The document provides a reference architecture for deploying 3000 virtual desktops using Nutanix Complete Clusters with VMware vSphere 5 and View 5. It details the setup of a 50 node Nutanix cluster, including compute, storage, and networking configurations. Performance tests were run using the VMware RAWC tool to simulate a morning login boot storm and daily user workload across the 3000 virtual desktops. Test results showed the infrastructure could handle the workload with predictable performance even at scale.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Reap better SQL Server OLTP performance with next-generation Dell EMC PowerEd...Principled Technologies
These new servers achieved up to 36.1 percent more OLTP database work than current-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers, while also lowering application response time
Drive new initiatives with a powerful Dell EMC, Nutanix, and Toshiba solution...Principled Technologies
A Dell EMC XC Series cluster featuring Nutanix software and powered by Toshiba PX05S SAS SSDs delivered strong database performance with a blend of structured and unstructured data
Create useful data center health visualizations with Dell iDRAC Telemetry Ref...Principled Technologies
Dell EMC™ has recently released Telemetry Reference tools for the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). The Telemetry Reference toolset enables data center engineers to ingest and structure telemetry data streams for visualization with Elastic Stack software. This report serves as a how-to guide for setting up and configuring these components within your own environment.
The switching method you choose for your SBC environment can help determine performance and the experience that end-users have. We found that unifying switching with Cisco VM-FEX resulted in up to 29 percent lower latency than a solution using a traditional vSwitch when running a Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop farm. Furthermore, the Cisco VM-FEX solution used up to 53 percent less CPU than the vSwitch solution did under extreme network conditions. In addition to these performance advantages, Cisco UCS Manager provides a central point of management and a simplified method to add vSphere hosts to the VM-FEX-enabled vSwitch, which can reduce management time and costs.
As our results show, switching to Cisco VM-FEX can provide your users with a more responsive environment.
Reap better SQL Server OLTP performance with next-generation Dell EMC PowerEd...Principled Technologies
These new servers achieved up to 36.1 percent more OLTP database work than current-generation Dell EMC PowerEdge MX servers, while also lowering application response time
Drive new initiatives with a powerful Dell EMC, Nutanix, and Toshiba solution...Principled Technologies
A Dell EMC XC Series cluster featuring Nutanix software and powered by Toshiba PX05S SAS SSDs delivered strong database performance with a blend of structured and unstructured data
Create useful data center health visualizations with Dell iDRAC Telemetry Ref...Principled Technologies
Dell EMC™ has recently released Telemetry Reference tools for the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC). The Telemetry Reference toolset enables data center engineers to ingest and structure telemetry data streams for visualization with Elastic Stack software. This report serves as a how-to guide for setting up and configuring these components within your own environment.
Updated lifecycle management, improved analytics and support, and the option of Kubernetes — VMware vSphere® 7 is the biggest re-platform of vSphere in years. Learn more about the most significant vSphere evolution in a decade.
Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6005TmX9B
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS stora...Principled Technologies
Virtualization is a critical part of data center computing. For your virtualization solution to succeed, it is essential that you have a storage platform capable of delivering the performance and capacity needed for a virtualized environment in a cost effective way. The Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array, paired with a cluster of Dell PowerEdge M620 servers, ran 12 VMmark tiles for a total of 96 running VMs, and achieved a score of 14.80@12. This performance, along with its value and ease of management, make the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array an excellent investment.
Boosting virtualization performance with Intel SSD DC Series P3600 NVMe SSDs ...Principled Technologies
When it comes time to make your server purchase or if you’re looking for an easy way to boost performance of existing infrastructure, consider upgrading your server’s internal storage. As our hands-on tests with a Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 environment running VMware Virtual SAN proved, Intel SSD DC P3600 Series NVMe SSDs could increase virtualized mixed-workload performance by as much as 59.9 percent compared to SATA SSDs while allowing you to run a large additional number of VMs. When you improve performance for your virtualized workloads, your employees and customers will benefit. By increasing performance with Intel NVMe SSDs on your Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 servers, you can potentially slash wait times and do more work on your servers without having to expand your infrastructure with additional storage arrays, which can translate to happier users and a more efficient infrastructure.
Case Study: Developing a Vblock System-based Private Cloud Platform with Pupp...VCE
This presentation provides an overview and lessons learned from deploying a large-scale private cloud platform for a key VCE customer based on Vblock Systems, Puppet Enterprise and VMware vCloud suite. VCE Vblock Systems provide seamless integration of compute, storage, network and virtualization technologies, delivering fast time-to-value for customers deploying private cloud solutions. Puppet Enterprise is at the core of this solution, enabling rapid application deployment and dynamic configuration management to support business groups and IT security requirements such as SOX. This presentation also describes how Puppet Enterprise is integrated seamlessly with VMware vCloud suite and provides a self-service portal for provisioning and management of the solution.
Desktop virtualization is a hot topic throughout the virtualization industry. Organizations view desktop virtualization as a way to control costs and use limited resources to manage large-scale desktop infrastructures while increasing security and deployment efficiency. NetApp, VMware, Cisco, Fujitsu, and Wyse joined forces to create an architectural design for a 50,000-seat VMware® View™ architecture. This project demonstrates the most reliable methods for deploying a scalable and easily expandable environment from 5,000 to 50,000 seats in an efficient manner.
Get improved performance and new features from Dell EMC PowerEdge servers wit...Principled Technologies
We put 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processor-powered Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to the test with a variety of workloads to see the benefits and features your organization could expect from this latest offering
“Backup Exec 2014 is nearly three times faster
than Backup Exec 2010, and I can manage it in
about three to four hours per week—about one third
the time our previous version required.”
Paul Flatt
Infrastructure and Support Manager
Mitre 10 NZ
(read more on next to be shared Mitre10NZ Study Case...)
This White Paper describes the EMC Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution based on EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC HomeBase, which allows service providers to deliver backup services for cloud and traditional hosted environments, reduce storage space, increase backup speeds, and provide portal-based backup management.
If your business is considering using a hyperconverged
computer/storage solution rather than disparate dedicated appliances, a Nutanix storage cluster powered by Dell XC630 appliances could bring many benefits. Thanks to its powerful Dell servers with Intel processors, this space-efficient solution was able to handle nine SQL Server 2014 OLTP workloads at over 420,000 OPM, 160 mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2013, and file/print and web server disk workloads; that’s enough to meet your present demands and still have room for future growth. With software-defined tiered storage, high availability, and a redundant network architecture, the hyperconverged solution based on Dell XC630 appliances can help your business get the job done.
This technical paper discusses the deployment of a VMware environment and best practices in using IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) for its primary storage. To know more about the Network Attached Storage, visit http://ibm.co/SH8WJo.
Updated lifecycle management, improved analytics and support, and the option of Kubernetes — VMware vSphere® 7 is the biggest re-platform of vSphere in years. Learn more about the most significant vSphere evolution in a decade.
Learn more: http://ms.spr.ly/6005TmX9B
VMmark 2.5.2 virtualization performance of the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS stora...Principled Technologies
Virtualization is a critical part of data center computing. For your virtualization solution to succeed, it is essential that you have a storage platform capable of delivering the performance and capacity needed for a virtualized environment in a cost effective way. The Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array, paired with a cluster of Dell PowerEdge M620 servers, ran 12 VMmark tiles for a total of 96 running VMs, and achieved a score of 14.80@12. This performance, along with its value and ease of management, make the Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS array an excellent investment.
Boosting virtualization performance with Intel SSD DC Series P3600 NVMe SSDs ...Principled Technologies
When it comes time to make your server purchase or if you’re looking for an easy way to boost performance of existing infrastructure, consider upgrading your server’s internal storage. As our hands-on tests with a Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 environment running VMware Virtual SAN proved, Intel SSD DC P3600 Series NVMe SSDs could increase virtualized mixed-workload performance by as much as 59.9 percent compared to SATA SSDs while allowing you to run a large additional number of VMs. When you improve performance for your virtualized workloads, your employees and customers will benefit. By increasing performance with Intel NVMe SSDs on your Dell EMC PowerEdge R630 servers, you can potentially slash wait times and do more work on your servers without having to expand your infrastructure with additional storage arrays, which can translate to happier users and a more efficient infrastructure.
Case Study: Developing a Vblock System-based Private Cloud Platform with Pupp...VCE
This presentation provides an overview and lessons learned from deploying a large-scale private cloud platform for a key VCE customer based on Vblock Systems, Puppet Enterprise and VMware vCloud suite. VCE Vblock Systems provide seamless integration of compute, storage, network and virtualization technologies, delivering fast time-to-value for customers deploying private cloud solutions. Puppet Enterprise is at the core of this solution, enabling rapid application deployment and dynamic configuration management to support business groups and IT security requirements such as SOX. This presentation also describes how Puppet Enterprise is integrated seamlessly with VMware vCloud suite and provides a self-service portal for provisioning and management of the solution.
Desktop virtualization is a hot topic throughout the virtualization industry. Organizations view desktop virtualization as a way to control costs and use limited resources to manage large-scale desktop infrastructures while increasing security and deployment efficiency. NetApp, VMware, Cisco, Fujitsu, and Wyse joined forces to create an architectural design for a 50,000-seat VMware® View™ architecture. This project demonstrates the most reliable methods for deploying a scalable and easily expandable environment from 5,000 to 50,000 seats in an efficient manner.
Get improved performance and new features from Dell EMC PowerEdge servers wit...Principled Technologies
We put 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processor-powered Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to the test with a variety of workloads to see the benefits and features your organization could expect from this latest offering
“Backup Exec 2014 is nearly three times faster
than Backup Exec 2010, and I can manage it in
about three to four hours per week—about one third
the time our previous version required.”
Paul Flatt
Infrastructure and Support Manager
Mitre 10 NZ
(read more on next to be shared Mitre10NZ Study Case...)
This White Paper describes the EMC Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution based on EMC Avamar, EMC Data Protection Advisor, and EMC HomeBase, which allows service providers to deliver backup services for cloud and traditional hosted environments, reduce storage space, increase backup speeds, and provide portal-based backup management.
If your business is considering using a hyperconverged
computer/storage solution rather than disparate dedicated appliances, a Nutanix storage cluster powered by Dell XC630 appliances could bring many benefits. Thanks to its powerful Dell servers with Intel processors, this space-efficient solution was able to handle nine SQL Server 2014 OLTP workloads at over 420,000 OPM, 160 mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2013, and file/print and web server disk workloads; that’s enough to meet your present demands and still have room for future growth. With software-defined tiered storage, high availability, and a redundant network architecture, the hyperconverged solution based on Dell XC630 appliances can help your business get the job done.
This technical paper discusses the deployment of a VMware environment and best practices in using IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) for its primary storage. To know more about the Network Attached Storage, visit http://ibm.co/SH8WJo.
Fusion-io Virtualization Reference Architecture: Deploying Server and Desktop...Principled Technologies
In our testing, Fusion ioControl, Cisco UCS, and VMware technologies created a high-performance, easy-to-configure and manage solution that could handle a demanding mixed application environment consisting of common virtualized business applications and VDI. By prioritizing performance resources with ioControl QoS service levels and policies, we demonstrated that mission-critical and business-critical applications will run at optimum performance levels in a 600 virtual desktop boot storm, or an OLTP heavy-workload use case. By adding Fusion ioTurbine software and Cisco Fusion ioDrive2 into the UCS Blade Server, we further extended OLTP performance with no additional solution footprint. With the Fusion ioControl UI and ioSphere UI integration with vCenter Server, you can manage all aspects of storage, both ioControl and UCS-side Fusion ioDrive flash, from within vCenter console. Fusion ioControl Hybrid Storage and Cisco UCS is a strong solution to meet today’s demanding mixed workloads in your VMware virtualized data center.
Business-critical applications on VMware vSphere 6, VMware Virtual SAN, and V...Principled Technologies
Moving to the virtualized, software-defined datacenter can offer real benefits to today’s organizations. As our testing showed, virtualizing business-critical applications with VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN, and VMware NSX not only delivered reliable performance in a peak utilization scenario, but also delivered business continuity during and after a simulated site evacuation.
Using this VMware Validated Design with QCT hardware and Intel SSDs, we demonstrated a virtualized critical Oracle Database application environment delivering strong performance, even when under extreme duress.
Recognizing that many organizations have multiple sites, we also proved that our environment performed reliably under a site evacuation scenario, migrating the primary site VMs to the secondary in just over eight minutes with no downtime.
With these features and strengths, the VMware Validated Design SDDC is a proven solution that allows for efficient deployment of components and can help improve the reliability, flexibility, and mobility of your multi-site environment.
Customers are using NSX to drive business benefits as show in the figure below. The main themes for NSX deployments are Security, IT automation and Application Continuity.
Figure 3: NSX Use Cases
• Security:
NSX can be used to create a secure infrastructure, which can create a zero-trust security model. Every virtualized workload can be protected with a full stateful firewall engine at a very granular level. Security can be based on constructs such as MAC, IP, ports, vCenter objects and tags, active directory groups, etc. Intelligent dynamic security grouping can drive the security posture within the infrastructure.
NSX can be used in conjunction with 3rd party security vendors such as Palo Alto Networks, Checkpoint, Fortinet, or McAffee to provide a complete DMZ like security solution within a cloud infrastructure.
NSX has been deployed widely to secure virtual desktops to secure some of the most vulnerable workloads, which reside in the data center to prohibit desktop-to-desktop hacking.
• Automation:
VMware NSX provides a full RESTful API to consume networking, security and services, which can be used to drive automation within the infrastructure. IT admins can reduce the tasks and cycles required to provision workloads within the datacenter using NSX.
NSX is integrated out of the box with automation tools such as vRealize automation, which can provide customers with a one-click deployment option for an entire application, which includes the compute, storage, network, security and L4-L7 services.
6
Developers can use NSX with the OpenStack platform. NSX provides a neutron plugin that can be used to deploy applications and topologies via OpenStack
• Application Continuity:
NSX provides a way to easily extend networking and security up to eight vCenters either within or across data center In conjunction with vSphere 6.0 customers can easily vMotion a virtual machine across long distances and NSX will ensure that the network is consistent across the sites and ensure that the firewall rules are consistent. This essentially maintains the same view across sites.
NSX Cross vCenter Networking can help build active – active data centers. Customers are using NSX today with VMware Site Recovery Manager to provide disaster recovery solutions. NSX can extend the network across data centers and even to the cloud to enable seamless networking and security.
VMworld 2013: Architectural Changes in vCenter Platform VMworld
VMworld 2013
Eddie Dinel, VMware
Fausto Ibarra, VMware
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
The values of server virtualization are well understood today. Customers implement
server virtualization to increase server utilization, handle peak loads efficiently,
decrease total cost of ownership (TCO), and streamline server landscapes.
Similarly, storage virtualization helps to address the same challenges as server
virtualization. Storage virtualization also expands beyond the boundaries of physical
resources and helps to control how IT infrastructures adjust to rapidly changing
business demands. Storage virtualization benefits customers through improved
physical resource utilization and improved hardware efficiency, as well as reduced
power and cooling expenses. In addition, consolidation of resources obtained
through virtualization offers measurable returns on investment for today’s
businesses. Finally, virtualization serves as one of the key enablers of cloud
solutions, which are designed to deliver services economically and on demand.
Enterprise data-centers are straining to keep pace with dynamic business demands, as well as to incorporate advanced technologies and architectures that aim to improve infrastructure performance
Learn about IBM PureFlex Sytem and VMware vCloud Enterprise Suite. The IBM PureFlex System platform has been used to meet the hardware requirements in support of this reference architecture. All the components required to support vCloud Suite (including computing, networking, storage, and management interfaces). For more information on Pure Systems, visit http://ibm.co/J7Zb1v.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/210719868/IBM-pureflex-system-and-vmware-vcloud-enterprise-suite-reference-architecture
2. 1. Executive Summary..................................................................................................1
2. Introduction to Project Colossus.............................................................................2
2.1. Problem Statement and Purpose....................................................................2
3. Nutanix Complete Cluster Setup.............................................................................4
4. Networking Setup..................................................................................................5
5. Storage Setup...........................................................................................................6
Shared Nothing Distributed Architecture..............................................................7
Distributed Metadata.............................................................................................7
Distributed Metadata Cache..................................................................................7
Lock-free Concurrency Model................................................................................7
Distributed MapReduce for data/metadata consistency......................................7
Distributed Extent Cache........................................................................................8
6.1. VMware View 5 Configuration......................................................................................9
6.2. Guest VM Setup - Windows 7 Virtual Machine...........................................................10
7.Testing.....................................................................................................................11
7.1.Tools...............................................................................................................................11
7.2. Procedure......................................................................................................................13
8. Test Results.............................................................................................................16
9. Conclusion..............................................................................................................17
10. References............................................................................................................18
10.1. Table of Figures............................................................................................18
10.2. Table of Tables..............................................................................................18
11. Authors and Acknowledgements........................................................................19
Table of Contents
6. VMware View Set-up...............................................................................................9
3. 1 www.nutanix.com
EXECUTIVESUMMARY
1. Executive Summary
Introduction
This document provides a reference architecture for deploying virtual desktops using the Nutanix
Complete Cluster for the virtualized infrastructure. The testing was completed using VMware vSphere
5 as the hypervisor and VMware View 5 as the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) connection broker.
This reference architecture is intended for use by customer, field and reseller architects and engineers
who will be configuring VDI environments. The goal of this reference architecture is to demonstrate
the ease of deployment of a large-scale VDI environment using these products, with detailed perfor-
mance and configuration information of the testing that was done in a lab environment.
Unlike many VDI reference architectures that are available today from other vendors, the Nutanix
approach of modular scale-out enables customers to select any pod size and grow in more granular
50-75 virtual desktop increments. This removes the hurdle of a large up-front infrastructure purchase
that a customer will need many months or years to grow into, ensuring a faster time to value for the
VDI implementation.
The Nutanix Solution for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
The Nutanix Complete Cluster is a converged virtualization appliance for desktop and server virtualiza-
tion that merges enterprise storage with x86 servers into a single high-performance tier. This innovative
converged appliance approach delivers the only truly modular way to grow your datacenter, resulting
in predictable performance and radically simple scalability with each unit of growth, much like a Google
or Facebook datacenter. Each modular “block” includes compute, storage and networking along
with the vSphere 5 hypervisor preloaded so customers can start provisioning virtual machines in less
than 30 minutes.
A Nutanix Block ships as a rackable 2U unit containing four high-performance server nodes with local
storage to run and store virtual machines. Fusion-io ioDrives combined with heat-optimized tiering of
data deliver the high performance of SSDs at the cost of hard drives to tackle VDI performance issues
like boot storms with ease. This design greatly reduces overall cost and complexity while increasing
performance and scalability in a fully integrated VDI-in-a-box solution.
VMware View 5
VMware View enables the simplification of desktop and application management while providing
an optimized user experience with high security. View allows IT to centrally manage desktops, ap-
plications, and data while increasing flexibility and customization at the end-point for the user. This
enables higher availability and agility of desktop services unmatched by traditional PCs while reducing
the total cost of desktop ownership by up to 50%.
4. 2 www.nutanix.com
INTRODUCTIONTOPROJECTCOLOSSUS
2. Introduction to Project Colossus
Project Colossus is a fifty-node Nutanix cluster that is
used to demonstrate the linear scalability of the Nu-
tanix architecture from four nodes (one Block) to fifty
nodes (12.5 Blocks or 3/5 of a rack). In previous bench-
marking, Project Colossus delivered 375,000 random
write IOPS and 224 Gbps of sequential write band-
width.
In this reference architecture, we use the same config-
uration of 50 nodes to validate a large-scale VMware
View 5 environment. In architecting this environment,
we created a real world architecture that stressed both
the server and storage capabilities of the Nutanix Com-
plete Cluster architecture.
In this reference architecture, we will demonstrate the
ease of scaling from one Nutanix block of 300 virtual
desktops to ten blocks hosting 3,000 virtual desktops.
2.1. Problem Statement and Purpose
Sizing and architecting a virtualized infrastructure de-
ployment to ensure adequate performance has been
a consistent challenge since companies started virtual-
izing their servers over a decade ago.
Building a new virtualized infrastructure environment
for a use case like VDI usually requires planning and
budgeting for a system that will support current and
future needs. Administrators would rather have excess
capacity and performance versus not enough, which
may result in oversizing.
Once the infrastructure has been created, grow-
ing it can be a challenge. The need for more
compute resources requires the addition of mul-
tiple servers. As more storage is needed, more
disks are added to the SAN. As this type of en-
vironment grows, bottlenecks are often created. Typically, the remedy is to upgrade the stor-
age controllers or the infrastructure. In addition to being very expensive to build and main-
tain, this can create a piecemeal model that doesn’t scale easily and incurs high costs.
5. 3 www.nutanix.com
INTRODUCTIONTOPROJECTCOLOSSUS
Nutanix seeks to address these challenges with a scalable and predictable virtualization appli-
ance. The Nutanix Complete Cluster contains the compute, storage, and networking in one pack-
age for turnkey virtualization. This allows the administrator to grow the virtual infrastructure
in a much more efficient manner, adding a node at a time for a more granular scale-out of the
virtualized environment.
Many vendors offer pre-packaged virtualized infrastructure stacks that integrate existing compute,
storage and networking products, but only Nutanix has a truly converged, scale-out solution that
merges these individual tiers into a single tier for high-performance virtualization. The smaller build-
ing block size enables customers to buy only what they need, instead of buying and re-architecting a
large infrastructure stack that is both costly and may be more capacity than is actually needed.
With use of the VMware Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC), we set up an environ-
ment that scaled in one block increments to demonstrate how a customer’s initial deployment of 300
VMs could grow to 3000 VMs in a plug-and-play fashion with zero redesign and linear performance
scaling.
6. 4 www.nutanix.com
NUTANIXCOMPLETECLUSTERSETUP
3. Nutanix Complete Cluster Setup
The Nutanix Complete Cluster is comprised of Nutanix Blocks that are rackable 2U units that contain
four high-performance server nodes. Each of the ten Blocks in this reference architecture is configured
as follows:
Figure 1 - Nutanix Hardware
4 x86 Server Nodes Per 2U Nutanix Complete Block
Per x86 Server Node Per Nutanix Complete Block
Dual 6-core Intel Xeon
X5650 CPUs
8 CPUs/48 cores
96GB RAM 384GB RAM
320GB Fusion-io
PCIe SSD
300GB SATA SSD
5TB HDD (5x1TB;
7200 rpm SATA)
Power for Block: Dual (Active-Active) Configuration
1400W:180–240V, 50–60Hz, 7.0–9.5 Amp
1.3TB Fusion-io PCIe SSD
1.2TB SATA SSD
20TB HDD (15x1TB;
7200 rpm SATA)
7. 5 www.nutanix.com
NETWORKINGSETUP
4. Networking Setup
The Nutanix Complete Cluster uses 10 Gigabit Networking and is configured per VMware recommend-
ed best practices. Multiple VMkernel ports were configured to isolate the different types of network
traffic.
Figure 2 below illustrates the networking setup that can be used for multiple pods of Nutanix Blocks to
scale from 3,000 desktops to 12,000 desktops. Note that pods can be of any desired size.
Figure 2 - Network Diagram
8. 6 www.nutanix.com
5. Storage Setup
The Nutanix Complete Cluster is unique in its grow-as-you-go scalability, enabled by its scale-out archi-
tecture. Because the Nutanix virtualization appliance uses internal storage, the need for an external
storage network or SAN is removed from the architecture. This removes the bottlenecks that are cre-
ated when all the storage traffic needs to route from the ESX hosts to the SAN.
Nutanix Distributed File System (NDFS) is at the heart of Nutanix’ clustering technology. Inspired by the
Google File System, NDFS delivers a unified pool of storage from all nodes across the cluster, leverag-
ing techniques including striping, replication, auto-tiering, error detection, fail-over and automatic
recovery. This pool can then be sliced and diced to be presented as shared-storage resources to VMs
for seamless support of features like vMotion, HA and DRS, along with advanced data management
features. Additional nodes can be added in a plug and-play manner in this high-performance scale-out
architecture to build a cluster that will easily grow as your needs do.
NDFS uses virtual storage controllers, one per node, which control the management of local storage of
each node. In Figure 3, we illustrate how these storage controller VMs communicate with the other
ESX hosts (nodes) in the cluster create a clustered storage system. The Fusion-IO ioDrives create the top
tier of primary storage to provide high performance for most recently accessed data, and when the
data becomes cold, the heat-optimized tiering feature automatically migrates that data to the lower
tier of SATA HDDs.
STORAGESETUP
Figure 3 – Nutanix Distributed Scale-Out Architecture
Node 1 Node 2 ..............
SSDs HDDs
Virtual Machine/Virtual Disk
Node N
Controller VM Controller VM Controller VM..............
.... ............ .... ............ .... ............
9. 7 www.nutanix.com
Before the storage configuration details are discussed, it is good to know how the Nutanix Complete
Cluster’s storage differentiates from traditional storage arrays.
Shared Nothing Distributed Architecture
The Nutanix Complete Cluster is a pure distributed system. This means that the compute gets its stor-
age locally, and does not need to traverse the network. All the problems around network, interconnect
and core switch bottlenecks are avoided completely.
Distributed Metadata
A big problem affecting scalability in a traditional SAN is metadata access. Most storage arrays have
1-4 controller heads and all metadata access needs to go through these heads. This causes contention
issues and performance drops as more servers try to access the same storage array.
In the Nutanix Cluster, metadata is maintained in a truly distributed and decentralized fashion. Each
of the nodes in the Nutanix Cluster maintains a part of the global metadata, which means that there
is no single bottleneck for metadata access.
Distributed Metadata Cache
Most storage arrays do a very poor job of maintaining metadata caches. In storage arrays that do
have a metadata cache, the caches live on the limited number of controller heads. Access to the cache
is limited by the bottlenecks around the network, interconnect and switch as discussed above. In the
Nutanix Cluster, metadata is cached on each of the controller VMs.
Most metadata access is served up by cache lookups. Each controller VM maintains its own cache. This
means that however large the Nutanix Cluster grows as you continue to add nodes, the performance
cost of metadata access stays the same.
Lock-free Concurrency Model
The standard approach to ensuring correctness for metadata access is to use locking. Unfortunately, in
a distributed system, locking can become very complicated. Excessive locking can better ensure correct-
ness, but creates significant performance drag.
The Nutanix Cluster implements an innovative lock free concurrency model for metadata access. This
model ensures the correctness of metadata but at the same time ensures high performance.
Distributed MapReduce for Data/Metadata Consistency
For a large scale deployment, consistency checking for data and metadata becomes a challenge. The
Nutanix Complete Cluster implements a fully distributed MapReduce algorithm to ensure data and
metadata consistency. The distributed nature of the MapReduce implementation ensures that there is
no single bottleneck in the system. MapReduce has been shown by Google to scale to 1000’s of nodes,
and is a key ingredient in the incremental scalability of the Nutanix Cluster.
STORAGESETUP
10. 8 www.nutanix.com
STORAGESETUP
Distributed Extent Cache
Caching is not a new concept to storage arrays. The challenge however, is that caches are located
on the limited number of storage controllers in a storage array. Not only does the limited of stor-
age controllers cause contention, but the fact that these caches live in the storage array means
that access to cached data needs to traverse the core switch. This brings latencies around the net-
work, interconnect and switch that we discussed above. The Extent Cache caches the data served
up by the controller VM from local storage, and similar to the Metadata Cache, leverages the Fu-
sion-io ioDrives for high performance. The compute tier can easily access the cache locally without
having to hop across the network and the core switch. This approach helps enable incremental scale-
out while maintaining high performance.
11. 9 www.nutanix.com
6. VMware View Setup
6.1. VMware View 5 Configuration
The VMware View configuration settings used during all performance tests are shown in Table 1 below.
VMWAREVIEWSETUP
Table 1 - View 5 Pool Configuration
View 5 Configuration Details
Pool Definition
Desktop Pool Type
User Assignment
vCenter Server
Desktop VM provisioning type
Remote Desktop Power Policy
Default Display Protocol
Automated Pool
Persistent Desktops: Dedicated
with automatic assignment
View Composer Linked Clones
Take no power action
PCoIP
Persistent Disk
Provisioning
Datastores
All changes (writes to OS, temporary
system and application and user data)
are saved to persistent disk
View Composer Disks
Provisioning Settings
Pool Settings
Provision all desktops up-front
OS Disks on separate datastores from
replica disks. Storage over-commit set
for conservative
(1) 100GB VMFS 5 Datastore for
each replica
(8) 2TB VMFS 5 Datastores for
Linked clones
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6.2. Guest VM Setup - Windows 7 Virtual Machine
The operating system chosen for the testing was Windows 7 Enterprise x86.
Several desktop configurations were considered based on the virtual desktop user types. There are
three basic types of Desktop Users: Task Workers, Knowledge Users and Power Users. The most com-
mon type of virtual desktop users are Knowledge Users. Our Knowledge User desktop configuration
assumes approximately 9-12 IOPS average workload and 20 IOPS Peak during Boot and Logon.
The Windows 7 virtual machines for Knowledge Users were configured as follows:
• VMware Hardware Version 8
• Windows 7 SP1 x86 Enterprise Edition
• 1GB Ram
• 2 vCPU
• 40GB HDD (Thin Provisioned)
• 1 vNIC (VMXNET 3)
The virtual machine also had the following software installed.
• Microsoft Office 2007 with
• Outlook
• Word
• PowerPoint
• Excel
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.4
The Windows 7 Desktop Gold Image was optimized using the VMware View Optimization Guide
for Windows 7.
VMWAREVIEWSETUP
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7. Testing
The VMware Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC) 1.2 Tool was used to create a real
world workload for performance testing of the virtual desktops.
The VMs were provisioned using VMware View 5 View Composer’s Linked Clone technology.
7.1. Tools
RAWC generated all workloads in the environment, as indicated by the screenshot in Figure 6. The
selected applications were chosen in collaboration with VMware to generate an application mix-
ture that matched a Knowledge User workload of 9-12 IOPS/desktop. The following information is
also significant:
• SendMail on a Linux VM was used for IMAP e-mail access.
• The virtual desktops were set to run Outlook in cached mode.
All logins with workload scenarios were conducted in the same manner. Users logged in over PCoIP
through RAWC. On average, 5 logins were initiated every 3 seconds, and all logins were completed
within 28 minutes. To achieve this, 60 RAWC launchers were used. The launchers were each configured
to log into one virtual desktop every 15 seconds. The launchers were logged in themselves every 5
seconds serially. After 3 minutes, all launchers were setting up new PCoIP sessions concurrently every
15 seconds.
The launching of a test run simulates a morning logon boot storm and the test workload would simu-
late a user workload. The testing used the default login rates as defined in the RAWC Administration
Guide (available to VMware partners). The order in which the applications were run was random on
each virtual desktop.
TESTING
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7.2. Procedure
Shared storage was provisioned for the VMs to enable use of VMware advanced features such as HA,
DRS and vMotion. One Replica Datastore was created per VMware cluster and one Linked Clone datas-
tore was created per ESX host (Nutanix Node).
VMware View Composer has a limit of 8 ESX hosts per View Linked Clone Pool. We created multiple
VMware clusters with 2 Nutanix Blocks (4 nodes/block) each.
The process of provisioning the datastores to the ESX servers is simple and can be done through the
Nutanix Management Interface.
1. Create Shared VMFS LUNS.
a. Create (4) 2TB VMFS DataStores per Block
b. Create (1) 2TB VMFS 5 Datastore for Replica Disks per VMware Cluster (2 Blocks)
c. Format VMFS 5
TESTING
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2. Create 300 Linked Clones per Block using VMware View 5 Connection Server and VMware
Composer 2.7:
a. Select the Gold VM and set destination of replica to Replica Datastore
b. Create 4 Dedicated Pools Per Block
c. Create 150 VMware Linked Clones from each Gold replica to the Linked Clone Datastore
3. Run RAWC and gather performance data
4. Add additional Nutanix Block (Four Nutanix Nodes)
5. Run next RAWC workload test.
After all tests were run, the RAWC tool generated the results data, which were compiled and charted
in the next section.
Based on whether the user profile is that of a task, knowledge or power user, the desktop ratios per
Nutanix block may be greater or less than 300 VMs per block. Power users’ desktops may require as
much as twice the CPU and storage of the knowledge worker profile that was used during this refer-
ence architecture testing, so advanced assessment and planning will need to be conducted for every
VDI environment to ensure adequate performance. Keep in mind that each Nutanix block consistently
delivers 25,000 random IOPS, so this process of mapping user requirements to the virtualized infra-
structure will be much simpler than with traditional approaches that require balancing of server, SAN
and networking components.
TESTING
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8. Test Results
The Nutanix Complete Cluster performed in a predictable scale-out fashion as ad-
ditional Nutanix Blocks of 300 VMs were added. The test results below demon-
strate the linear performance in consistent application response times from 300 to 3000
desktop VMs. Single nodes, instead of blocks of four nodes, could have been used as well.
Note: The times listed below in Figure 8 were collected from the VMware RAWC benchmarking tool,
and represent response times that yield a user experience roughly equivalent to that of a local desktop
experience.
TESTRESULTS
Figure 8 - RAWC Performance Chart of 300 to 3000 Desktop VMs on Nutanix Cluster
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9. Conclusion
In this reference architecture, we have demonstrated that the Nutanix Complete Cluster delivers a
modular scale-out solution for VDI infrastructure. The performance results prove the linear perfor-
mance as the cluster grew with almost no difference in application response times of 300 VMs versus
3000 VMs. The ability to grow-as-you-go has tremendous benefits over the traditional virtualization
infrastructure architectures in addressing two key problems of VDI deployments: high upfront cost
and performance.
By scaling from 300 to 3000 virtual desktops, this validation shows the ability to start with a small VDI
environment and expand easily. Whether it is a VDI proof of concept or a large-scale enterprise deploy-
ment, administrators are able to grow this environment easily and efficiently. Traditional server and
SAN approaches require sizing for longer term capacity, which often results wasted or limited capacity.
Expanding a Nutanix Cluster is as easy as adding an additional block for a more granular growth model
that can deliver ROI in a much shorter time span.
Along with the grow-as-you-go scalability ease, another key benefit is the predictable linearity of per-
formance that allows for easier performance design of VDI deployments. This validation shows there is
guaranteed predictable performance going from 300 desktops to 3000 desktops, with an application
response time difference of less than .3 seconds between the slowest and fastest times on all applica-
tion tests. Nutanix delivers fast random IO as well as high sequential bandwidth, providing desktop
users with a great experience in steady state and in the face of boot storms.
Another advantage demonstrated with this reference architecture is the ease of management for a
VDI installation. The intuitive Nutanix user interface makes it easy to manage entire virtual environ-
ments without separate consoles for server and storage. This converged approach enables administra-
tors to easily see the environment’s capacity, utilization and overall health.
Ease of manageability combined with the high performance and 40-60% cost savings that the Nutanix
solution delivers for virtualized infrastructure offers customers seeking to deploy VDI a new approach
that removes the complexity that has held many deployments back. Nutanix combined with VMware
View provides a radically simple approach to VDI that enables customers to realize the ROI on Win-
dows 7 migration, better security and simpler desktop management much more rapidly than with
traditional server and SAN products.
CONCLUSION
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11. Authors and Acknowledgements
This reference architecture was designed and tested by Scott Werntz, Technical Marketing Engineer,
and Steve Poitras, Solutions Engineer, at Nutanix.
Nutanix would like to thank the VMware View Technical Marketing team, including Mason Uyeda,
Mac Binesh and Fred Schimscheimer, for their valuable guidance and ongoing collaboration during
this project.
AUTHORSANDACKNOWLEDGEMENTS