VDI:
What Does it Mean,
Deploying challenges &
Will It Save You Money?
Jack Watts, Senior Sales Executive & Cloud Solutions Specialist
Distributor and Systems Integrator since
1992
HQ in UK, with offices in Germany,
France, India, USA
Deliver cutting edge technology for
Servers / Storage / Workstations
5,000+ Customer Deployments With 900PB+ Under NexentaStor Management 100% Software Solution, based on
Open Source plus 8 Years of R&D by 130+ Top Class Engineers and strong patent portfolio Validated by Strategic Partners Including Supermicro, Dell, Cisco, VMware and Citrix Worldwide Service and Support
Enterprise-Class, Cost Effective, Flexible and Scalable Storage Solutions
Certified on
•
What is VDI?
•
Storage Deployment challenges for VDI
•
How you can save money with Boston/Nexenta
solution
•
Boston Igloo storage
•
Nexenta Connect
•
Further research
•
Visit Boston and Nexenta stand
•
Links to blogs/websites for further reading
• Boston
• Nexenta
• Gartner
• Citrix
What is VDI?
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI,
Deployment Challenges
Storage Performance considerations
• Need equal or better performance than PC
• Requires low latency to deliver good end user experience
• High Write IOPS due to user profile updates need more resources than high read requirements
• Boot/login storms necessitate sizing for overall peak performance requirements therefore need more spindles
High performance storage required to support workload means that storage costs severely impact VDI deployment
Monitoring
• Storage Calibration – ensuring storage resources are applied for the right desktops • No insight into performance at the desktop level
Different categories of user require different levels of performance therefore important to understand when and where additional storage resources are required
How you can save money with
Boston/Nexenta solution
Citrix Ready Capacity Validation Program – Benchmark 750 Desktop Solutions
Citrix Validation Test
• Early in 2014, Citrix launched a new programme to assist customers to
ensure they could address their storage needs for implementing XenDesktop appropriately.
• Citrix constructed a turnkey “VDI Capacity” test rig to allow customers the opportunity to assess different options in the market for storage when running VDI workloads
• Test rig designed to simulate 750 VDI users.
• Multiple vendors invited to test their solutions on this rig
• Tests focus on provisioning the appropriate amount of storage – performance and capacity in a cost efficient design. The test runs for a period of one day to simulate all typical eventualities.
• Login VSI is used to generate the VDI workloads and to measure
Solution Components/Architecture Design
The Citrix VDI test environment required at least 32TB of logical storage but due to the compression delivered by NexentaStor, only 16.5TB physical storage was required. The total
logical storage delivered by the Nexenta solution was calculated at 118TB.
Boston Igloo NX-Stor Series
Unified NAS & SAN, supporting iSCSI, FC, CIFS/SMB, NFS & FTP Protocols Web GUI for simple operation & CLI / SSH access for advanced management Enterprise level feature set through ZFS file system
High Availability cluster options for NAS, FC & iSCSI
High performance through integrated ZFS SSD & DRAM caching
Virtual GPU Technology
Key Features
Boston NVIDIA Grid Host System
Up to 32 High-End Users and Up to 64 Knowledge Users 20 CPU Cores @ 2.8GHz
256GB ECC-Registered 1866 DDR3 per node
4x SanDisk Enterprise Class 2TB 2.5” SAS 2.0 SSD Drives Dual Port 10/40GbE connectivity
Dual Redundant high efficiency power supplies
Software & Support
• Citrix/VMware environment
• NexentaConnect Installed and configured
• Boston 3 Years On-site Next Business Day Warranty • On-Site Installation
Stateless (Floating) VDI
Existing Storage Architecture Shared Nothing Architecture
Workloads: Call Centers, Healthcare, Standard Office Workers, Kiosks Additional Components: User Profile Management
Location Benefit
Desktop Images NexentaConnect Low Latency High Performance User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache
Location Benefit
Desktop Images NexentaConnect with Any Array
Use existing storage Cached images User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity
Increased Cache
Desktop Images
User Data User Data
Persistent (Dedicated) VDI
NexentaConnect Based Architecture
Workloads: Graphics Workers, Executive Workers Additional Components: User Profile Management
Location Benefit
Desktop Images NexentaConnect Low Latency High Performance User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity
Increased Cache
NexentaStor only Architecture
Location Benefit
Desktop Images Any Array Use existing storage
User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache
User Data
Desktop Images User Data
Summary
• Super Micro server/storage platform combined with Nexenta software solutions provide the lowest cost per virtual desktop (based on Citrix validation methodology)
• Nexenta Connect provides an efficient way to deploy storage in a VDI environment utilising SSD and RAM combined with data reduction techniques to maximise performance and minimise cost
• Nexenta Connect provides insight into deployment and ongoing management of virtual desktop and storage usage at a desktop granular level – helps with maintaining user experience and
decisions on when and where to add additional resources
• Super Micro platform provides enterprise class performance, scalability and resiliency
• Solution will support all deployment options – persistent and stateless
Further Research
Come and visit us @
– Stand H1 – Stand HH1 Useful links for further reading;
• http://blogs.gartner.com/gunnar-berger/the-real-cost-of-vdi-storage/ • http://www.citrix.com/cms/ready/files/1713/9826/9812/CR_VDI_ Whitepaper_Nexenta.pdf • www.boston.co.uk • http://nexenta.com/products/nexentaconnect
