Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage A Dell EqualLogic Best Practices Technical White Paper This document has been archived and will no longer be maintained or updated. For more information go to the Storage Solutions Technical Documents page on Dell TechCenter or contact support.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell. Dell, the Dell logo, and the Dell badge, PowerConnect™, EqualLogic™, PowerEdge™ and PowerVault™ are trademarks of Dell Inc. Broadcom® and NetXtreme® are registered trademarks of Broadcom Corporation.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Table of contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Feedback ............................................................................................................................................................................................
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 5.2 View Storage Accelerator/CBRC benefits ...................................................................................................................... 22 5.3 Boot storm I/O .................................................................................................................................................................... 24 5.4 Task worker – Login storm and steady state I/O ...............
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage C.2 vSwitchISCSI ........................................................................................................................................................................48 C.3 vSwitch1 ............................................................................................................................................................................... 49 Additional resources ..................
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Acknowledgements This whitepaper was produced by the PG Storage Infrastructure and Solutions of Dell Inc.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Executive summary Desktop virtualization is an important strategy for organizations seeking to reduce the cost and complexity of managing an expanding variety of client desktops, laptops, and mobile handheld devices. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) offers an opportunity to lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of desktop devices in all organizations, small and large.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Audience This paper is intended for solution architects, storage network engineers, system administrators, and IT managers who need to understand how to design, properly size, and deploy View based VDI Solutions using Dell EqualLogic storage.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 1 Introduction Desktop virtualization platforms like VMware View can provide organizations with significant cost savings, streamlined implementation, and ease of desktop management. In order to achieve these VDI benefits and to ensure optimal user experience, storage infrastructure design and sizing considerations need to be addressed carefully.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 2 Desktop Virtualization with VMware View VMware View is a VDI solution that includes a complete suite of tools for delivering desktops as a secure, managed service from a centralized infrastructure. A View infrastructure consists of many different software, network, and hardware layer components. 2.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage In View, an Automated Pool is a collection of VMs cloned from a base template, while a Manual Desktop pool is created by the View Manager from existing desktop sources, physical or virtual. For each desktop in the Manual Desktop pool, the administrator selects a desktop source to deliver View access to the clients.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Accelerator uses the VMware vSphere platform feature called Content Based Read Cache (CBRC) implemented inside the ESXi hypervisor. CBRC is an in-memory cache of common blocks. When enabled for VMs used as virtual desktops, the ESXi host scans the storage disk blocks to generate digests of block contents. When the blocks are first read into the ESXi server, they are cached in the CBRC of the ESXi server.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 3 Infrastructure and test configuration This section provides information on the test setup and configuration used for hosting View virtual desktops, including infrastructure components, networking, and storage subsystems. 3.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Switches in fabrics B1 and C1 were uplinked to a pair of Dell Force10 S55 switches for dedicated access to the iSCSI SAN. Switches in fabrics B2 and C2 were connected to the VDI LAN and provide client connectivity.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 2 iSCSI SAN connectivity 3.3 EqualLogic storage array configuration A single EqualLogic PS6100XS array hosted all the virtual desktops. The volume layout used for configuring the Replica volumes and the VDI volumes on a single PS6100XS array is shown in Table 1.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 3.4 ESXi host network configuration VMware ESXi 5.0 U1 hypervisor was installed on all 16 blades. The network configuration on each of those hosts is described below. Each ESXi host was configured with three virtual switches: vSwitch0, vSwitch1, and vSwitchISCSI to separate the different types of traffic on the system.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 3.7 Windows 7 VM configuration Following the guidelines from VMware and Login VSI, the Windows 7 base image was generated based on a generic Base VM with the following properties. • • • • • • VMware Virtual hardware v8 One virtual CPU 1.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 4 View test methodology This section outlines the test objectives along with the test tools and criteria used to determine the sizing guidelines and best practices for deploying View on the EqualLogic storage platform. 4.1 Test objectives • • • Develop best practices and sizing guidelines for a View 5.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage • • Idle time is about two minutes between each 12 minute loop. Type rate is approximately 160ms per character. Although Login VSI provides other workloads, the Medium workload was used in the tests because it closely resembles the workload of a task worker. 4.3.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Liquidware Labs Stratusphere UX was used to gather data for user experience and desktop performance. Data gathered from the hosts (in VMware vCenter) and the virtual machines (software installed on the VM) is reported back to the Stratusphere Hub. The Stratusphere Hub was used to generate a comprehensive report on the Desktop Virtualization Performance Analysis.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage • Host caching was enabled for all hosts A total of 832 virtual desktops were split into two pools of 512 and 320 desktops each. These numbers were chosen so that the number of virtual desktops hosted by each physical host was identical.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 5 Test results and analysis This section presents the results from different View VDI characterization tests and the key findings from each test. The task worker workload represents the majority of the VDI users in the industry today, and the testing was focused on this workload profile. 5.1 Test scenarios • • • View Storage Accelerator/CBRC impact As noted in Section 2.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 4 CBRC effects on VDI workload The following analysis shows the CBRC benefits for the enterprise in terms of desktop density and cost for each desktop. It is a sample analysis, and exact benefits will vary based on the actual VDI workload, array performance characteristics, and price.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Table 4 CBRC effect on desktop density on a storage array Read Write Total array IOPS (Sample) percentage percentage CBRC 30% 70% 7300 Disabled CBRC 12% 88% 6700 Enabled IOPS/desktop Total desktops 10 730 8 838 As Table 5 shows, in this example, CBRC improves desktop density by 15% and cost for each desktop by 13%.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage On the replica image volume nearly 100% reads and almost negligible writes were observed. Figure 6 Read and write IOPS on the replica volume The read and write ratios on the remaining volumes that hosted the virtual machines were nearly 53% reads and 47% writes. The IOPS on one such volume are shown in Figure 7 below. The remaining volumes that hosted the VMs had similar IOPS as shown in the figure.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage The ESXi hosts did not show any bottle necks with respect to meeting the CPU and memory resource demands during the boot operation. There were no CPU utilization alerts, and no memory ballooning was observed. Other infrastructure services like the View Servers and Active Directory servers did not show any exceptional load during the boot storm.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 8 SAN HQ data showing network performance during boot storm These results show that the EqualLogic PS6100XS can handle a heavy random I/O load like a boot storm with no issues. Typically boot storms rare, but they can occur after a power failure or a major system outage.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 5.4 Task worker – Login storm and steady state I/O The following sections provide results from the login storm and steady state testing. 5.4.1 Login storm I/O Login VSI was programmed to launch 832 virtual desktops over a period of 20 minutes after pre-booting the virtual desktops. The peak IOPS observed during the login storm was about 6200 IOPS (6-8 IOPS per VM).
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 9 SAN HQ data showing login storm I/O The peak latency seen on the storage array is less than 20ms, and the storage array is able to handle the 832 users logging in over such a short duration with no performance issues.The following table shows the overall usage of the disks in the array during a login storm as collected by SAN HQ.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Table 7 Disk usage on EqualLogic PS6100XS array during login storm Member View51-6100XS-2 Disk 0 Description SSD 400GB SAS Average IOPS 1,952.80 Read I/O Rate 19.4 MB/sec Write I/O Rate 21.5 MB/sec Status online View51-6100XS-2 1 SSD 400GB SAS 1,939.90 19.4 MB/sec 21.7 MB/sec online View51-6100XS-2 2 SSD 400GB SAS 1,934.60 19.5 MB/sec 21.6 MB/sec online View51-6100XS-2 3 SSD 400GB SAS 1,947.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 10 SAN HQ data showing steady state I/O 5.4.3 Server host performance During the boot storm, login storm, and steady state of the test, the ESXi host CPU, memory, network, and storage performance was measured on all the servers hosting the virtual desktops. The performance of one such ESXi server is presented here. The other ESXi servers had similar performance characteristics.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage • • 32 Network utilization was about 10MBps which included an average of 5MBps usage on the iSCSI SAN and very minimal traffic on management and VDI LANs. Average Read and Write latencies at the storage adapter level matched the observed latencies in SAN HQ.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 13 Combined ESXi host network utilization Figure 14 ESXi storage adapter read and write latencies 5.4.4 User experience monitoring Based on the criteria in Section 4.4.3, the scatter plot for the user experience is shown below. As Figure 15 shows, virtually all the users are in the Good category.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Note that Liquidware Labs Stratusphere UX registered 788 of the total 832 desktops for the scatter plot in Figure 15, but the Good performance of the remaining ones were verified in other reports. Figure 15 Average VDI user experience for all users 5.5 Results summary The key observations from the test results are listed below.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 6 Sizing guidelines for EqualLogic SANs The storage array selected for the solution should be able to handle various I/O patterns that occur throughout the day for a VDI solution. These include the login storm at the beginning of a shift or a work day when employees login to their virtual desktops in a relatively short period of time.
BP1033 6.1.1 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage VMware View Accelerator sizing Enabling VMware View Accelerator turns on CBRC on the selected ESXi hosts. CBRC works by creating a digest file for each VMDK on the VM and stores the hash information about VMDK blocks with the VM itself. The size of this digest file is between 5 to 10MB for each GB of the VMDK size.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage More information on storage overcommit for linked clone desktops can be found here: http://pubs.vmware.com/view-51/topic/com.vmware.view.administration.doc/GUID-5CE57B8D-312744DB-BA51-18C96CE29096.
BP1033 6.2.2 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Login storm and steady state sizing considerations In the testing, logging in all 832 users over a period of 30 minutes generated about 6200 IOPS which is about 7-10 IOPS per desktop. The maximum read/write ratio seen during the login storm was about 15% / 85%. During the login storm most of the operations are writes because of the changes to the OS and page files being written to the disk.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 7 Best Practices 7.1 Application layer 7.1.1 Implement roaming profiles and folder redirection It is highly recommended that all users in the VDI environment be configured with roaming profiles and folder redirection. This preserves user profiles and user data across boots while still using non-persistent virtual desktops. . 7.1.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage • • • • Follow VMware and Dell best practices for installing and configuring ESXi. Install and configure EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module (MEM) for vSphere 5.0 to get the best performance from the storage array. Separate virtual switches to segregate iSCSI SAN traffic, VDI traffic, and Management network traffic.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage It is recommended to have separate volumes for the base images, replica images, and the virtual desktops. This aids in better manageability of the volumes and allows for easy future growth.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage 8 Conclusions Testing of the EqualLogic storage platform showed that the EqualLogic PS6100XS arrays can easily support very fast access to high-demand data in a multi-tiered VDI workload environment.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Appendix A VMware View 5.1 solution configuration Solution configuration - Hardware components: Virtual Desktops 13 x Dell PowerEdge M610 Servers: • BIOS Version: 6.1.0 • 2 x Hexa Core Intel® Xeon® X5680 3.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Performance Monitoring • Firmware: 5.2.4 1 x Dell EqualLogic PS6500E: • 48 x 1TB 7.2K SATA disks • Dual 4 port 1GbE controllers • Firmware: 5.2.4 • SAN HQ – 2.2.0 • vCenter Performance monitoring • Liquidware Stratusphere UX – 5.0.0 Solution Configuration - Software Components: VMware View Server VMware View Composer VMware View Agent VMware View Client 64bit.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Appendix B Network design and VLAN configuration B.1 • • Management LAN configuration Each PowerEdge M610 server has an onboard Broadcom 5709 dual port 1GbE NIC. Dual PowerConnect M6220 switches are installed in fabric A of the blade chassis. The onboard LOM NICs are connected to each of the M6220 switches. The two PowerConnect M6220 switches are interconnected using 2 x 10GbE stacking interconnects.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage These switches may be uplinked to external switches to provide connectivity to the rest of the organization.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Appendix C ESXi host network configuration Each ESXi host was configured with three virtual switches, vSwitch0, vSwitch1, vSwitchISCSI. Figure 18 ESXi vSwitch logical connection paths C.1 vSwitch0 vSwitch0 provides connection paths for all management LAN traffic. The physical adapters from the two onboard NICs (fabric A) were assigned to this switch.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage Figure 19 vSwitch0 C.2 vSwitchISCSI This virtual switch provided paths for all the iSCSI SAN traffic. Two physical adapters were assigned, one from each of the mezzanine cards on fabric B and fabric C. In the configuration, the software iSCSI initiator provided by the ESXi host was used. To take advantage of EqualLogic–aware multi-path I/O, the EqualLogic MEM for VMware vSphere was installed on each ESXi host.
BP1033 Deploying VMware View 5.1 on VMware vSphere 5.0 U1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage C.3 vSwitch1 Two physical adapters, one each from the mezzanine cards on fabric B and fabric C are assigned to this virtual switch. This vSwitch carries all traffic for the VDI LAN.
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