theswitches 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 availablepaths to the storage array. Figure 17 confirms that information from the vCenter interface.

Figure 17. Zoning configuration





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Zone configurationThis solution uses single initiator and multiple target zoning. Each server initiator is zoned totwo 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 thissolution, 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 theVMware 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 overviewThe VMware View Installation Guide available on the VMware website has detailedprocedures to install View Connection Server and View Composer 2.5. There are no specialconfiguration instructions required for this solution.

The ESX Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide available on the VMware website hasdetailed 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 setupBefore 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 configurationOne 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 wereused as shown in Figure 19.

Figure 19. Persistent automated desktop pools

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

1. Log in to the VMware View Administration page, which is located athttps://server/admin, where “server” is the IP address or DNS name of the ViewManager 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 automaticassignment 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 23and click Next. The pool ID is used by the View Administrators and the Display name iswhat 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 clickNext.

Figure 24. Pool settings

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

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 thenumber 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 theend 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 virtualmachines, the cluster hosting the virtual desktops, the resource pool to hold thedesktops, 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 thenclick OK. We used Aggressive as the Storage Overcommit option to allow moredesktops 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 selectUse 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 EditionPowerPath/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 toinstall and configure PowerPath/VE. There are no special configuration instructions requiredfor 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 poolsStorage 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. Eightthin 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 Figure33. 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 CacheFAST Cache is enabled as an array-wide feature in the system properties of the array inUnisphere 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, andthen select the eligible Flash drives to create the FAST Cache as shown in Figure 35. There areno 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 alldatastores allocated to that pool. But, as the data gets frequently accessed, it ends up inFAST Cache.





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Configure FAST VPTo configure the FAST VP feature for a pool LUN, go to the properties for a pool LUN inUnisphere, 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 featureThe VNX Home Directory installer is available on the NAS Tools Website and the applicationCD 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 pathbased 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 HomeDirectory 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.

http://vnxfile/Home

http://vnxfile/Home





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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 asshown 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

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

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

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

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 timewas below 4 ms as shown in Figure 41.

Figure 41. LUN IOPS and response time

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

1 4 7 10 13 1 6 19 2 2 25 2 8 31 34 3 7 40 4 3 46 49 5 2 55 5 8 61 64 6 7 70 7 3 76 7 9 82 85 8 8 91 9 4 97

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 Figure42.

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 inFigure 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 isabout 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 poolof 100, 200, and 300 virtual machines. The average times to perform the anti-virus scan areshown in Figure 45.

Figure 45. Average anti-virus scan time

0:10:340:11:03

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

T i m e i n

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 areprovided in Figure 46.

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

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

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 highlightsthe design guidelines for hosting 2,000 users on EMC VNX5700 and uses advancedtechnologies like EMC FAST VP and EMC FAST Cache to optimize the performance for thevirtual 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 ausable start was reduced by 25 percent.

By using a VAAI-enabled storage platform, we are able to store up to 512 virtualmachines 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.



References

White papers

Refer to the following white papers, available on Powerlink, for information about solutionssimilar 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

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