Atlantis HyperScale VDI Reference Architecture with VMware Horizon · PDF fileAtlantis...

Atlantis HyperScale VDI Reference Architecture with VMware Horizon View

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VMware View Reference Architecture with Atlantis HyperScale

Atlantis HyperScale | VMware Horizon View

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Solution Overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Why use Atlantis HyperScale for VDI? ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Atlantis HyperScale Benefits ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

All-Flash Performance ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Disruptive Costs .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Freedom of Choice .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Modular Scalability ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Atlantis HyperScale Enterprise-Class Data Services ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Reduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

IO Acceleration ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Management .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Mobility .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Data Protection ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Unified Storage ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Disk Capacity with Atlantis HyperScale ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Testing Methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9

VMware vSphere and vCenter ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Atlantis HyperScale .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Desktop Broker .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Workloads and Login VSI Configuration .................................................................................................................................................................. 10

Provisioning Methodology ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Virtual Desktop Configuration ................................................................................................................................................................................. 10

Test Environment Overview .................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Benchmarking Tools ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 13

Login VSI v4.1.3 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

Iometer ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

PassMark Performance Test 8.0 .................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Test Results ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

Test Results Summary ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

VSImax Login Test .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Iometer Test ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 17

Passmark Performance Test .................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

About the Authors ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20

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Executive Summary

Virtual desktops have tremendous benefits in terms of mobility, employee productivity and security. However, user experience, the infrastructure cost and complexity are the three key challenges facing IT organization deploying VDI. Atlantis HyperScale provides the server, storage and virtualized infrastructure required to achieve a better-than-PC user experience at a cost per desktop under $200 with the simplicity of a turnkey appliance that can be deployed in 20 minutes.

With Atlantis HyperScale, IT can quickly deploy up to 600 Login VSI Knowledge Worker virtual desktops running VMware Horizon with all the storage and compute required on a single 4-node appliance. Each VDI desktop has the performance of a MacBook or Ultrabook configured with a dedicated local SSD but costs less than $200 in infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking. This sets a new VDI value standard, allowing a virtual desktop to be deployed at a lower initial cost than physical PCs. Atlantis HyperScale also offers freedom of choice when choosing a server vendor since it has defined appliance platforms based on 4 leading suppliers: Cisco, HP, Lenovo, and SuperMicro. For greater than 600 desktops, IT organizations can scale out multiple appliances to deliver predictable performance and cost.

Atlantis HyperScale is a hyper-converged appliance based on Atlantis USX software-defined storage technology that host virtual desktops that perform better than physical PCs and reduce storage requirements by up to 95%. This is made possible by Atlantis HyperDup content-aware data services, which provide inline deduplication, compression and IO acceleration using memory. The result is better user experience in the form of faster boot times, application launches and searches, while as the same time driving down the cost per desktop to below the cost of a PC.

In this reference architecture document, Atlantis provides detailed test results including Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer benchmarks to test system scalability, performance and availability. In addition, Atlantis provides recommendations on Atlantis HyperScale appliance models and density for specific stateless and persistent VDI scenarios with VMware Horizon.

Altantis HyperScale with VMware Horizon View

Characterist ic Result

Cost Under $200 per VDI desktop

Density 600 Desktops per appliance

Performance Login VSI baseline of 774 with a Login VSI average 1186 (VSImax Not Reached)

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Introduction

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the fastest growing markets in the IT industry. IT departments are getting pushed to virtualize their desktop users to take advantage of centralized management, mobility, and security benefits. With the success of initial VDI projects and the diversity of the desktop user community, it is required that virtual desktops perform better than physical PC. IT departments are faced with the demand that virtual desktops should provide user experience as good as or better than a consumer devices such as Macbooks or Ultrabooks that come with a dedicated local SSDs.

Delivering a better-than-PC user experience is challenging from a storage perspective, especially when attempting to deliver the thousands of IOPS available from a PC’s local SSD. To meet these challenges, Atlantis Computing® has provided a storage architecture to meet the VDI performance requirements at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage solutions. The Atlantis USX® architecture provides nearly unlimited IOPS per desktop and 50GB per virtual desktop of storage for up to 600 persistent virtual desktops using a single 4-node Atlantis HyperScale hyper-converged appliance. To deploy more than 600 users, IT organizations can scale out multiple appliances to deliver predictable performance and cost per desktop.

The key is Atlantis HyperDup content-aware data services, which provide inline deduplication, compression and IO acceleration using system memory. This results in better user experience in the form of faster boot times, application launches and searches, while as the same time driving down the cost per desktop to below that of a traditional PC.

Atlantis designed a test plan to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of the HyperScale appliance using a combination of industry standard benchmarking tools such as Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer.

The environment was tested with the following configuration:

• 583 concurrent persistent virtual desktops running desktop workloads generated by Login VSI v4.1 knowledge worker workload.

• 1 Atlantis HyperScale appliance (4 nodes) running with VMware Horizon View.

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Solution Overview

Why use Atlantis HyperScale for VDI?

Atlantis HyperScale is an all-flash, hyper-converged appliance that provides all the compute, storage and networking you need to deploy VDI, delivering higher performance and lower cost desktops than traditional PCs. Instead of piecing together costly and complex SAN, NAS or all-flash array storage with servers, Atlantis HyperScale is a low-footprint, fully integrated compute and storage solution that comes preconfigured with Citrix or VMware hypervisors. Within 20 minutes, a simple configuration process sets up the required infrastructure to deploy up to 600 virtual desktops per appliance. Atlantis HyperScale is easily scalable and runs on your preferred hardware platform, minimizing data center complexity. Also, the appliances come with a single point of support and maintenance with 3 year, 24x7x365 coverage and 4 hours parts replacement.

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Atlantis HyperScale Benefits

All-Flash Performance

Atlantis HyperScale delivers the performance of an all-flash array in every appliance, enabling IT organizations to meet the performance requirements of any workload. Atlantis HyperScale features award-winning patented software-defined storage technology that performs in-memory in-line deduplication before data is written to storage, leading to extremely low latencies, high IOPS and lower storage network traffic.

Disruptive Costs

Atlantis HyperScale hyper-converged appliances cut datacenter infrastructure costs by 50-90%, while delivering All-Flash performance. Atlantis reduces costs by using its patented data reduction and IO acceleration technology to reduce the amount of physical RAM and local flash required per TB of storage capacity. Based on industry-standard x86 server hardware, Atlantis HyperScale eliminates the need for expensive proprietary hardware or multiple tiers of flash and hard drives required by other hyper-converged appliances.

Freedom of Choice

Atlantis HyperScale gives enterprises the freedom to use their preferred server and hypervisor platforms, eliminating complexity and additional investments in training, time and tools. This enables customers to simplify their datacenters and prevent vendor lock-in. Atlantis HyperScale is the only hyper-converged appliance available on four leading server platforms and multiple hypervisors.

More information on each server platform is available on the Atlantis website:

Modular Scalability

Instead of buying large and expensive storage arrays that have limited performance, Atlantis HyperScale enables enterprises to scale storage in small modular units as they grow their compute resources. Atlantis HyperScale delivers the performance of an all-flash array in each appliance with 12 or 24 TB of capacity, enabling customers to scale-out performance and capacity to meet any application requirement.

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_HP.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_HP.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Cisco.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Cisco.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Lenovo.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Lenovo.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_SuperMicro.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_SuperMicro.aspx

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Atlantis HyperScale Enterprise-Class Data Services

Data Reduction

Atlantis HyperScale provides patented, real-time, in-line deduplication, compression and thin provisioning to reduce the capacity required to store data by up to 90%. The Atlantis HyperScale Storage Guarantee ensures that customers receive at least 70% data reduction.

IO Acceleration

Atlantis HyperScale process IO in-memory before writing to its primary storage tier of local flash. This in-memory storage technology accelerates storage by minimizing the data that must traverse the network and be serviced by flash.

Data Management

Atlantis HyperScale automates the tiering of data between memory and local flash to simplify data management. In additional, Atlantis HyperScale features Fast Clone™, providing the capability to instantly provision full clone VMs in seconds without consuming additional storage capacity.

Data Mobility

Atlantis HyperScale provides intelligent volume-to-volume rapid migration of files and VMs through a unique, patent-pending, capability called Teleport™. An industry first, Teleport moves data between two virtual volumes by reconstructing the data on the target volume from existing duplicate blocks, enabling VMs to be moved between volumes in a matter of seconds even across low-bandwidth high-latency connections.

Data Protection

Atlantis HyperScale has integrated High Availability and data protection capabilities that are highly resilient and can sustain a drive failure, node failure or any individual component of the storage system. Atlantis HyperScale is pre-configured with volume-level high availability and data protection that allows for one of four nodes in the appliance to fail without affecting the datastores on the system. Even if the entire appliance loses power, all data is protected and consistent with a journal file system. With Atlantis HyperScale appliance that feature high-endurance Intel Flash (10 drive writes per day), the reduced amount of data written to local flash provides better storage media endurance than other hyper-converged appliances.

Unified Storage

Atlantis HyperScale enables customer to create both file and block based storage volumes exported as NFS or iSCSI datastores in the hypervisor.

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Disk Capacity with Atlantis HyperScale

We tested 583 Knowledge Worker virtual desktops, which would normally require 30TB of storage capacity in total. When deploying desktop workloads on Atlantis HyperScale, we observed only 238 GB of physical storage consumed, representing over 99% data capacity reduction. The HyperScale CX-12 appliance provides 12TB of effective all-flash storage capacity based on a 70% data reduction storage guarantee, delivering much more storage capacity than the test environment required. However, in real world VDI deployment scenarios, data reduction rates may vary with an average between 80-90%.

The highest rate of data reduction (typically 85-90%) is expected for stateless desktops, so we can recommend the HyperScale CX-12 appliance for that scenario. For persistent desktops, more unique data is typical, resulting in an 80-85% data reduction rate, requiring the HyperScale CX-24 to provide all the storage required for 600+ 50GB knowledge worker desktops. Please see the table below for more information.

VDI Desktops and Appl iance Recommendat ions

HyperScale Appliance Desktop

Type User Profi le

Expected Deduplicat ion

Max. Number of Desktops

HyperScale CX-12 (384 GB RAM) Stateless Any 85%+ 580

HyperScale CX-24 (384 GB RAM) Persistent Knowledge Worker 80-85% 580

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Testing Methodology

A series of various tests were conducted to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of Atlantis HyperScale for VDI workloads. These tests were designed to replicate recommended configurations for production environments instead of pushing the system to its breaking point.

For the first phase of the test Login VSI, the industry standard for virtualized desktop environments, was used to evaluate expected server performance for scaling and sizing a virtual desktop environment. This test focused on leveraging persistent desktops showcasing an increase in system performance and stability, while dramatically reducing storage costs. During this test, system metrics including CPU, memory, and disk performance and size were measured to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of Atlantis HyperScale when used as the infrastructure for VDI deployments.

The second phase was conducted to demonstrate the raw standalone storage performance that Atlantis HyperScale provides, leveraging Iometer and Passmark configured to simulate VDI workloads. These test demonstrate the overall disk performance provided by Atlantis HyperScale.

VMware vSphere and vCenter

VMware vSphere 5.5 Update 2 was installed on all 4 nodes hosting the VDI desktops. vCenter 5.5 Update 2 was also used to manage all four hosts and was installed on a separate infrastructure server. Performance metrics for the vCenter server were not measured for this test. VMware tools were installed into each VM, and no additional performance optimizations were performed than the default configurations for vCenter, vSphere, and the VMs.

Atlantis HyperScale

Atlantis HyperScale is a turnkey appliance that is pre-installed and configured with a hypervisor and Atlantis USX storage volumes. When the customers receives the Atlantis HyperScale appliance, a simple installation wizard guides they through the process of entering system, networking and configuration information to finalize the setup of the hyper-converged infrastructure. Detailed configuration is provided below. Four service VMs are pre-installed along with four volume VMs. While only three of each are necessary for functionality, the goal of these tests were to simulate a production environment that would incorporate High Availability with the resiliency than enables one of the four nodes to fail without disruption to the system.

Atlantis HyperScale comes preconfigured with three storage volumes. These three volumes provide a guaranteed effective storage capacity of 12TB, assuming the conservative 70% deduplication percentage estimate. When deduplication rates are above 70%, customer can take advantage of the additional storage capacity.

Desktop Broker

For this test, VMware Horizon View 6 was used to broker the Login VSI launcher machines to their respective desktop session. The Horizon View Connection Server, Security Server, and Workspace Portal were all installed on a single node. The Horizon View database was configured on a separate VM running SQL Express 2014. For the purposes of this test, no metrics were measured regarding the broker or database server’s resource consumption. There were no session policies configured on the broker, therefore all connections were established leveraging the default standard configurations with no additional optimizations.

http://www.loginvsi.com/

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Workloads and Login VSI Configuration

The Login VSI 4.1.3 Knowledge Worker workload was used to conduct the tests. The VMs were balanced across each of the servers, keeping a consistent number of VMs on each node.

For the Login VSI Max test, 40 Login VSI launchers were used, launching approximately 15 sessions per host. The Login VSI launcher was configured to launch a new session every 20 seconds via the Horizon View Connection Server and Workspace Portal components. All VDI desktops were powered on, registered, and idle prior to beginning the test.

Provisioning Methodology

Three VM templates were created and placed on each one of the preinstalled volumes. Scripts were then leveraged to automate the provisioning and cloning of these templates into their respective HyperScale volumes. In addition, the scripts would inject the computer name while adding the machine to the domain at first boot leveraging the Atlantis agent installed into the OS of the VM template. Each machine was booted and staged prior to the VSI Login tests to prevent any additional IO that would already be performed in a traditional production environment. Machines were then added to the Horizon View Connection Server via CSV files associating the VDI VM with the AD computer account.

Virtual Desktop Configuration

The virtual desktops were persistent images installed with Windows 7 (64-bit) and Office 2007. Other miscellaneous software required to run the Login VSI 4.1.3 test were also installed. Each desktop VM’s attached disk running Windows was placed onto one of three available Atlantis HyperScale volumes (default Atlantis HyperScale configuration). The VMware Horizon client was installed without the desktop optimizations being used and no additional optimizations were performed. More detailed VDI VM configuration information can be viewed below.

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Test Environment Overview

Software Components

C o m p o n en t D es c r i p t io n

VDI Broker and Client VMware Horizon View 6

Hypervisor VMware ESXi 5.5 U2

Atlantis HyperScale Atlantis USX 2.2.1.38

Benchmarking/Load Gen. Login VSI 4.1.3

Hardware Components – 4 Nodes Tota l

C o m p o n en t Q u a n t i t y D es cr ip t io n

Processor (Per Node) 2 Intel Xeon 12C E5-2680v3 120W 2.5GHz/2133MHz/30MB (12 cores/socket)

Networking (Per Node) 1 Dual Port – Intel 82599EB 1GB NICs

Networking (Per Node) 1 Dual Port – Intel I350GB 10GB NICs

RAM (Per Node) 384GB 16GB TruDDR4 (2 Rx4, 1.2V) PC4-17000 CL15 2133MHz (x24 modules)

Disk (Per Node) 1.2TB Intel S3700 400GB SATA 2.5” MLC G3HS Enterprise SSD (x3 drives)

Effective Capacity 12TB Atlantis HyperScale appliance effective capacity

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VDI VM Conf igurat ion


Operating System X Windows 7 SP1 – 64-bit

vCPU 2 2 virtual sockets, 1 core per socket

Networking 1 1GB – Management Network

RAM 2GB

Disk 40GB VM disk stored on the Atlantis HyperScale Volumes

Atlant is USX Manager


vCPU 2 2 virtual sockets, 1 core per socket, No reserve

Networking 1 1GB - Management Network

RAM 6GB

Disk 22GB Disk stored local SSD

Atlant is HyperScale Serv ice VM Conf igurat ion


vCPU 4 1 core reserved, 3 additional allocated

Networking 2 10GbE SFP+ NIC, (Storage Network) 1Gb (Management Network)

RAM 4GB

Disk 10GB OS VM disk on local SSD

Disk - Additional 1080GB Presents local SSDs to USX for usable capacity

Atlant is HyperScale Volume Configurat ion


vCPU 4 1 core reserved, 3 additional allocated

Networking 2 10GbE SFP+ NIC, (Storage Network) 1Gb (Management Network)

RAM 73GB

Disk 10GB VM Disk stored on local SSD

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Benchmarking Tools

Login VSI v4.1.3

Login VSI is the industry standard load testing solution for centralized virtualized environments. Enterprise IT departments use Login VSI to test the performance and scalability of VMware Horizon View, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) or any other Windows based virtual desktop solution with minimal configuration. Login VSI benefits IT organizations in all phases of their deployment—from capacity planning, to load testing, to change impact prediction--for more predicable performance, higher availability and a more consistent end user experience.

Login VSI provides proactive performance management solutions for virtualized desktop and server environments. Enterprise IT departments use Login VSI products in all phases of their virtual desktop deployment—from planning to deployment to change management—for more predictable performance, higher availability and a more consistent end user experience. The world's leading virtualization vendors use the flagship product, Login VSI, to benchmark performance.

For more information, download a trial at www.loginvsi.com.

Iometer

Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behavior of applications. In this test, Iometer was configured to simulate a VDI workload and determine the maximum available IOPS of Atlantis HyperScale environment. The VDI workload tested was configured to be 80% write, 20% read and 80% random with a 4K block size using a 20GB test file. A virtual machine with Iometer was run with this test profile determine the maximum available IOPS for Atlantis HyperScale Solution.

For more information on how to use Iometer to test desktop workload, visit:

http://blog.atlantiscomputing.com/2013/08/how-to-use-iometer-to-simulate-a-desktop-workload/

PassMark Performance Test 8.0

Performance Test is a benchmarking tool designed to measure the performance of physical PCs. Using the test, virtual desktop disk performance can be compared with hard drives of different types of physical PCs that have been previously benchmarked by individuals and uploaded to the PassMark database. The Performance Test Disk Mark test measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. For comparison purposes, a MacBook Air with an Apple SSD was selected as well as a few various server disks.

http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

http://www.loginvsi.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input/output

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsystem

http://blog.atlantiscomputing.com/2013/08/how-to-use-iometer-to-simulate-a-desktop-workload/



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Test Results

Test Results Summary

The tables below provide a summary of the results achieved based on the various testing methods that were used to demonstrate the performance of Atlantis HyperScale. A more in depth analysis is provided in the testing sections to explain how these results were achieved. Average - 60% Utilization, Highest Peak 95%

Phase 1 Test Resul ts ( Per Node Average)

T es t V S I m a x C P U U t i l i za t i o n A ct iv e

M em o ry D i s k L a te n c y

Login VSI - Login Test 583* 60% 140GB 0.028ms

*VSImax not reached with availability for additional capacity

Phase 2 Test Resul ts

T es t Res u l t s

Iometer 171,715

Passmark Disk Score 5,227

Deduplication Rate 99%

Physical Storage Consumed for 583 VMs 238GB

VSImax Login Test

Two separate Login VSI tests were conducted to determine the scalability and resiliency of the environment. The goal of the first test was to determine the VSImax number of users that could be achieved across the four hosts. VSImax is a number that indicates the maximum number of virtual desktops that can be used on a host before the available resources are saturated. Typically, a bottleneck occurs between the CPU, memory, or disk IO before all of these resources are consumed simultaneously. The Login VSI Testing Solution measures this by determining the response time of the virtual machines on each host as more VMs are logged in and running the desired workload. When the response time threshold is exceeded, this will indicate the maximum number of VMs that can be leveraged before user experience begins to suffer dramatically.

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Figure 1: VSImax Knowledge Worker Test Results

Based on the findings, a conclusion was determined that although the VSImax was not reached, system performance was at a significant level of saturation based on CPU utilization. Any additional workloads beyond this number may begin to impact user experience, especially considering that VDI workloads may periodically spike CPU utilization depending on user activities. Overall, the test showed that 583 knowledge worker virtual desktop can be run on an Atlantis HyperScale CX-12 appliance, achieving high density while still providing a great user experience.

Figure2: CPU Utilization During VSImax Knowledge Worker Test

CPU utilization showed a steady incline as the test proceeded and additional users were logged in. The average peak CPU utilization per server across all four host reached 95% before observing a steep decline as users were logged off. The graph above shows all four hosts CPUs during the course of the test and based on the approximately 146 desktops that were achieved on each of the four hosts, this resulted in roughly 6.08 users per CPU core leveraging the knowledge worker workload.

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Figure 3: Memory Consumption

Memory findings showed that although most of the available memory was committed on the host, active memory was considerably less. Therefore, while the virtual machines would request to allocate memory at near capacity of the HyperScale appliance, only a minor portion was actually in use by the VMs. More specifically, active memory averaged 132GB per node while consumed memory averaged around 360GB per node.

Figure 4: I/O Latency

Disk latency was never a performance factor during this test. Due to the 171,715 IOPS made available of when leveraging the Atlantis HyperScale platform, the disk esentially never entered a queue state, always being available to write I/O on demand as required. The graph below shows a few spikes periodically during the test with the highest being 2ms and averaging 0.028ms.

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Figure 5: Atlantis USX Console

The observed low latency is primarily due to the data deduplication technology that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides to the virtual machines. With traditional storage systems, heavy I/O requests can be queued causing poor system performance and a bad user experience. With Atlantis’s deduplication technology, the majority of these requests are eliminated, reducing I/O requirements while boosting performance and the user’s experience of the desktop. The graph below indicates the amount of deduplication that Atlantis is providing for this test. While 99% deduplication is unlikely in production, it illustrates the level of capability Atlantis HyperScale has to inspect and remove any duplicate I/O. In this scenario, since all the VMs in this environment are using a nearly identical image, the deduplication number is extremely efficient. Still, in a typical VDI scenario the Atlantis HyperScale platform is able to perform deduplication ranging from 80-90% depending on the amount of unique data in the virtual desktops. Storage also can be a big concern when implementing persistent desktops as well. As previously indicated, each desktop was configured to leverage a 40GB image across the three storage volumes provided by Atlantis HyperScale. While typically this would equal 24TB of required storage space, almost 600 desktops are only using approximately 238GB of storage due to the data deduplication and compression technology that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides.

Iometer Test

Iometer is a tool that assists in determining the amount of IOPS a machine is capable of producing, leveraging both reads and writes to the disk. In this scenario, since the disk is writing to the Atlantis HyperScale volumes, the IOPS capabilities are significantly higher than traditional storage architectures. A test was performed on one of the VDI desktops provisioned in the Login VSI test environment with the configuration explained in this previous Atlantis blogpost:

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx.

This configuration simulates a VDI desktop, given the nature of read/write ratio, non-sequential heavy workload. From the results below, the desktop reported 57,238.52 which is the total number

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx

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of IOPS that this volume was able to produce. Since the Atlantis HyperScale system uses three volumes, that’s a total of 171,715.56 IOPS! If one was to take the Login VSImax test mentioned earlier and divided the total IOPS by 583 desktops, that’s an average of 295 write heavy IOPS per desktop. Keep in mind the ability to burst to thousands of IOPS per desktop is possible when needed as well for operations such as application launches.

Figure 10: Iometer Test Results

Passmark Performance Test

Passmark is a utility that helps compare and benchmark hardware against other devices and components on the market. Benchmarks are determined using various tests incorporated into this tool, including disk testing utilities. In order to achieve results that would be closer to a desktop or VDI workload, the default configuration was altered with the configuration as pictured and configured to run over a 60 second period:

The test resulted in a much higher score for the disk stored on the Atlantis HyperScale volume than typical spindle and flash drives below, such as the Apple SSDs, etc. Overall this test provides a good baseline to determine yet again the performance that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides when compared to traditional storage methods.

Figure 10: PassMark Settings Panel

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Figure 12: Disk Speed

This graph indicates the disk transfer speed that was observed while the disk was performing the test as configured above. This transfer speed is significantly higher than traditional storage systems or even local storage since we’re talking directly to the Atlantis HyperScale platform for reads and writes.

Conclusion

Atlantis HyperScale is a hyper-converged turnkey appliance, deployed in 20 minutes or less, that provides the server, storage and virtualized infrastructure required to achieve a better-than-PC user experience at a cost per persistent desktop under $200. This sets a new VDI value standard, allowing a VDI desktop to be delivered at a lower initial cost than physical PCs.

In this reference architecture document, detailed test results were provided including Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer benchmarks, testing system scalability, performance and availability. With Atlantis HyperScale, 583 Login VSI Knowledge Worker virtual desktops were able to be deployed with all the storage and compute required on a single 4-node appliance. This test environment achieved a Login VSI baseline of 774 with a Login VSI average 1186 (VSImax Not Reached). PassMark testing revealed VDI desktop disk performance 3X that of a MacBook Air and Iometer results indicated the availability of at least 295 write-heavy IOPS per desktop with the ability to burst to thousands more. Overall, all of these results indicate a very high quality user experience across 600 desktops.

Recommendations were also provided on Atlantis HyperScale appliance models and density for specific stateless and persistent VDI scenarios. The Atlantis HyperScale high availability and data protection enabled 3 of the 4 nodes to continue running without disruption to the storage system.

Figure 11: PassMark Results

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Based on this reference architecture, even the smallest IT organization will be able to easily and quickly roll out up to 600 desktops at less than $200 each using a single Atlantis HyperScale appliance with full confidence in the quality of the desktop user experience and the appliance’s ability to withstand hardware failures without significant user impact.

About the Authors

Ron Lott, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

Ron is responsible for VDI solutions at Atlantis. In this role, he oversees Atlantis’ VDI industry-leading software-defined storage products, counting the largest market share growth in global storage and hyper-converged solutions for VDI and SBC according to Independent Project "Virtual Reality Check" survey. Prior to Atlantis, Ron held a number of positions at Citrix Systems, including Product Marketing for Citrix XenDesktop from its inception and launch.

Patrick Brennan, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

Twitter:@vPatrickB

Patrick leads the development of solutions and marketing campaigns around applications and platforms such as database, exchange and analytics. Prior to Atlantis, Patrick worked at Citrix as a Sr. Solution Architect for Global Systems Integrator HP where he was responsible for architecting and developing service and product offerings related to virtualization, cloud, mobility and datacenter transformation.


Atlantis Computing U.S. Headquarters 2525 E. Charleston Road, Suite 100 Mountain View, CA 94043 PHONE: 650.917.9471 EMAIL: [email protected] TWITTER: @AtlantisSDS

Atlantis Computing European Headquarters Birchin Court, 20 Birchin Lane London, EC3V 9DU, United Kingdom PHONE: +44 2034052851 EMAIL: [email protected] TWITTER: @AtlantisSDS

© 2015 Atlantis Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Atlantis Computing is a trademark of Atlantis Computing, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective holders.

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