Architecture Planning

Table Of Contents
Storage Bandwidth Considerations
In a View environment, logon storms are the main consideration when determining bandwidth
requirements.
Although many elements are important to designing a storage system that supports a View environment,
from a server configuration perspective, planning for proper storage bandwidth is essential. You must also
consider the effects of port consolidation hardware.
View environments can occasionally experience I/O storm loads, during which all virtual machines
undertake an activity at the same time. I/O storms can be triggered by guest-based agents such as antivirus
software or software-update agents. I/O storms can also be triggered by human behavior, such as when all
employees log in at nearly the same time in the morning. VMware has tested a logon storm scenario for
10,000 desktops. For more information, see “View Composer Performance Test Results,” on page 64.
You can minimize these storm workloads through operational best practices, such as staggering updates to
different virtual machines. You can also test various log-off policies during a pilot phase to determine
whether suspending or powering off virtual machines when users log off causes an I/O storm. By storing
View Composer replicas on separate, high-performance datastores, you can speed up intensive, concurrent
read operations to contend with I/O storm loads. For example, you can use one of the following storage
strategies:
n
Manually configure the pool settings so that replicas are stored on separate, high-performance
datastores.
n
Use Virtual SAN, available with vSphere 5.5 Update 1 or later, which uses Software Policy-Based
Management to determine which kinds of disks to use for replicas.
n
Use Virtual Volumes, available with vSphere 6.0 or later, which uses Software Policy-Based
Management to determine which kinds of disks to use for replicas.
In addition to determining best practices, VMware recommends that you provide bandwidth of 1Gbps per
100 virtual machines, even though average bandwidth might be 10 times less than that. Such conservative
planning guarantees sufficient storage connectivity for peak loads.
Network Bandwidth Considerations
Certain virtual and physical networking components are required to accommodate a typical workload.
For display traffic, many elements can affect network bandwidth, such as protocol used, monitor resolution
and configuration, and the amount of multimedia content in the workload. Concurrent launches of
streamed applications can also cause usage spikes.
Because the effects of these issues can vary widely, many companies monitor bandwidth consumption as
part of a pilot project. As a starting point for a pilot, plan for 150 to 200Kbps of capacity for a typical
knowledge worker.
With the PCoIP display protocol, if you have an enterprise LAN with 100Mb or a 1Gb switched network,
your end users can expect excellent performance under the following conditions:
n
Two monitors (1920 x 1080)
n
Heavy use of Microsoft Office applications
n
Heavy use of Flash-embedded Web browsing
n
Frequent use of multimedia with limited use of full screen mode
n
Frequent use of USB-based peripherals
n
Network-based printing
View Architecture Planning
62 VMware, Inc.