VDI design VBlock and VPLEX

Olivier.

About sizing, you could consider the method following, Total Host (HI) = # of win7 desktop * IOPS per Win7 VM # of disk = HI* Read % + HI*Write%*Write penalty) / ROT (Write penalty, RAID 5 is 4, RAID 10 is 2, RAID 6 is 6; ROT, FC on VMAX is 200, EFD on VMAX is 4000) VDI Storage Capacity sizing = # of VM * (Delta disk+2*VM RAM+2MB+Disposable Disk+Log size) And have a look at the whitepapers, http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/h8525-virtual-desktops-vnx-vmware-wp.pdf http://powerlink.emc.com/km/live1/en_US/Offering_Technical/White_Paper/h7118-vmware-virtualization-vplex-wp.pdf 

if you like to size FAST_VP, you might need information of data locality of user data. 

Your thoughts? 

Eddy

Hi Eddy,

Thank you for your feedback.

This is for new configuration, i don't have any information about locality.

VDI boot will send a lot of IOs on disks. We want to use SSD for that. But do you think taht FAST VP will help us for that.

For example All VDI can boot together in morning send hot IOs. it means that boot blocs need to be on SSD at this time.

Any recommandation about workload analysis period, collect windows ?

Thank you

Olivier 

Olivier ,

FAST VP w/ SSD does help VDI implementation, a typical VDI environment have two part data, boot image /w wide-deployed application, and personal information, in most case boot image generate most IOPS workload on bootup and steady running, therefore if your environment look like this, your data locality should be high. If so SSD would absorb IOPS of “boot storm” and peaks and FAST VP would automatically promote hot data to SSD pool ( these data mostly should come from boot image)

If in your case, amount of user personal data (unstructured data, like office documents etc) is huge, you might consider use NAS for better C/P.

About workload analysis, try this

Statistical Math for VDI Design, this one is a bit complex.

http://www.atlantiscomputing.com/downloads/Statistical%20Math%20for%20VDI%20Design%20-%20Atlantis%20Webinar.pdf

EMC WP I sent you bring up a practices, (Avg IOPS of Single VM) 3 # of VM, this formal has left sufficient room to absorb peaks.

Thanks,

Eddy

Eddy,

Yes FAST VP can promote hot data (Boot) to SSD. But how to be sure that each time VDI are boot these data are on SSD. FAST VP can promote hot data  but can consider it,after boot, as cold data and then demote them.

Of course we can consider to set performance collect windows from 9 to 10 in the morning every day but boot data will on 2TB datastore and Boot and user data will be mixed. So in that case no FAST VP possible for user data during the day.

What do you think ?

Thank you

Olivier

you could pin your boot devices to your EFD tier so they will always be there. You are most likely using linked clones so it should not be that much data.

Naureo,

FAST VP consciously monitors the activity level at sub-LUN level and it would more sub-extents that meet the demotion/promotion criteria.

In VDI environment, the boot image would be accessed many time during VMs booting up, almost all of its content would be promoted to EFD pool.

As Dynamox mentioned, VM linked mode, VM replica datastore on EFD is considerable, all common data OS requested (read) would come from read-only replica datastore on EFD and unique data created by OS or User are placed on Linked Clone. Therefore as long as there’s not much diversity in your VM configuration, it is good.

Eddy

do you guys have any design doc for VDI-Vplex with VNX as storage and with ILIO deployment? We have about 1500 desktops with 24-29 IOPS requirement per desktop with 30Tb usable storage overall - no wide striping raid 5 and raid 6 with 2.1 TB of CIFS.  Any lead is appreciated. thank you.

Doesn't ILIO require NFS storage, or will it work on a block-based backend?

jim

If I understand your question properly, using the vPlex you will present storage to your hosts just as you normally would.  You don't have any requirement (minimums or maximums) changes by using it.  You are still bound by the same restrictions.  I've had negative experiences with the vBlock though.  They seemed to want to come in (without me being there of course) and tell the customer what they were getting.  Not really getting input for the infrastructure.

As far as using a NAS, I would inly consider for breaking the 8 node-cluster limitations.  Otherwise, I would use straight fiber channel for storage.

Hope that helps.