Update on Sheridan's journey to large-scale desktop virtualization.

1. sheridancollege.ca
Desktop Virtualization at Sheridan:
Past, Present and Future
James Duncan Director, Information and Communication Technology
james.duncan@sheridancollege.ca
Ian Colquhoun Sr. Systems Architect / Team Lead
ian.colquhoun@sheridancollege.ca
Vicken Awakian Systems Administrator
vicken.awakian@sheridancollege.ca

2. sheridancollege.ca
Agenda
• Use cases for Desktop Virtualization at Sheridan
• Move from Pilot into large scale Production
• Move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)
• Overview of our Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Lessons Learned / Next Steps

3. sheridancollege.ca
Sheridan’s VDI use cases:
1. Academic Lab and Open Access Desktops
2. Administrative Desktops
3. Mobile Computing
4. Distance Education
5. ”Other”
Overall goal – common end user computing platform for anywhere, any device
access
Sheridan’s Use Cases for VDI
OVERVIEW

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• Replacement of traditional desktops with Zero Clients
(hardware terminals with no local CPU, GPU or disk storage)
• The user experience is largely the same as before; students
log in to use a Windows desktop with a display, keyboard and
mouse
• Primarily used by non-mobile students
• Hardware costs (Zero Client + Infrastructure + Licensing) is
slightly less expensive than previous desktops used; additional
savings when factoring in ease of management
• Funded by existing lease streams – separated into capital
hardware costs (Zero Client) and lease infrastructure costs
(Storage + Servers)
Over 800 Zero Clients
deployed
Trafalgar, HMC, and Davis
Learning Commons and
some selected labs
Various Dell Wyse Zero
Clients
Academic Desktops
OVERVIEW – USE CASES

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Staff Desktops
OVERVIEW – USE CASES
• As with Academic Lab / Learning Commons machines, these
replace traditional desktops in staff / faculty areas
• Can be used in a 1:1 user/device model, or can be highly effective
in hoteling scenarios, where staff or faculty use any available
device but need a consistent computing experience
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) similar to academic computing;
additional savings possible if VDI enables hoteling rather than
dedicated machines
• Funded by existing lease streams or departmental cost transfers

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Mobile Computing
OVERVIEW – USE CASES
• Migration from College-provided hardware (Rent and Lease to
Own) to “bring your own device” (BYOD) created support issues
for IT and user experience issues for some students & faculty
when trying to use applications in a highly heterogeneous
computing environment
• VDI can provide a standardized desktop environment for students
and faculties again where software is most problematic
• Students access the desktop using a Horizon View client from their
laptops (Windows or OS X)
• Associated cost is per-VM only (no Zero Client required)

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Distance Education
OVERVIEW – USE CASES
• Similar challenge as Mobile Computing (supporting College
software in a ‘bring your own device’ paradigm), except students
are not on campus
• Provides remote access to a standardized computing environment
• Some software is difficult to support remotely, or the vendor may
not allow for it to be installed on computers not owned by the
College
• As with mobile computing, cost is for VMs only

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Other use cases
OVERVIEW – USE CASES
• Provide Windows desktops in an otherwise OS X lab environment
(e.g. where most software required by program runs in OS X but
some runs only in Windows)
• Software upgrade pilots / trials (e.g. Windows + Office)
• Providing access to legacy software versions (e.g. Office 2010)
• Others?

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Various Project Phases
PROJECTS
• Pilot (2011-14)
• Proof of Concept in satellite campus labs and Learning Commons
• Production (2013/14)
• Infrastructure Design
• Infrastructure Deployment
• Open Access Labs and Learning Commons Zero Client
Deployment
• Expansion (2014-2016)
• Distance Education
• Mobile Computing
• Administrative Users
• Move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (2017)

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Move to HCI
PROJECTS
• Past Infrastructure
• Came off lease at end of 2016
• “FlexPod” architecture – Cisco UCS + NetApp
• Strategic decision to move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
• Lower overall cost of ownership
• More predictable cost modelling
• Linear scalability
• RFP Process
• Evaluated a number of HCI offerings, selected VMware VSAN (deployed on
our current Server Platform of Record – Cisco UCS)
• Migration Project
• Upgrade to VMware Horizon View 7 in conjunction with migration to VSAN

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Where We Were
INFRASTRUCTURE
• VMware View 5.3
• traditional hardware layout (based on FlexPod)
• Cisco C240 M3 server nodes
• datastores NFS from NetApp arrays
• 2 clusters located in 2 separate datacentres
• single namespace – desktop.sheridancollege.ca
• facilitated by complex load balancing
configuration (F5)
• went live while F5 config was still in beta!

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INFRASTRUCTURE
Horizon View 7 High-Level
• Utilizes datacenters in both HMC and
Trafalgar campuses for scale and site
redundancy
• Multiple servers in each datacenter to
provide additional scale and redundancy
• Load Balancers provide automatic failover
and load distribution
• Employs Hyper-Converged architecture
(VMware vSAN) to simplify management,
allow cost predictability, leverage linear
scalability

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Server Configuration
INFRASTRUCTURE
• Cisco UCS C240 M4S2 – 10 per campus
• 2 CPUs (14 cores each) (Xeon E5-2690 v4)
• 512GB RAM (16 x 32GB DIMMs)
• 1 x 800GB Ent. SAS SSD 12 Gpbs (vSAN cache)
• 3 x 960GB Ent. SATA SSD 6 Gpbs (vSAN capacity)
• Teradici PCoIP offload cards
• 26 TB per site total
• supports VM density of 80-100:1 (or more)

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F5 iApp vs. CloudPod
INFRASTRUCTURE
• we used the F5 View5 iApp to allow a single
namespace to be presented into our two clusters
• bleeding edge at the time, no one else was doing
multi-site load balancing for View
• the iApp would do lookups into the View Events
database to find valid existing sessions for the
user and into Active Directory to establish home
site for the user for persistent pools based on
groups
• unfortunately somewhat unstable and lead to
odd, hard to diagnose problems
• upgrading to View 7 allowed us to leverage the
CloudPod feature instead

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F5 iApp vs. CloudPod
INFRASTRUCTURE
• our CloudPod contains 2 pods (clusters)
• each cluster is a “site”
• each site is aware of global pool entitlements as
well as the state of all current sessions
• a user can be assigned a home site which allows
those with access to persistent pools to always
make it to their desktop regardless of which site
they connect to
• existing sessions to non-persistent pools can be
reestablished regardless of which site they
connect to
• load balancing simplified!

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DESKTOP POOLS
Currently running 7 pools on 2 sites
(14 pools total)
five floating
two Dedicated
Requirements for the Desktop pools
were derived from users and
assessment tool.
Baked in apps on demand/roaming
apps and ThinApps.
And a mix of Global and local
Entitlements

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GLOBAL ENTITLEMENTS
Defining Global Entitlements
Name, Display protocol, HTML
Access, pools.
AD groups have access to Global
Entitlement or Local
Entitlements
Global Entitlements everywhere
except if you want to honor
Connection server restrictions.
Academic
Desktop
acd_traf
acd_miss
Student Faculty
Groups
Pools

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Two Scenarios
GLOBAL ENTITLEMENTS
Academic
Desktop
acd_traf
acd_miss
Student Faculty
Pools
Admin Desktop
adm_traf
adm_miss
Staff Faculty
Pools
Floating Dedicated

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• Cost modelling
• Governance of extra capacity
• Software/App Store - deliver apps instead of full desktops for mobile computing
• HTML5 (Blast Access) instead of full client
• App Volumes
Next Steps
DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

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Thank You