Architecture Planning

Table Of Contents
In cases where availability requirements are high, proper configuration of VMware HA is essential. If you
use VMware HA and are planning for a fixed number of desktops per server, run each server at a reduced
capacity. If a server fails, the capacity of desktops per server is not exceeded when the desktops are restarted
on a different host.
For example, in an 8-host cluster, where each host is capable of running 128 desktops, and the goal is to
tolerate a single server failure, make sure that no more than 128 * (8 - 1) = 896 desktops are running on that
cluster. You can also use VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) to help balance the desktops
among all 8 hosts. You get full use of the extra server capacity without letting any hot-spare resources sit
idle. Additionally, DRS can help rebalance the cluster after a failed server is restored to service.
You must also make sure that storage is properly configured to support the I/O load that results from many
virtual machines restarting at once in response to a server failure. Storage IOPS has the most effect on how
quickly desktops recover from a server failure.
Example: Cluster Configuration Examples
The settings listed in the following tables are View-specific. For information about limits of HA clusters in
vSphere, see the VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums document.
The following infrastructure example was tested with View 5.2 and vSphere 5.1.
Table 48. View Infrastructure Cluster Example
Item Example
Virtual machines vCenter Server instances, Active Directory, SQL database server, View Composer, View
Connection Server instances, security servers, parent virtual machines to use as desktop pool
sources
Nodes (ESXi hosts) 6 Dell PowerEdge R720 servers (16 cores * 2 GHz; and 192GB RAM on each host)
SSD storage Virtual machines for vCenter Server, View Composer, SQL database server, and the parent
virtual machines
Non-SSD storage Virtual machines for Active Directory, View Connection Server, and security server
Cluster type DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)/HA
Table 49. Virtual Machine Desktop Cluster Example
Item Example
Number of clusters 5
Number of desktops
and pools per cluster
1 pool of 2,000 desktops (virtual machines) per cluster
Nodes (ESXi hosts) Following are examples of various servers that could be used for each cluster:
n
12 Dell PowerEdge R720 (16 cores * 2 GHz; and 192GB RAM on each host)
n
16 Dell PowerEdge R710 (12 cores * 2.526 GHz; and 144GB RAM on each host)
n
8 Dell PowerEdge R810 (24 cores * 2 GHz; and 256GB RAM on each host)
n
6 Dell PowerEdge R810 + 3 PowerEdge R720
SSD storage Replica virtual machines
Non-SSD storage 32 Non-SSD datastores for clones (450 GB per datastore)
Cluster type DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler)/HA
View Architecture Planning
58 VMware, Inc.