EMC provides a great whitepaper that delivers general sizing guidelines and best practices for end-user computing virtual desktops with their next-generation VNX storage architecture called EMC VSPEX. The new version was just recently released in October 2013; and provides sizing guidelines for up to 2,000 virtual desktops using VMware Horizon View 5.2.
VSPEX helps with server virtualization planning and configurations by incorporating extensive interoperability, functional, and performance testing by EMC. The 500, 1000, and 2000 virtual desktop environments are based on defined desktop workloads.
One important design consideration is that every virtual desktop deployment is unique, rarely do I come across two customers with the exact same requirements, VSPEX doesn't replace the need to do a full VDI assessment with a tool like Liquidware Labs' Stratusphere Fit and Lakeside Software's SysTrack MVP.
The VNX storage series provides both file and block access with a broad feature set, which makes it a great choice for end-user computing implementations.
VNX is a flash-optimized hybrid storage array which delivers automated tiering to provide the best performance for highly accessed data, while intelligently moving less frequently accessed data to lower-cost disks.
In EMC's VNX hybrid approach, only a small percentage of flash drives are required in the system. Those flash drives will provide a high percentage of the overall IOPS. The FAST CACHE and FAST VP tiers both block and file data across dissimilar drives and boosts the most active data to the cache.
The diagram below shows all the computer and resource connections.
To ensure maximum availability when designing the infrastructure solution for your virtual desktop deployment, you will need redundant network links for each vSphere host, the storage array, the switch interconnect ports, and the switch uplink ports. This not only provides redundancy, but also delivers additional network bandwidth.
The VSPEX solution uses the VNX5400 (for up to 1,000 virtual desktops) or the VNX5600 (for up to 2,000 virtual desktops).
The first building block can contain up to 500 virtual desktops with ten SAS drives in a FAST Cache enabled storage pool as shown below.
The second building block can contain up to 1,000 virtual desktops. It contains 15 SAS drives in a FAST cache enabled pool as shown below.
The table below shows a simple list of the disks required to support different configuration scales, excluding hot spare needs. These are currently verified on the VNX series.
Now that we have reviewed the quantity of disks required, let's look at the cores storage layout in the VNX5400 to support 1,000 desktop virtual machines. The layout includes disks for the VNX system, FAST Cache, hot spares, and the virtual desktop pools. This doesn't include space for user profile data.
The following drives are used in this solution to support 1,000 virtual desktops:
- Four SAS disks are used for the VNX OE
- One SSD and one SAS hot spare
- Fifteen SAS disks in the RAID5 storage pool are used to store virtual desktops
- Two flash drives are used for the EMC VNX FAST Cache
The following drives are used in this solution to support 2,000 virtual desktops:
- Four SAS disks are used for the VNX OE
- One SSD and two SAS hot spare
- Thirty SAS disks in the RAID5 storage pool are used to store virtual desktops
- Four flash drives are used for the EMC VNX FAST Cache
The VSPEX for End-User Computing whitepaper is 152 pages, and covers the entire Horizon View deployment including a section on Horizon Workspace. It is a fantastic reference guide to use in the early stages of your VDI logical design, especially if you are going to be utilizing the next-generation VNX storage architecture.
In closing, I wanted to share with you the VNX series hardware capabilities matrix and give you a sense of where the VNX5400 and VNX5600 are in the VNX series lineup.
