Migrating vWorkspace from Hyper-v to VMWare

Hi,

Due to Hyper-v complication in CSV setup and due to my ability to try understanding those complication, while on the other hand I don’t call myself as an expert in VMWare vSphere but I do have decent amount of hands-on experience in VMWare product since ESX version 2.5. When it comes to troubleshooting cluster issue on VMWare, maintenance, etc etc… All this kind of troubleshooting won’t impact other hosts in the cluster. Unlike with Hyper-v which gave me a great nightmare.

VMWare virtualization platform provides the same concept as Hyper-v Virtualization platform, with enhanced feature, less cost, less reliability and stability as well as complex in to setup and troubleshoot in comparison to ESXi. It’s just my opinion, others has his own opinion and justification but that’s not the argument. My arugment is, while I’m fully understanding how vSphere works let me stick with it rather than wasting time in understanding a new product that provides same concept (Virtualization).

That’s that main reason why I wanted to move my vWorkspace VDI environment to the VMWare setup, but the main questions are and before I detailed down the steps and the approach options, I would like to hear from others in relation to vWorkspace features in conjunction to Hyper-v vs VMWare setup. I’m going to lose any real features that I don’t live with it unless I have Hyper-v setup?

I’m going to lose VDI performance when it comes to user experience?

I’m going to face different challenges such as Pooled VDI on Hyper-v using disk referencing where the parent setup intend and the child VMs are linked to small disk file? Is this still the case with VMWare..?

 

Current Setup:

• Physical Servers
  • 2 R630 with 64 GB RAM and 2 Sockets with 10 Cores each.
  • 3 R730 with 256 GM RAM and 2 Sockets with 12 Cores each
• R630 are management servers that setup with Hyper-V and hosts all vWorkspace VMs.
  
• • R630-1
    • Broker01
    • Web01
    • App01 with RDSH Role
    • File Server01 with DFS (User Profile Server)
    • SQL01 2012 R2 Standard in Cluster Mode
    • FogLight Server
• • R630-2
    • §  Broker02
    • §  Web02
    • §  App02 with RDSH Role
    • §  File Server02 with DFS (User Profile Server)
    • §  SQL01 2012 R2 Standard in Cluster Mode
• R730 are hosting the VDI virtual Machines. They are configured with 4 GB ram and 2 vCPUs.

Before I jumped to the migration path I would to go with, I will introduce the VMWare Servers to host couple of VDI machines managed by vWorkspace which is setup on Hyper-V servers. I will see how that goes in terms of performance, user experience, user profile redirection, template creation and provisioning along with its customization…

I can see the best approach for this Migration Option is the following, please feel free to add any point.

1.      Create VMs for vWorkspace roles in VMWare Setup, joined to the domain, patches etc etc..

2.      Add all VMs part of Backup Jobs.

3.      Setup each Role of vWorkspace on VMWare VMs;

a.      Broker03

b.      Web03

• • • Make sure web customization same as existing servers.
    • SSL Certificates.
    • Web Load Balancer. I’m using Zen NLB.
    • DNS for NLB

c.      App03 with RDSH Role, make sure to install the RDSH Terminal Services Roles, and install Licenses and activate them. Install other Apps and Point them within the Managed Application Group.

d.      File Server03 with DFS (User Profile Server), make sure DFS replication works correctly.. Configure vWorkspace Silos. (It seems vWorksapce limitation can’t point more than on DFS server in the Silos… Checkbox instead of ComboBox selection) J

e.      SQL03 2012 R2 Standard in Cluster Mode. Will make sure the clustering failover works on VMWare setup.

4.      Will make sure the Golden Image template, provisioning works perfect. 5.      Will configure managed Applications and assign them to test users.

6.      Will make sure My Documents GPO redirections works. s

7.      Will make sure the test account is pointed to the correct User Profiles parameters in vWorkspace to make sure the user gets whatever has been created on Hyper-v VMs.

• •    Test the setup properly in terms of user experience. Which is very important.
  •    Specify a maintenance window to test failover of vWorkspace Setup.
    •   Disconnect Hyper- Brokers
      •  Connect client.
      • Setup AppPortal etc…

Disconnect Hyper-v Web Servers

• • Connect to Web Access
  • Launch Application / Desktop.
• o   Disconnect App Servers / RDSH;
  • Test applications, performance etc.
  • Login sessions etc..
• o   Disconnect User Profile servers
  • Test User Profile Redirections.
• o   Disconnect SQL Servers;
  • Test all the functionality of vWorkspace.

              

If all of the above works, introduce another VMWare VMs part of the existing vWorkspace Setup and test failover.

Decommission of old servers.

Is it just simple uninstall and it going to delete itself from the database of vWorkspace..?

Or is there a special precaution that I must take care of…?

 

Much appreciate your input.

Regards,