Flash Storage Optimizing
Virtual Desktop Deployments
Ashok Rajagopalan
UCS Product Management
May 2014
In Collaboration with Intel ®
Cisco Confidential 2
© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
“Old Fashioned” VDI (circa 2012) was Financially Unattractive to Most
Source: 2011 Morgan Stanley Desktop Survey
Server, Storage and Networking on average
comprise 50% of solution TCO per desktop
$160
$125
$40
$150
$125
$50
Storage
Server
Networking
Endpoint
Broker
Licensing
Average Cost per Virtual Desktop ($)
In 2014:
Flash Storage, Server
Performance, and even
cloud, have evolved to
drop the TCO and
improve the ROI of VDI
Before:
✕ Protracted ROI
✕ Bloated TCO
Cisco Confidential 3
© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Your Customer’s Client Computing Challenges / Imperatives
The Economics of Flash is Top of Mind
Higher Performance & Efficiency = lower VDI TCO than traditional disk
Parity Research Wikibon
WHY?
Your customers are
increasingly looking to
flash technologies to
reduce the cost of
performance-
demanding
applications like VDI
Cisco Confidential 4
© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Server
Application CPU PCIe Flash Card/SSD
2
3
1
4
EFDFC HDD
SATA HDD
• Reads are serviced by the server
• Writes are usually passed through to the Storage array
Network Storage
Switch RAID Controller SSD/HDD
Read latency : ~“<100 μs ”
Write latency : ~“550 μs -11 ms”
4
3
5
6
8 7
9
* VNX 7500 w/20 SSD and 20 HDDs drives (SSD latency – HDD latency ) Typical loads (e.g. outstanding I/O). Typical = 32 outstanding IO.
Server Caching
Cisco Confidential 5
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IOPS and R/W Mix
OS Boots/Reboot User Logon Application First Run AV Scans AV Definition Update Steady State Log Off
Read 90% 60% 50% 80% 20% 20% 20%
Write 10% 40% 50% 20% 80% 80% 80%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0
10
20
30
40
Total IOPS
Cisco Confidential 6
© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Flash within server
PCIe flash
Flash SSD
External storage
Flash caching with traditional storage
Hybrid storage
All-flash storage
Flash Storage Options
Cisco Confidential 7
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Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solution Architectures
Cisco Desktop and Application Virtualization Solutions
Converged
Infrastructure
Scalable
Architecture
Simplified
Architecture
On-Board
Architecture
Storage “Appliance”
model
medium scale
Integrated Solution with
Tier-0 Storage on Server
Scale-out environment
with shared storage
medium & large scale
Turnkey Solutions with
integrated compute
stacks
medium & large scale
UCS Invicta
Eco system Designs
Industry-
leading
portfolio
With Intel ®
Xeon ® processor
Cisco Confidential 8
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On-Board Architecture
UCS with UCS Storage Accelerator
Best-in-class solution for VMware View pooled/floating
desktops
Linked clones and replicas on storage accelerator for fast
boot and login
50% reduction in storage costs compared to traditional
shared storage
Ease of management through UCS Manager rather than
complex SAN management
Small building blocks reducing the marginal cost of
desktops
32x reduction in power with no floor footprint on per
desktop basis
Reduces TCO with reduction in power, cooling, rack
space, SAN mgmt, and operational costs
Cisco UCS
UCS Storage Accelerator
• UCS Storage Accelerator – Fusion IO
785GB, LSI 365GB
• Integrated Management with UCS
Manager
• Predictable and linear performance with
scale
With Intel ®
Xeon ® processor
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On-Board Architecture
High-level Topology
Existing Storage
• User Shares
• Profiles
Server Hypervisor
and VDI Platform
UCS Storage Accelerator
• Clones Connection Clients
Brokers
Thin Client
Laptop
Desktop
With Intel ® Xeon ® processor
Cisco Confidential 10
© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Prescriptive, Validated
Configurations, Eliminating
the Guesswork
Minimized Up-Front
Capital Outlay
Built-in Scalability as Your
Business Demand Grows
Accelerated Path to ROI with
VDI and App Virtualization
Get Started Now with Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions
For Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp
More info: http://bit.ly/1cZJfeG
Economical Solution Bundles That Deliver
Cisco Confidential 11
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Key Benefits of Cisco UCS for Desktop Virtualization
Simple, Resilient Architecture
for Deploying Desktop Virtualization
ARCHITECTURE
Linear Scalability and Performance from
100 to 1000’s of Desktops Without a Change in Architecture
SCALABILITY
Providing the Right Balance of Memory, I/O and CPU
Is the Key to Cost-Effective Scalability
BALANCED SYSTEM
Rapid Provisioning with Cisco UCS Manager for Ease of Scale
SIMPLICITY
Reducing Risk and Accelerating Deployment
Through Validation
VALIDATED DESIGNS
With Intel ® Xeon ® processor
Cisco Confidential 12
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