Transcript
Reference Architecture
VMware Horizon 6 with SimpliVity OmniStack
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Reference Architecture
Table of Contents 1. E xecutive Summary................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Audience.............................................................................................................................................................................. 3 2. Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................ 4
SimpliVity Hyperconvergence: Simplifying VDI................................................................................................................... 4
Superior user experience through unmatched VDI performance................................................................................. 4
Linear scalability from pilot to production with cost-effective VDI deployments......................................................... 4
Simple, ultra-fast desktop provisioning........................................................................................................................ 4
Enterprise-grade data protection and resiliency for VDI workloads............................................................................ 4
Technology Overview.......................................................................................................................................................... 5
3. Solution Overview.................................................................................................................................................................. 7
VMware Horizon 6............................................................................................................................................................... 8
Connection Server........................................................................................................................................................ 8 Security Server.............................................................................................................................................................. 8 vCenter Server.............................................................................................................................................................. 8 View Composer............................................................................................................................................................. 8 4. Solution Architecture............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Management Infrastructure Design..................................................................................................................................... 9
Desktop Infrastructure Design.......................................................................................................................................... 14
2000 Office Worker Block........................................................................................................................................... 15
5. Login VSI.............................................................................................................................................................................. 23
Testing Methodology........................................................................................................................................................ 23
Office Worker Workload Definition................................................................................................................................... 24
Test Environment............................................................................................................................................................... 24
Results......................................................................................................................................................................... 24 6. Summary/Conclusion........................................................................................................................................................... 26 7. References and Additional Resources.................................................................................................................................. 27 8. Appendix.............................................................................................................................................................................. 28
Windows 7 Optimization................................................................................................................................................... 28
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1. Executive Summary Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a top initiative for many IT organizations, driven in part by the promise of a flexible, mobile computing experience for end users, and consolidated management for IT. Organizations are looking to VDI solutions like VMware Horizon to reduce software licensing, distribution and administration expenses, and to improve security and compliance. Too often, however, VDI deployments are plagued by sluggish and unpredictable desktop performance and higher than expected costs. Adopting organizations have been forced to compromise among competing goals of solution performance, resilience and costs. SimpliVity’s market-leading hyperconverged infrastructure platform is an ideal solution for addressing the challenges of VDI. It provides the end user experience organizations require, without sacrificing economics or resilience. SimpliVity provides: • Simplified deployment with hyperconverged, x86 building blocks. • Ability start small and scale out in affordable increments—from pilot to production. • Highest density of desktops per node in the hyperconverged infrastructure category. • Independently validated, unmatched VDI performance for a superb end user experience. • Deployment of full-clone desktops with the same data efficiency as linked clones. • Enterprise-class data protection and resiliency. This Reference Architecture provides evidence of these capabilities and showcases third-party validated Login VSI performance testing. It provides a reference architecture for implementing VMware Horizon 6 on SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure, and describes tests performed by SimpliVity to validate and measure the operation and performance of the recommended solution. 1000 Linked Clones deployed
1000 Linked Clones recomposed
1000 Linked Clones refreshed
70 minutes
113 minutes
53 minutes
1000 Linked Clones booted
VSImax 4.1 – 2000 Office Worker
19 minutes
757ms, VSImax not reached
Linear scaling
Zero downtime in loss of OVC
Audience The document is intended for customer IT planners, managers and administrators; channel partner engineers, professional services personnel and other IT professionals who plan to deploy the SimpliVity hyperconverged solution to support VMware Horizon 6.
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2. Introduction SimpliVity Hyperconvergence: Simplifying VDI Many businesses are constrained by legacy IT infrastructure that isn’t well suited for VDI initiatives. Siloed data centers, composed of independent compute, storage, network and data protection platforms with distinct administrative interfaces are inherently inefficient, cumbersome and costly. Each platform requires support, maintenance, licensing, power and cooling—not to mention a set of dedicated resources capable of administrating and maintaining the elements. Rolling out a new application like VDI becomes a manually intensive, time-consuming proposition involving a number of different technology platforms, management interfaces, and operations teams. Expanding system capacity can take days or even weeks, and require complex provisioning and administration. Troubleshooting problems and performing routine data backup, replication and recovery tasks can be just as inefficient. While grappling with this complexity, organizations also need to address challenges that are unique to VDI, including: 1. Difficulty sizing VDI workloads upfront, due to the randomness and unpredictability of user behavior 2. Periodic spikes in demand, such as “login storms” and “boot storms”, that may significantly degrade performance if not properly handled 3. High cost of downtime in the event of an outage SimpliVity OmniStack addresses each of these challenges by providing a scalable, building block-style approach to deploying infrastructure for VDI, offering the enterprise predictable cost, and delivering a high-performing desktop experience to end users.
Superior user experience through unmatched VDI performance The SimpliVity solution enables high performance at very high desktop density. It eliminates VDI login storms, delivering 1,000 logins in 1,000 seconds – nearly 3x faster than the standard Login VSI benchmark provisioning speed and unparalleled in the hyperconverged infrastructure solution market. Linear scalability from pilot to production with cost-effective VDI deployments SimpliVity’s scale-out architecture minimizes initial capital outlays and tightly aligns investments with business requirements; SimpliVity OmniStack building blocks are added incrementally providing a massively-scalable pool of shared resources.
Simple, ultra-fast desktop provisioning With OmniStack, desktops can be deployed or updated quickly and easily for greater end-user and IT staff productivity. In performance testing conducted by SimpliVity 1,000 linked clone desktops were provisioning in just 70 minutes. 1 Enterprise-grade data protection and resiliency for VDI workloads SimpliVity OmniStack provides built-in backup and disaster recovery capabilities for the entire virtual desktop infrastructure. The solution also ensures resilient, highly available desktop operations with the ability to withstand node failures with no loss of desktops and minimal increase in latency.
Technology Overview SimpliVity’s OmniStack hyperconverged infrastructure solution is designed from the ground up to meet the increased performance, scalability and agility demands of today’s data-intensive, highly virtualized IT environments. OmniStack transforms IT by virtualizing data and incorporating all IT infrastructure and services below the hypervisor into compact x86
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building blocks. With 3x total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction, OmniStack delivers the best of both worlds: the enterprise-class performance, protection and resiliency that today’s organizations require, with the cloud economics businesses demand. Designed to work with any hypervisor or industry-standard x86 server platform, the SimpliVity solution provides a single, shared resource pool across the entire IT stack, eliminating point products and inefficient siloed IT architectures. The solution is distinguished from other converged infrastructure solutions by three unique attributes: accelerated data efficiency, built-in data protection functionality and global unified management capabilities. • Accelerated Data Efficiency: OmniStack performs inline data deduplication, compression and optimization on all data at inception across all phases of the data lifecycle, all handled with fine data granularity of just 4KB-8KB. On average, SimpliVity customers achieve 40:1 data efficiency while simultaneously increasing application performance. • Built-In Data Protection: OmniStack includes native data protection functionality, enabling business continuity and disaster recovery for critical applications and data, while eliminating the need for special-purpose backup and recovery hardware or software. OmniStack’s inherent data efficiencies minimize I/O and WAN traffic, reducing backup and restore times from hours to minutes, while obviating the need for special-purpose WAN optimization products. • Global Unified Management: OmniStack’s VM-centric approach to management eliminates manually intensive, errorprone administrative tasks. System administrators are no longer required to manage LUNs and volumes; instead, they can manage all resources and workloads centrally, using familiar interfaces such as VMware vCenter.
VM
VM
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VM
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VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
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VM
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VM
VM
VM
VM
VM
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VMware vSphere OmniCube
OmniCube
OmniCube Virtual Controller SCSI Controller
OmniCube
OmniCube Virtual Controller
OmniCube Accelerator
SCSI Controller
OmniCube
OmniCube Virtual Controller
OmniCube Accelerator
SCSI Controller
OmniCube Virtual Controller
OmniCube Accelerator
SCSI Controller
OmniCube Accelerator
400GB SSD
1TB HDD 1TB HDD1TB HDD 1TB HDD
400GB SSD
1TB HDD 1TB HDD1TB HDD 1TB HDD
400GB SSD
1TB HDD 1TB HDD1TB HDD 1TB HDD
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1TB HDD 1TB HDD1TB HDD 1TB HDD
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1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD
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1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD
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1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD 1TB HDD
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svtfs
SimpliVity Datastore
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SimpliVity Datastore
SimpliVity Datastore
SimpliVity Datastore
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3. Solution Overview SimpliVity packages OmniStack on popular x86 platforms—either on 2U servers marketed as OmniCube, or with partner systems from Cisco or Lenovo, marketed as OmniStack Integrated with Cisco UCS and OmniStack Solution with Lenovo System x, respectively.
An individual OmniStack node includes: 1. OVC – OmniCube Virtual Controller – A virtual machine is deployed and pinned to the host servicing an NFS datastore to the ESXi kernel. OVC uses DirectPath I/O for the local SCSI controller and the OA. Manages all aspects of SVTFS file system. Maintains a read cache in OVC’s memory. Multiple OVCs in a VMware Datacenter present a unified namespace of storage across all OmniCubes within that Datacenter as a vSphere Datastore. 2. OA – OmniStack Accelerator – Acknowledges writes, performs data efficiency operations, manages metadata and works with OVC to store metadata in the SSD pool. DRAM is used for transient data. Super capacitors are used to destage DRAM to Flash in the event of a power failure. 3. Cache and Metadata SSD Pool – SSD drives (number and sizes vary based on OC model) protected with RAID1 or RAID5 using a local SCSI controller – provides read cache and metadata storage. 4. Capacity Pool – HDD drives (number and sizes vary based on OC model) protected with RAID6 using a local SCSI controller. SimpliVity OmniStack is a software-defined hyperconverged infrastructure solution. Clustering multiple OmniStack-powered hyperconverged infrastructure units forms a shared resource pool and delivers high availability, mobility, and efficient scaling of performance and capacity.
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The solution outlined in this document provides guidance for implementing SimpliVity OmniStack to enable a single VDI building block, supporting 2,000 office workers. This architecture can be used to scale up to 10,000 users within a Horizon View pod, consisting of five building blocks as outlined below. This solution leverages SimpliVity OmniStack hyperconverged infrastructure as the foundational element of the design. OmniStack nodes are combined together, forming a pool of shared compute (CPU and memory), storage, and storage network resources. VMware vSphere and Horizon View provide a high-performance VDI environment that is highly available and highly scalable. The building block includes: Internet
• SimpliVity OmniStack nodes with Haswell-based Intel Xeon E5-2697 CPUs for desktop workloads
External Users
• SimpliVity OmniStack nodes with Haswell-based Intel Xeon E5-2680 CPUs for management workloads • 199GB – 455GB usable memory per OmniStack node
DMZ
• 1TB datastores for desktop workloads; 2TB datastores for server workloads • 10GbE networking • Windows 7 SP1 for desktops
View Security Server
View Security Server
• Windows Server 2012 R2 for servers
Local Network
• N+1 design for management workloads and infrastructure where possible
View Pod
View Replica Server
View Replica Server
View Replica Server
View Replica Server
Virtual Desktops ThinApp Repository
View Composer
vCenter Server
Virtual Desktops
vSphere
SimpliVity OmniCube/OmniStack
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VMware Horizon 6 VMware Horizon 6 is a virtual workspace and application delivery suite that enables IT administrators to distribute, protect, and manage Windows desktops and applications while containing costs and ensuring end-users can work anytime, anywhere, on any device. With Horizon 6, virtualized or hosted desktops and applications—including Microsoft Remote Desktop Services RDS hosted apps, SaaS apps, and packaged apps with ThinApp—can all be accessed from one unified workspace. This datacenter-centric approach to delivering desktops and applications allows IT staff to deliver resources to their end users in a way that minimizes the time to delivery and maximizes availability, all without sacrificing security in the process. This section focuses on the following Horizon 6 components: • Connection Server • Security Server • vCenter Server • View Composer
Connection Server The Connection Server is the backbone for the management of the Horizon 6 solution. It provides for management via a web interface, as well as an Active Directory Lightweight Domain Services (AD LDS) database containing the objects within the Horizon 6 inventory. The AD LDS database is replicated between Connection Servers in a Horizon 6 pod to keep the state consistent across the pod. The Connection Server also provides authentication and brokering of sessions to desktops and applications. Authentication is provided via Active Directory integration, as well as support for two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication can be achieved via RSA SecurID integration or any RADIUS-compliant solution. Once a user has been authenticated, they are directed to their desktop or application by the Connection Server. This is referred to as session brokering.
Security Server The Security Server enables secure access to virtual desktops and applications from outside the network. It is typically placed inside the DMZ, where it acts as a reverse proxy for Teradici PC-over-IP, Microsoft RDP, or VMware Blast traffic. Security Servers are typically paired 1-to-1 with Connection Servers on an internal network.
vCenter Server The Horizon 6 infrastructure is tied into vCenter Server to give access to vSphere resources. This provides the physical compute, storage, and network resources that the virtual desktops will use to function, as well as the operation of the virtual machines themselves.
View Composer View Composer is used to create, manage, and destroy linked clone desktops within Horizon 6, as well as keep inventory on all objects for which it has responsibility. View Composer is able to perform a number of maintenance tasks on desktops and desktop pools, which provide for ease of administration of those desktops. These include: • Recompose – This allows the administrator to define a new snapshot for the desktops in a pool. This is typically done to update them en masse after patches have been applied to the parent image and a new snapshot taken. • Rebalance – This takes a pool of desktops and redistributes them across datastores as defined in the desktop pool configuration.
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• Refresh – This takes desktops and puts them back to their original post-deployment state. The delta disk attached to the virtual desktop is reset, thereby removing any changes made to the desktop. • Reset – The administrator is given the ability to reset (warm boot) user desktops from the Horizon 6 administrative interface.
4. Solution Architecture Management Infrastructure Design This section details the OmniStack environment dedicated to supporting the management workloads required to run 2000 virtual desktops. A separate, dedicated OmniStack environment is also used for the Horizon 6 virtual desktops and is detailed in the Desktop Infrastructure Design section. The VDI-supporting workloads considered in this document are detailed in the table below. Workload
Version
vCPUs
RAM
Disk
OS
vCenter Server DT
5.5 Update 2e
8
32GB
100GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
vCenter Server Mgmt
5.5 Update 2e
4
16GB
100GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
Microsoft SQL Server
2012 SP1
4
8GB
100GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
AD DC/DHCP/DNS x 2
N/A
2
4GB
40GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
Horizon 6 Connection Server x 4
6.0.1
4
10GB
40GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
Horizon 6 Security Server x 2
6.0.1
4
10GB
40GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
Horizon 6 Composer
6.0.1
4
6GB
40GB
Windows Server 2012 R2
vSphere Design Attribute
Value
Rationale
Number of vCenter Servers
1
A vCenter Server instance will support 2000 virtual desktops.
Number of vSphere Clusters
1
Given the number of OmniStack nodes required to support the given workload, there is no need to split out hosts into separate vSphere Clusters.
Number of vSphere Datacenters
1
A single vSphere Cluster means only a single vSphere Datacenter is required.
1. HA enabled 2. Admission Control enabled 3. % of cluster resources reserved – 50% 4. Isolation Response – Leave Powered On
1. Enabled to restart VMs in the event of an ESXi host failure 2. Ensure VM resources will not become exhausted in the case of a host failure. 3. S et to the percentage of the cluster a single host represents. 4. E nsure a host isolation event does not needlessly power off desktops.
vSphere HA Configuration
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Attribute
vSphere HA – Advanced Settings
Value
Rationale
• das.vmmemoryminmb – 10853MB • das.vmcpuminmhz – 1000MHz
Both are set to averages of the workloads in the cluster. This serves to set the percentage of cluster resources in HA calculation to that of an average VM.
ESXi – Advanced Settings SunRPC.MaxConnPerIP
256 (max)
Avoid hitting NFS connection limit
NFS.MaxVolumes
256 (max)
Increase number of NFS volumes per host
NFS.MaxQueueDepth
256
Performance consideration
NFS.SendBufferSize
512
Performance consideration
NFS.ReceiveBufferSize
512
Performance consideration
Net.TcpipHeapSize
32
Performance consideration
Net.TcpipHeapMax
512
Performance consideration
Misc.APDHandlingEnable
1
Turn on All Paths Down handling in ESXi
These workloads are visually represented in the diagram on the right: • (2) SimpliVity CN-2400 OmniCubes with
Management vCenter Server Management Datacenter/Cluster
• Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 (Haswell 12-core, 2 sockets per server) • 199GB usable memory each
2x Connection Server(int )
2x Connection Server(Ext )
2x Securit y Server s
View Composer
vCenter Server(Mgmt)
vCenter Server (Desktop)
MS SQL Server
Active Directory
• 2TB datastores x2 • 10GbE interconnect between nodes (no 10GbE switch required, but may be used) OmniStack Servers – To support the management workloads outlined in this document, a 2 host vSphere Cluster, comprised of CN-2400nodes, is recommended. Unlike other HCI vendors, SimpliVity fully supports a 2 host cluster in its minimum configuration. Using OmniStack from SimpliVity allows you to start small, with only the infrastructure you need, and scale out as your VDI environment grows.
2x CN2400 2x Haswell 12 core 2.5GHz each 199GB RAM usable each
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2x 2TB NFS OmniCube Datastores
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vCenter Servers – All roles were installed onto a single virtual machine, including the vCenter Server Service, vCenter Single Sign On (SSO), Inventory Service, and Update Manager. No CPU or memory pressure were observed during testing, so dedicating servers for each service was unnecessary. If an embedded database server had been utilized in this infrastructure, it would be advised to have dedicated servers for the SSO and Inventory services to avoid resource contention. The vCenter Server appliance was not used in these tests. It is a perfectly acceptable alternative to the Windows version of vCenter Server, and is permissible to use with the caveat that any Windows-based features will require a stand-alone Windows server to support. Please see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2005086 for more details. Connection Servers – To support 2000 users in an N+1 configuration, 2 internal and 2 external Connection Servers were used. Security Servers – To support up to 2000 external users in an N+1 configuration, 2 Security Servers were used. These were paired 1:1 with the two external Connection Servers. Infrastructure Services (Domain Controllers/DNS/DHCP) – These services were all co-located on the same virtual machines. While no CPU or memory pressure was observed during testing, in-depth Active Directory design and recommendations are outside the scope of this document. Please see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727085.aspx for more information and best practices. Composer – One Composer server is required per desktop-supporting vCenter Server in order to leverage Linked Clone deployment and management within Horizon View. Microsoft SQL Server – All supporting databases for this reference design, were run on a single virtual machine. These databases are referenced in the table below. Sizing – Compute, Storage, and Network resources for each infrastructure VM were selected using VMware best practices as a baseline and modified based on their observed performance on the OmniStack nodes. SimpliVity Arbiter Placement – Please refer to the SimpliVity OmniCube Deployment Guide for further guidance. Database
Authentication
Size
Recovery Mode
Desktop vCenter Server
Windows authentication
5GB
Simple
Management vCenter Server
Windows authentication
1GB
Simple
Desktop Update Manager
SQL authentication
100MB
Simple
Management Update Manager
SQL authentication
100MB
Simple
Composer
SQL authentication
100MB
Simple
View Events
SQL authentication
1GB
Simple
vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) – VAAI is a vSphere API that allows storage vendors to offload some common storage tasks from ESXi to the storage itself. In conjunction with Horizon 6 on SimpliVity OmniStack, this has the effect of dramatically lowering the time to usable desktop in provisioning, as well as in maintenance operations. The VAAI plugin for OmniStack is installed during deployment, so no manual intervention is required. Datastores – A single datastore per server is recommended to ensure even SimpliVity storage distribution across cluster members. This is less important in a 2 OmniStack server configuration; however, following this best practice guideline will ensure a smooth transition to a 3+ node Omnistack environment, should the environment grow over time. Additionally, this best practice has been proven to deliver better storage performance and is highly encouraged.
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Networking – The following best practices were utilized in the vSphere networking design: • Segregate OVC networking from ESXi host and virtual machine network traffic • Leverage 10GbE where possible for OVC and virtual machine network traffic These best practices offer the highest network performance to VMs running on OmniStack 3.0. Taking this into consideration, a single vSphere Standard Switch is deployed for management traffic, and a single vSphere Distributed Switch is deployed for the remaining traffic, including: • Virtual Machines • SimpliVity Federation • SimpliVity Storage • vMotion
vSphere Standard Switch Configuration Parameter
Setting
Load balancing
Route based on Port ID
Failover detection
Link status only.
Notify switches
Enabled.
Failback
No.
Failover order
Active/Active
Security
• Promiscuous Mode – Reject • MAC Address Changes – Reject • Forged Transmits – Reject
Traffic Shaping
Disabled
Maximum MTU
1500
Number of Ports
128
Number of Uplinks
2
Network Adapters
vmnic0 and 1 on each host
VMkernel Adapters/VM Networks
• vmk0 – ESXi Management – Active/Active – MTU 1500 • VM – vCenter Server – Active/Active – MTU 1500
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vSphere Distributed Switch Configuration Parameter
Setting
Load balancing
Route based on physical NIC load.
Failover detection
Link status only.
Notify switches
Enabled.
Failback
No.
Failover order
Active/Active • Promiscuous Mode – Reject
Security
• MAC Address Changes – Reject • Forged Transmits – Reject
Traffic Shaping
Disabled
Maximum MTU
9000
Number of Ports
4096
Number of Uplinks
2
Network Adapters
vmnic2 and 3 on each host
Network I/O Control
Disabled • vmk1 – vMotion • vmk2 – Storage
VMkernel ports/VM Networks
• vMotion – Active/Standby – MTU 9000 • Federation – Standby/Active – MTU 9000 • Storage – Standby/Active – MTU 9000 • Management VMs – Active/Active – MTU 9000
Port Binding
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Static
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Management or Resource Cluster vSwitch0 A
Management
vmnic0
VLAN A A
vmnic1
Switch1
dvSwitch0 vMotion
VLAN B A
S
dvUplink1 S
VLAN C
S
SVT Federation
Switch2 VLAN C
A
SVT Storage
A
dvUplink2
A
VM Networks
VLAN D VLAN E ...
A
Desktop Infrastructure Design This desktop block is sized to support 2,000 users. The sizing of the infrastructure supporting this desktop block is dependent on the workload profile defined for the use case supported by that block. In this case, we defined a single block supporting 2,000 office workers.
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2000 Office Worker Block The desktop block for 2,000 Office Workers is two 5 node vSphere Clusters that are contained within separate vSphere Datacenter objects (5+5 Federation). This configuration has been tested and validated to support the workload as defined, including N+1 design. Results of these tests are available in this document.
Office Worker Virtual Machine Configuration Attribute
Specification
Operating System
Windows 7 SP1 64-bit
Virtual Hardware
VM virtual hardware version 10
VMware Tools
Latest
Number of vCPUs
1
Memory
1536MB
Virtual Disk – VMDK
25GB
SCSI Controller
VMware Paravirtual
Virtual Floppy Drive
Removed
Virtual CD/DVD Drive
Removed
NIC vendor and model Number of ports/NIC x speed
VMXNET3 1x 10 Gigabit Ethernet
OS Page file
1.5GB starting and max
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The infrastructure diagram below was used to support these workloads: • (10) SimpliVity OmniCube CN2400s • Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 (Haswell 14-core, 2 sockets per server) • 455GB usable memory per OmniCube node • 1TB datastores x10 • 10GbE networking
Desktop vCenter Server Desktop Datacenter/Cluster1
Desktop Datacenter/Cluster2
Desktop Pool 1 (1000 Office Workers)
Desktop Pool 2 (1000 Office Workers)
Replica
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Replica
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Parent Images
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Parent Images
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
Linked Clones
... 5x CN2400 2x Haswell 14 core 2.6GHz each 327GB RAM usable each
... 5x 1TB NFS OmniCube Datastores
... 5x CN2400 2x Haswell 14 core 2.6GHz each 327GB RAM usable each
... 5x 1TB NFS OmniCube Datastores
Note: This solution architecture was designed based on a standard workload size. When sizing a production environment, proper assessment and use case definition should be done to accurately size the environment. SimpliVity Federation and vSphere Cluster/Datacenter Sizing – The decision was made to split the workload into multiple equally-sized vSphere Clusters, thereby dividing the environment into multiple failure domains. This serves to limit the exposure to the total workload in the event of a cluster-wide failure. To support multiple vSphere Datacenters in a single vCenter Server, both Datacenters must belong to a single SimpliVity Federation, as a vCenter Server supports a single Federation. A Federation can span multiple vCenter Server instances, but that configuration is outside the scope of this document.
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vSphere Design Attribute
Value
Rationale
Number of vCenter Server instances
1
A vCenter Server instance will support more than 2000 virtual desktops, so multiple vCenter Server instances is not necessary here.
Number of vSphere Clusters
2
Given the number of OmniStack nodes required to support the given workload, the decision was made to split out into separate vSphere Clusters.
Number of vSphere Datacenters
2
With OmniStack 3.0, the failure domain is at the vSphere Datacenter level. Desktops will not cross back and forth between vSphere clusters, so each vSphere Cluster should have its own vSphere Datacenter.
vSphere HA Configuration
1. HA enabled 2. Admission Control enabled 3. % of cluster resources reserved – 20% 4. I solation Response – Leave Powered On
1. E nabled to restart VMs in the event of an ESXi host failure 2. Ensure VM resources will not become exhausted in the case of a host failure. 3. S et to the percentage of the cluster a single host represents. 4. E nsure a host isolation event does not needlessly power off desktops.
vSphere HA – Advanced Settings
• das.vmmemoryminmb – 1536MB • das.vmcpuminmhz – 300MHz
Both are set to averages of the workloads in the cluster. This serves to set the percentage of cluster resources in HA calculation to that of an average VM.
vSphere DRS Configuration
Disabled
To ensure optimal virtual machine performance.
Reservations and Limits
Full memory reservation for all desktop workloads
Ensures all desktop workloads have access to memory resources. Also avoids creation of VMkernel swap files on storage.
View Composer APIs for Array Integration (VCAI)
Disabled
Better performance was observed without VCAI. ESXi – Advanced Settings
SunRPC.MaxConnPerIP
256 (max)
Avoid hitting NFS connection limit
NFS.MaxVolumes
256 (max)
Increase number of NFS volumes per host
NFS.MaxQueueDepth
256
Performance consideration
NFS.SendBufferSize
512
Performance consideration
NFS.ReceiveBufferSize
512
Performance consideration
Net.TcpipHeapSize
32
Performance consideration
Net.TcpipHeapMax
512
Performance consideration
Misc.APDHandlingEnable
1
Turn on All Paths Down handling in ESXi
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OmniStack Servers – Two five host vSphere Clusters comprised of CN-2400 OmniCubes to support the Office Worker desktop workload. The following design patterns were observed: • Limit physical CPU to virtual CPU oversubscription – In this configuration, each OmniStack node has 28 physical cores. The OVC takes four of those physical cores, leaving 24 per OmniStack node for desktop workloads to use. The desktops are split evenly between vSphere Clusters with 1000 desktops each. Each Office Worker desktop, as described above, has a single virtual CPU.
24 pCPU x 4 usable OmniStack nodes (taking into account N+1) = 96 pCPU 1000 vCPU per cluster / 96 pCPU = 10.42 vCPU:pCPU • Do not overcommit memory – In this configuration, each OmniStack node has 512GB of available physical memory. With the CN2400, 57GB of memory is reserved for the OVC. That leaves 455GB available per OmniStack node for desktop workloads. The desktops themselves are evenly split between vSphere Clusters with 1000 desktops each. Each Office Worker desktop, as described above, has 1.5GB of memory.
455GB x 4 usable OmniStack nodes (taking into account N+1) = 1820GB memory per cluster 1820GB per cluster - 1500GB for desktops = 320GB spare capacity, no overcommitment of memory
NOTE: For our testing, we used OmniStack nodes with 384GB of memory, so there was some memory overcommitment. We also did not set memory reservations for desktop workloads. We did not notice any adverse effects, e.g., VMkernel swap to disk; however, we recommend 512GB in this case to avoid overcommitmentover commitment of memory. vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) – VAAI is a vSphere API that allows storage vendors to offload some common storage tasks from ESXi to the storage itself. In conjunction with Horizon 6 on SimpliVity OmniStack, this has the effect of dramatically lowering the time to usable desktop in provisioning, as well as in maintenance operations. The VAAI plugin for OmniStack is installed during deployment, so no manual intervention is required. Datastores – An equal number of SimpliVity datastores to the number of OmniStack nodes in each vSphere Cluster were deployed. In this 5+5 Federation configuration, five SimpliVity datastores were created for each vSphere Cluster. This is done to more evenly distribute storage load across the OmniStack nodes in the vSphere Cluster, as well as increase the likelihood any given desktop has locality with its View Replica disk. Networking – The following design patterns were observed in the design of the vSphere networking for the solution: • Segregate OVC networking from ESXi host and virtual machine network traffic • Leverage 10GbE where possible for OVC and virtual machine network traffic With those ideals in mind, a single vSphere Standard Switch is deployed for management traffic, and a single vSphere Distributed Switch is deployed for the rest of our network needs, including • Virtual Machines • SimpliVity Federation • SimpliVity Storage • vMotion
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Reference Architecture
vSphere Standard Switch Configuration Parameter
Setting
Load balancing
Route based on Port ID
Failover detection
Link status only.
Notify switches
Enabled.
Failback
No.
Failover order
Active/Active • Promiscuous Mode – Reject
Security
• MAC Address Changes – Reject • Forged Transmits – Reject
Traffic Shaping
Disabled
Maximum MTU
1500
Number of Ports
128
Number of Uplinks
2
Network Adapters
1GbE NICs on each host
VMkernel Adapters/VM Networks
vmk0 – ESXi Management – Active/Active – MTU 1500
vCenter Server Integration Settings Below are the configuration details for the vCenter Server integration with Horizon 6 as they pertain to this solution: Attribute
Specification Provisioning
Max concurrent vCenter provisioning operations
8
Max concurrent power operations
50
Max concurrent View Composer maintenance operations
12
Max concurrent View Composer provisioning operations
8
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Attribute
Specification Storage
Reclaim VM disk space (SE Sparse)
Disabled
Enable View Storage Accelerator
Disabled
Desktop Pool Configuration Below are the configuration details for the Desktop Pools deployed. There are a total of two Desktop Pools deployed due to the use of multiple vSphere Clusters. It is also required that these pools leverage unique Parent virtual machines due to vSphere Datacenter separation. Attribute
Specification
Pool Type
Linked Clone
Assignment
Floating
Pool ID
• Office_Worker_1 • Office_Worker_2
Display Name
• Office Worker Pool 1 • Office Worker Pool 2
Folder ID
/
Separate Datastores for Replica and OS?
Not Selected
State
Enabled
Connection Server Restrictions
None
Remote Desktop Power Policy
Ensure Machines are Powered On
Auto Logoff After Disconnect
Immediately
User Reset Allowed
False
Multiple Sessions Per User Allowed
False
Delete Or Refresh Desktop On Logoff
Never
Display Protocol
PCoIP
Allow Protocol Override
False
Max Number of Monitors
1
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Reference Architecture
Attribute
Specification
Max Resolution
1920x1200
HTML Access
Not Selected
Flash Quality Level
Do not Control
Flash Throttling Level
No Throttling
Disposable/Persistent Disk
None
Enable Provisioning
Yes
Stop Provisioning On Error
No
Provisioning Timing
All Up Front
Naming
• Office1-{n} • Office2-{n}
Use View Storage Accelerator
No
Reclaim Virtual Machine Disk Space
No
Storage Overcommit Policy
Aggressive
Use native NFS snapshots (VAAI)
No
Global Policies Attribute
Specification
Multimedia Redirection (MMR)
Allow
USB Access
Allow
Remote Mode
Allow
PCoIP Hardware Acceleration
Allow-Medium Priority
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Global Settings Attribute
Specification
Session Timeout
600 (10 Hours)
SSO
Always Enabled
View Administrator Session Timeout
120 Minutes
Automatic Status Updates
Enabled
Pre-login Message
None
Warning Before Forced Logoff
None
Global Security Settings Attribute
Specification
Re-Authenticate Secure Connections After Network Disrupt
Enabled
Message Security Mode
Enabled
Enable IPSec For Security Server Pairing
Enabled
Disable SSO For Local Mode
Disabled
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5. Login VSI All performance testing documented utilized the Login VSI (http://www.loginvsi.com) benchmarking tool. Login VSI is the industry-standard load testing solution for centralized virtualized desktop environments. When used for benchmarking, the software measures the total response time of several specific user operations being performed within a desktop workload in a scripted loop. The baseline is the measurement of the response time of specific operations performed in the desktop workload, which is measured in milliseconds (ms). There are two values in particular that are important to note: VSIbase and VSImax. • VSIbase: A score reflecting the response time of specific operations performed in the desktop workload when there is little or no stress on the system. A low baseline indicates a better user experience, resulting in applications responding faster in the environment. • VSImax: The maximum number of desktop sessions attainable on the host before experiencing degradation in host and desktop performance. SimpliVity used the latest version, Login VSI 4.1.4, to perform the tests. The VMs were balanced across each of the servers, maintaining a consistent number of VMs on each node. For the Login VSImax test, a Login VSI launcher was used per 500 desktops. The Login VSI launcher was configured to launch a new session every two (2) seconds. All VDI desktops were powered on, registered, and idle prior to starting the actual test sessions.
Testing Methodology For the tests, SimpliVity used the new Login VSI Office Worker workload. The workload simulate the following applications found in almost every environment, as listed below: Login VSI Workload Applications • Microsoft Word 2010 • Microsoft Excel 2010 • Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 • Microsoft Outlook 2010 • Internet Explorer • Mind Map • Flash Player • Doro PDF Printer • Photo Viewer
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All tests are executed in Login VSI’s Direct Desktop Mode. Since no specific remoting protocol is used, this makes the test results relevant for everyone. In Direct Desktop Mode, all sessions are started as a console session. The big advantage is that all comparisons are not influenced by changes on a remoting protocol level. As a result, the results are a “pure” comparison of the tests in a VDI context.
Office Worker Workload Definition (from http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/Changes_old_and_new_workloads) There is a new workload added that has no precursor, called the Office Worker, which is based on the Knowledge Worker (previously Medium) workload. The main goal of the Office Worker workload is to be deployed in environments that use only 1vCPU in their VMs. Overall, the Office Worker workload has less resource usage in comparison to the Knowledge Worker workload.
Test Environment The test environment is as described in the Solution Architecture section of this document. That includes both management infrastructure design for the management workloads used, with an addition of Login VSI launchers, and the desktop infrastructure design for the desktop workloads tested.
Results The following results are representative of multiple Login VSI 4.1 runs for 2000 Office Worker workloads on the infrastructure described above. VSImax Overview – Normal Operation VSIbase for the environment was 757ms, and VSImax was not reached in any run. VSImax average was 1038ms, and VSImax threshold was 1757ms. Latency was consistently low, showing how the OmniStack 3.0 environment scaled to meet the demands of the 2000 Office Worker workloads.
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VSImax Overview – Failed Cluster Member VSIbase for the environment was 787ms, and VSImax was not reached in any run. VSImax average was 1195ms, and VSImax threshold was 1787ms. Latency was consistently low, showing how the OmniStack 3.0 environment scaled to meet the demands of the 2000 Office Worker workloads even with a complete host failure. This includes both the storage controller and compute resources.
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Reference Architecture
6. Summary/Conclusion This Reference Architecture provides guidance to organizations implementing VMware Horizon 6 on SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure, and describes tests performed by SimpliVity to validate and measure the operation and performance of the recommended solution, including third-party validated performance testing from Login VSI, the industry standard benchmarking tool for virtualized workloads. Organizations are looking to VDI solutions like VMware Horizon to reduce software licensing, distribution and administration expenses, and to improve security and compliance. SimpliVity’s market-leading hyperconverged infrastructure platform helps to deliver the promised benefits of VDI, while overcoming many common challenges. SimpliVity for VDI provides: • Simplified deployment with hyperconverged, x86 building blocks. • Ability start small and scale out in affordable increments—from pilot to production. • Highest density of desktops per node in the hyperconverged infrastructure category. • Independently validated, unmatched VDI performance for a superb end user experience. • Deployment of full-clone desktops with the same data efficiency as linked clones. • Enterprise-class data protection and resiliency.
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7. References and Additional Resources Performance Whitepaper: VDI without Compromise with SimpliVity OmniStack and VMware Horizon View ESG Lab Review Preview: SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure for VDI Environments Minimum requirements for the VMware vCenter Server 5.x Appliance (2005086) Best Practice Active Directory Design for Managing Windows Networks Login VSI - Changes old and new workloads
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8. Appendix Windows 7 Optimization The following was used to optimize the Windows 7 image for our testing purposes. rem
Setting Default HKCU values by loading and modifying the default user registry hive
reg load “hku\temp” “%USERPROFILE%\..\Default User\NTUSER.DAT” reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop” /v SCRNSAVE.EXE /d “%windir%\ system32\scrnsave.scr” /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop” /v ScreenSaveTimeOut /d “600” /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop” /v ScreenSaverIsSecure /d “1” /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System” /v Wallpaper /d “ “ /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Cache” /v Persistent /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Microsoft\Feeds” /v SyncStatus /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “hku\temp\Software\Microsoft\WIndows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer” /v HideSCAHealth /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg unload “hku\temp” rem Making modifications to the HKLM hive reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main” /v DisableFirstRunCustomize /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters” /v EnableSuperfetch /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU” /v NoAutoUpdate /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore” /v DisableSR /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x1 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Disk” /v TimeOutValue /t REG_DWORD /d 200 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Image” /v Revision /t REG_SZ /d 1.0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Image” /v Virtual /t REG_SZ /d Yes /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Application” /v MaxSize /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x100000 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Application” /v Retention /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\NewNetworkWindowOff” /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\System” /v MaxSize /t REG_DWORD /d 0x100000 /f
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reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\System” /v Retention /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Security” /v MaxSize /t REG_DWORD /d 0x100000 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Security” /v Retention /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl” /v CrashDumpEnabled /t REG_ DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server” /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp” /v UserAuthentication /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg ADD “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system” /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f reg Add “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Sideshow” /v Disabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0x1 /f rem Using Powershell to perform Windows Services modifications Powershell Set-Service ‘BDESVC’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘wbengine’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘DPS’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘UxSms’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘Defragsvc’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘HomeGroupListener’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘HomeGroupProvider’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘iphlpsvc’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘MSiSCSI’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘swprv’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘CscService’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘SstpSvc’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘SSDPSRV’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘SysMain’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘TabletInputService’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘upnphost’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘VSS’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘SDRSVC’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘WinDefend’ -startuptype “disabled”
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Powershell Set-Service ‘WerSvc’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘ehRecvr’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘ehSched’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘WSearch’ -startuptype “disabled” Powershell Set-Service ‘wuauserv’ -startuptype “disabled” rem Making miscellaneous modifications bcdedit /set BOOTUX disabled vssadmin delete shadows /All /Quiet Powershell disable-computerrestore -drive c:\ netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off powercfg -H OFF net stop “sysmain” fsutil behavior set DisableLastAccess 1 rem Making modifications to Scheduled Tasks schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Defrag\ScheduledDefrag” /Disable schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\SystemRestore\SR” /Disable schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Registry\RegIdleBackup” /Disable schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows Defender\MPIdleTask” /Disable schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows Defender\MP Scheduled Scan” /Disable schtasks /change /TN “\Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance\WinSAT”
For more information, visit: www.simplivity.com
® 2015, SimpliVity. All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice. SimpliVity, the SimpliVity logo, OmniCube, OmniStack, and Data Virtualization Platform are trademarks or registered trademarks of SimpliVity Corporation in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. J442-VDI-RA-EN-1215
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