Interactive VDI Design
1    Workshop
                                                  Team member 1, Team member 2
                                                                    NutanixTeam




    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
2   Session Interactivity


    • If Tweeting about this session, please use
      @Nutanix in your tweet.




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
3   VDI Technical Components

                HOW THE DESKTOPS ARE DELIVERED



                                                                       VDI
          WHERE THE DESKTOPS RUN
                                                      COMPUTE

    WHERE THE DESKTOPS LIVE                            STORAGE
                              NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
4
4

        STORAGE –
    BUILDING THE BASE
       FOR SUCCESS



        NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
5   The Biggest On-Going Lie




                   NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
6   Storage Design

Infrastructure Gotcha's
     Network Interconnect
     Limited number of storage Controllers

Performance is King
    Random steady state I/O attributes of Virtual Desktop (results in
    excess spindle count)
    Reads are Easy, Writes are Hard
    Overprovisioning of storage required for acceptable performance
    (expensive)
    Network interconnect often becomes a bottleneck


                         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
7   IO Dispersion
    Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are
    broken down into the following six different types:
    • Operating System Template
    • Master Replica
    • Parent Replica
    • Linked Clone – Composed of Delta Footprint + Log + User Data Disk.
    • Persistent Disk – Optional, and ideally not used for Stateless Desktop
    • Disposable Disk




                           NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
8    IO Dispersion

    Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic
    • Replica on SSD storage

    • Offload operations
         •C: - System disk
         •Profile -View Virtual Profiles
         •User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory
         •Applications –Streamed ThinApp




                            NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
9     IO Dispersion – XenDesktop
 Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are
 broken down into the following types:
 Machine Creation Services                                         Provisioning Services (PVS)
 (MCS)                                                             • Master vDisk
 • Master Image                                                    • Difference Disk
 • Master Snapshot                                                 • Write Cache
 • Host Snapshot                                                   • PvDisk – Optional
 • Difference Disk                                                                                     Master vDisk

 • ID Disk                                                                      VM        R/O Image
                                                                                                           File


 • PvDisk – Optional
        VM                                                                                Streamed
                                                                                          from PVS
                             Host
                    Read
                           Snapshot
          Write
                            (R/O)
                                                                                                      PVS Server/ VM
ID DIsk       Difference
                                                                                      Write Cache
                 Disk


                                                                                    Compute Host
           Compute Host

                                      NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
10   IO Dispersion
 Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic
 • Replica on SSD storage

 • Offload operations
      •C: - System disk
      •Profile -View Virtual Profiles / Citrix UPM
      •User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory
      •Applications –Streamed ThinApp, Streamed XenApp, or Hosted
      XenApp




                         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
11


        COMPUTE –
     Squeezing Them In




         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
12   How Many VM’s Can Fit in this sucker?




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
13   How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker?
      CPU




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
14   How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker?
      RAM




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
15   Setting Memory Reservation




                   NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
16   32 is the New 8
      Cluster Size




                       NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
17   Why Not 10,000 Users per vCenter?




                   NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
18   Pods & Blocks




                     NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
19     Pods & Blocks
     Pods
        • User/datacenter
        • Security boundaries
        • BCDR requirements
        • Networking
        • Stretching the StorageFailure domains


     Blocks
         • Pool Types
         • Administration
         • Operational Impactsizing


                             NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
20   Brokers




               NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
21
21


     Delivering the Desktop




           NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
22   Load Balancers




                      NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
23   Networking
 • Mark the Traffic
 • WRED FTW!
 • Scanvenger
 • USB Traffic
 • Stay under 80%
 • 200kps for average user
 • Application Streaming
 • Subnet sizing
     •/25 /24/ /23 /22




                         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
Networking - Optimize your Protocol for your
24
   Use Case
 • Frame Rate
 • Bandwidth Floor
 • Min & Max Image Quality
 • Audio Limit
 • Group Policy
 • Caching




                        NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
25   Picking your ClientsEnd Point
 • Managed  Unmanaged
 • Security
 • Repurposing
 • Future Plans  Upgrades




                         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
26   Security Considerations
 • vShield Manager
 • App Zone
 • Data Security
 • EndPoint
 • Certificates




                     NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
27   Security Considerations – Authentication
 • Password
 • Smartcards
 • Kiosk Mode
 • Radius
 • Copy and Paste
 • USB – Allow or Disallow




                         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
28   Application Deployment
 • Do What Works For You
 • ThinApp, XenApp & App-V – The Bubble
      • Stream or Not to Stream
      • Compression
      •ThinReg vs SDK
 • Unidesk & Mirage – Layering
 • ProfileUnity – GUI & Scripts
 • Horizon
 • All of the above will have impact on
   storage & performance




                       NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
29   User Personalization
 • Test, Test, Test
 • ViewPersona - RTO
 • Unidesk & Mirage – Layering
 • ProfileUnity
 • All of the above will have impact on
   storage & performance




                           NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
30   Persistent vs Non-Persistent

 Persistent                                              Non-Persistent
 • Quick logon                                         • Delete instead of fix
 • Like a regular desktop to maintain                  • Spare Pool
 • Easier to find the desktop                          • Survival of ADAM errors
 • Infrastructure people will love                     • Larger impact on IO
 • Hardier recovery                                    • Profile Management Needed
                                                       • InfoBlox
 • Other considerations
     • Pool Size
     • Power On/Power Off




                          NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
31   AD Blunders That Can Hurt You

 • Configure all DC’s as Global Catalog Servers
 • Missing Subnets in AD
     • Closet Domain Controller
 • DNS Aging & Scavenging
 • Orphaned DC’s




                     http://carlwebster.com/briforum-2012-chicago
                           NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
32
32


     KEY CONSIDERATIONS
         FOR SUCCESS




         NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
CONSIDERATION 1
TRADITIONAL OR
CONVERGED?


                  33
34   Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
     A massive strain on legacy traditional infrastructure




                                          QuickTime™ and a
                                        H.264 decompressor
                                 are needed to see this picture.




                        NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
35   The SSD Band-Aid
     ...that doesn’t solve the real problem




                        NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
36   Nutanix Converged Virtualization Appliance




                   Dramatically Lower TCO with True Convergence
                   Built-In Enterprise-Grade Data Management
                      NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
Consideration 2
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY
PILOT VDI


                      37
38   1) What gear for the Pilot?




                                 OR


                     NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
41   Rapid Desktop Program - for POC’s

     • Only 85LBs per Nutanix appliance
     • Hundreds of VMs
     • Shrink from half-rack to
       transit cases
     • Turnkey with VDI
       already installed*

       *not available for secured enclaves
                        NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
CONSIDERATION 3
HOW DO YOU SCALE-
OUT, cost effectively?


                         42
43   Target lock?
                                                                              600 more
          CORRECTION
                                                                               users!

           $$$$$ - WASTE - $$$$$

                                                                             2,000 users
                                                                               please!
        MEASURED ERROR



                                             PERFECT
                                               VDI
        REFERENCE




                               NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
44   Target lock!

         CORRECTION
                                                                    600 more
                                                                     users!
                               PERFECT
         REFERENCE
                                 VDI
                                                                     2,000
                                                                     users
                                                                    please!



                      NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
45    True Scale-Out VDI




     Provisioned 300 desktops on each Nutanix CVA & scaled LINEARLY to 3,000
                             NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
CONSIDERATION 4
WHERE SHOULD YOU
FOCUS?


                   47
48   The MANY Layers of VDI




                   NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
CONSIDERATION 5
COST



                  49
50   VDI Cost Breakdown: Traditional Architecture




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
53   VDI Cost Comparison: Scale-Out
                                                                   inefficient
                                                                   scale-out




                  additional costs
                      of entry




                                       Virtual Desktop Users
                     NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
54   Q&A - Next Steps




                    NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY

Nutanix vdi workshop presentation

  • 1.
    Interactive VDI Design 1 Workshop Team member 1, Team member 2 NutanixTeam NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 2.
    2 Session Interactivity • If Tweeting about this session, please use @Nutanix in your tweet. NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 3.
    3 VDI Technical Components HOW THE DESKTOPS ARE DELIVERED VDI WHERE THE DESKTOPS RUN COMPUTE WHERE THE DESKTOPS LIVE STORAGE NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 4.
    4 4 STORAGE – BUILDING THE BASE FOR SUCCESS NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 5.
    5 The Biggest On-Going Lie NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 6.
    6 Storage Design Infrastructure Gotcha's Network Interconnect Limited number of storage Controllers Performance is King Random steady state I/O attributes of Virtual Desktop (results in excess spindle count) Reads are Easy, Writes are Hard Overprovisioning of storage required for acceptable performance (expensive) Network interconnect often becomes a bottleneck NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 7.
    7 IO Dispersion Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are broken down into the following six different types: • Operating System Template • Master Replica • Parent Replica • Linked Clone – Composed of Delta Footprint + Log + User Data Disk. • Persistent Disk – Optional, and ideally not used for Stateless Desktop • Disposable Disk NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 8.
    8 IO Dispersion Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic • Replica on SSD storage • Offload operations •C: - System disk •Profile -View Virtual Profiles •User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory •Applications –Streamed ThinApp NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 9.
    9 IO Dispersion – XenDesktop Tiered storage is defined with a single aggregate, but volumes are broken down into the following types: Machine Creation Services Provisioning Services (PVS) (MCS) • Master vDisk • Master Image • Difference Disk • Master Snapshot • Write Cache • Host Snapshot • PvDisk – Optional • Difference Disk Master vDisk • ID Disk VM R/O Image File • PvDisk – Optional VM Streamed from PVS Host Read Snapshot Write (R/O) PVS Server/ VM ID DIsk Difference Write Cache Disk Compute Host Compute Host NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 10.
    10 IO Dispersion Storage tiering – Manual vs Automatic • Replica on SSD storage • Offload operations •C: - System disk •Profile -View Virtual Profiles / Citrix UPM •User Data –Folder Redirection for Home Directory •Applications –Streamed ThinApp, Streamed XenApp, or Hosted XenApp NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 11.
    11 COMPUTE – Squeezing Them In NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 12.
    12 How Many VM’s Can Fit in this sucker? NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 13.
    13 How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker? CPU NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 14.
    14 How Many VM’s Can Fit In This sucker? RAM NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 15.
    15 Setting Memory Reservation NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 16.
    16 32 is the New 8 Cluster Size NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 17.
    17 Why Not 10,000 Users per vCenter? NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 18.
    18 Pods & Blocks NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 19.
    19 Pods & Blocks Pods • User/datacenter • Security boundaries • BCDR requirements • Networking • Stretching the StorageFailure domains Blocks • Pool Types • Administration • Operational Impactsizing NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 20.
    20 Brokers NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 21.
    21 21 Delivering the Desktop NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 22.
    22 Load Balancers NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 23.
    23 Networking • Mark the Traffic • WRED FTW! • Scanvenger • USB Traffic • Stay under 80% • 200kps for average user • Application Streaming • Subnet sizing •/25 /24/ /23 /22 NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 24.
    Networking - Optimizeyour Protocol for your 24 Use Case • Frame Rate • Bandwidth Floor • Min & Max Image Quality • Audio Limit • Group Policy • Caching NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 25.
    25 Picking your ClientsEnd Point • Managed Unmanaged • Security • Repurposing • Future Plans Upgrades NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 26.
    26 Security Considerations • vShield Manager • App Zone • Data Security • EndPoint • Certificates NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 27.
    27 Security Considerations – Authentication • Password • Smartcards • Kiosk Mode • Radius • Copy and Paste • USB – Allow or Disallow NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 28.
    28 Application Deployment • Do What Works For You • ThinApp, XenApp & App-V – The Bubble • Stream or Not to Stream • Compression •ThinReg vs SDK • Unidesk & Mirage – Layering • ProfileUnity – GUI & Scripts • Horizon • All of the above will have impact on storage & performance NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 29.
    29 User Personalization • Test, Test, Test • ViewPersona - RTO • Unidesk & Mirage – Layering • ProfileUnity • All of the above will have impact on storage & performance NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 30.
    30 Persistent vs Non-Persistent Persistent Non-Persistent • Quick logon • Delete instead of fix • Like a regular desktop to maintain • Spare Pool • Easier to find the desktop • Survival of ADAM errors • Infrastructure people will love • Larger impact on IO • Hardier recovery • Profile Management Needed • InfoBlox • Other considerations • Pool Size • Power On/Power Off NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 31.
    31 AD Blunders That Can Hurt You • Configure all DC’s as Global Catalog Servers • Missing Subnets in AD • Closet Domain Controller • DNS Aging & Scavenging • Orphaned DC’s http://carlwebster.com/briforum-2012-chicago NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 32.
    32 32 KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR SUCCESS NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 33.
  • 34.
    34 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure A massive strain on legacy traditional infrastructure QuickTime™ and a H.264 decompressor are needed to see this picture. NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 35.
    35 The SSD Band-Aid ...that doesn’t solve the real problem NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 36.
    36 Nutanix Converged Virtualization Appliance  Dramatically Lower TCO with True Convergence  Built-In Enterprise-Grade Data Management NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 37.
    Consideration 2 HOW TOSUCCESSFULLY PILOT VDI 37
  • 38.
    38 1) What gear for the Pilot? OR NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 39.
    41 Rapid Desktop Program - for POC’s • Only 85LBs per Nutanix appliance • Hundreds of VMs • Shrink from half-rack to transit cases • Turnkey with VDI already installed* *not available for secured enclaves NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 40.
    CONSIDERATION 3 HOW DOYOU SCALE- OUT, cost effectively? 42
  • 41.
    43 Target lock? 600 more CORRECTION users! $$$$$ - WASTE - $$$$$ 2,000 users please! MEASURED ERROR PERFECT VDI REFERENCE NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 42.
    44 Target lock! CORRECTION 600 more users! PERFECT REFERENCE VDI 2,000 users please! NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 43.
    45 True Scale-Out VDI Provisioned 300 desktops on each Nutanix CVA & scaled LINEARLY to 3,000 NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 44.
  • 45.
    48 The MANY Layers of VDI NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 46.
  • 47.
    50 VDI Cost Breakdown: Traditional Architecture NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 48.
    53 VDI Cost Comparison: Scale-Out inefficient scale-out additional costs of entry Virtual Desktop Users NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY
  • 49.
    54 Q&A - Next Steps NUTANIX INC. – CONFIDENTIAL AND PROPRIETARY

Editor's Notes

  • #6 20 IOPS is the big lie. If desktops needed only 20 IOPS we wouldn’t put SSD’s in our laptops! Thank god we have PCI-Flash! Operational they number is way higher. Recomposing, refreshes, updates, boot storms need to be accounted forPerformance fluctuations have high visibility and impact.
  • #8 Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operations
  • #9 Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operationsTalk Filers and Data movers being the bottle neck and yo-yoing the storage traffic
  • #10 Talk about he different architectures of MCS vs PVS.
  • #11 Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operationsTalk Filers and Data movers being the bottle neck and yo-yoing the storage traffic
  • #13 Talk about the merits of letting the array be the smart guy vs using a whiptail like device. Chance for more human error if you use all SSD array like violin or whiptail.Talk about the design impact off offload certain operations
  • #14 Reference states – 1 for XP , 2 is a must for most deploymentshypervisor is blind to is the type of workload that is being done , multimedia applications tend to struggle as physical cores become oversubscribed.Once you allocate 2 vCPU, your host hypervisor scalability will decrease because the CPU scheduler must do more work.
  • #15 Large pages will be broken down if memory pressure occurs in the system. If no memory pressure is detected on the host, i.e the demand is lower than the memory available, the ESX host will try to leverage large pages to have the best performance. Just calculate how big the Translation lookaside Buffer (TLB)is when a 2GB virtual machine use small pages (2048MB/4KB=512.000) or when using large pages 2048MB/2.048MB =1000. The VMkernel need to traverse the TLB through all these pages. And this is only for one virtual machine, imagine if there are 50 VMs running on the host. There is operational impact with taking off large pagesUsing Large pages shows a different memory usage level, but there is nothing to worry about. If memory demand exceeds the availability of memory, the VMkernel will resort to share-before-swap and compress-before-swap. Resulting in collapsed pages and reducing the memory pressure.
  • #16 Talk about the impact of setting a Memory Reservation
  • #17 Talk about Cluster size moving up now that Vmware supports bigger cluster sizes due to vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)I will advise at keeping it at 8 for the sake of operations
  • #19 Discussing Pod\\Block Design
  • #20 Discussing Pod\\Block Design
  • #21 Talk about the security servers in relation to connections serversTalk about the ADAM database and why it’s not like Normal Active DirectoryDoes anyone have something for Xen?
  • #23 Talk namespace and geo-dispersed podsF5 can manage user sessions across Pods Currently, Cisco ACE will not manage session state across View Pods. Cisco is working on resolution, need to see if this fixed or notLoad Balancers used in DMZ or on the Internal Network need to be Session-Aware. Can it handle the portocol your trying to deliver
  • #24 Talk namespace and geo-dispersed podsF5 can manage user sessions across Pods Currently, Cisco ACE will not manage session state across View Pods. Cisco is working on resolution, need to see if this fixed or notLoad Balancers used in DMZ or on the Internal Network need to be Session-Aware. Can it handle the portocol your trying to deliver
  • #25 Can someone add HDX infor?
  • #26 Zero Clients for the winSecurity impact of your decisionRepurposing is very hard for user adoptionHow flexible is your decision
  • #32 Aging and scavenging must be enabled in four placesdns serverdns server properties forward lookup zones reverse lookup zones