VMworld 2013 Jad Chamcham, VMware Narasimha Krishnakumar, VMware, view, vsan, tco Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare

1. Lowering TCO for Virtual Desktops with
VMware View and VMware Virtual SAN
Jad Chamcham, VMware
Narasimha Krishnakumar, VMware
EUC4688
#EUC4688

2. 2
Disclaimer
 This presentation may contain product features that are currently
under development
 This overview of new technology represents no commitment from
VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product
 Features are subject to change, and must not be included in
contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind
 Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery
 Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features
discussed or presented have not been determined

3. 3
Agenda
 VDI Cost Profile
 VDI Storage Evolution
 TCO reduction with Virtual SAN
 Virtual SAN characteristics/architecture
 Demo
 Performance Validation
 Summary
 Q&A

4. 4
VDI Cost Profile
Cost (CapEx) of a VDI VM
Data Center
Infrastructure Costs
for hosting VDI
(>50% of Total VDI costs)
*Costs calculated using a 1000 desktop Reference Architecture with a Shared Storage System

5. 5
Primary Barriers for Organizations to Adopt VDI
What is the primary barrier for your organization to adopt VDI?
Source – IDC 2011 Survey of 115 respondents
#1 Barrier – High Capex Costs

6. 6
Storage Design Choices for VDI
Storage Design 
Desktop Type 
Local Storage Design Centralized Storage
Design
(SAN or NAS Array)
Stateless Desktops
Only
• Server based disk
provides capacity and
IOPS
• Leverages SSD,
Server RAM or a
combination
• Choice of multiple
storage vendors,
multiple design
choices
• Performance and
storage capacity
provided by shared
storage system
Stateful & Stateless
Desktops
• Requires 3rd party
software
• Same as above
Simple Complex
Provisioning Complexity

7. 7
Storage Evolution for VDI – Shared Storage Design
Scale Up
• Highly resilient fault tolerant architecture – Built for VDI and other
workloads
• Infrastructure cost is low at full capacity
• Application Latency/Response times depends on storage
subsystem design
• Scaling beyond maximum capacity of storage system requires
another storage system – Cost is a step function
• POC to Pilot to Production takes time due to sizing issues,
complexity of managing stack
Scale Up = +1 Server, +1 Storage Array
Costs ~$$$$$$ infrastructure, $$$ per VM

8. 8
Storage Evolution for VDI – Local Storage Design
• Storage for VDI is contained within a single server
• Application Latency/Response time is a function of the SSD
tier within the Server (milliseconds)
• Allows granular scaling – Add one server with SSD & Disk to
scale out
• Deployment Simplicity – Eliminates need for extensive storage
design and sizing
• Accelerate Deployment - Customers can quickly go from POC
to Pilot to Production
Scale Up
Scale Up = +1 Server
Costs ~$$$$ infrastructure, $$ per VM

9. 9
Introducing VMware Virtual SAN
Storage Design Advantages Disadvantages
Local Storage Design • IOPS
• Low Cost
• Linear Scaling (+1
Server)
• Easy Sizing, Design
• Supports Stateless
desktops
• Server is a Single
Point of Failure
Shared Storage
Design
• Resiliency
• Supports Stateless &
Stateful desktops
• High Cost – Initial &
Scaling
• Complex design &
sizing
Introducing VMware Virtual SAN
• Aggregates storage on servers and offers
• Resiliency
• Simplicity
• Linear scaling (low cost) & support for all types of desktops

10. 10
Virtual SAN – Low Cost Storage for VMware View
…………….
vSphere
VSAN
VMware vCenter
Server
• Virtual SAN clusters solid state drives and
hard disks from multiple servers to create
shared storage
• Redefines the hypervisor to cluster
compute and storage
• Policy based management for self-tuning
VM-centric storage
• Scale-out architecture with built-in SSD
caching
• Simplicity - Storage designed for virtual
machines
• Fast, resilient, dynamic
• Significantly lower TCO while delivering
same user experience
• Starts small with linear scaling of
performance, capacity, and cost
Overview
BenefitsHard
disks
SSD
Hard
disks
SSD
Hard
disks
SSD Hard
disks
SSD
Clustered
VSAN Datastore
VMware View

11. 11
View + Virtual SAN Configuration
 Costs
• <$135* (Storage + Compute +
Networking) per desktop regardless of
scale
• Granular scaling – Add 1 server with
SSD and Hard Disk to scale
performance and capacity
Virtual SAN Aggregated
Datastore
Highly Available Scale Out DAS
Scale Up
 Configuration Requirements
• 3 ESX hosts minimum
• CPU, RAM based on workload
requirements
• SSD & Hard Disk drives – Minimum 1 SSD
and 1 HDD per Server
• Pass through RAID Controller
• SSD Capacity - ~5%-10% of Hard Disk
• 10Gbe Switching backplane
*Costs include hardware infrastructure only

12. 12
View + VSAN Costs – 432 VM Reference Configuration
3 Servers
3 SSDs
200GB SSD drives (EMLC, SAS/SATA)
16 Core Intel Xeon, 128GB RAM,
8 Drive Slots
3 HDD’s
View
Infrastructure
Server
$26212
16 Core AMD Opteron, 64GB RAM,
250GB Drive
$3297
Linked Clone VM’s - 40GB Capacity
$973
$1771
Cost Per VM* $75
*Costs based on List Price
Storage cost per VM ~$6
2TB 7.2K RPM Drives
*Costs include hardware infrastructure only

13. 13
View + Virtual SAN Costs - Summary
 Cost of a Virtual Desktop on Virtual SAN depends on
multiple factors
 Infrastructure costs
• Server Costs = Function (CPU, Memory, Drive Slots)
• Disk Costs = Function (SSD Capacity, HDD type, HDD Capacity)
 Desktop Type
• Persistent (Stateful) – Full Clone Desktops
• Non-Persist (Stateless) – Linked Clone Desktops
 Resiliency/Availability
• Virtual SAN can be configured to withstand host failures
• Higher resiliency results in slightly higher costs
 Lowest cost desktop on Virtual SAN = Stateless Desktop
• Storage cost range per VM - $6 to $60 (List Price)

14. 14
Virtual SAN + View = Ultra Low Cost Desktop at Any Scale
VSAN storage costs =
~50% of shared storage costs
Cost of VDI VM – Shared Storage Design Cost of VDI VM – VSAN

15. 15
View + Virtual SAN Feature Availability
 Virtual SAN is now in Public Beta
• Downloadable at www.vsanbeta.com
 VMware View will Integrate and deliver VSAN capabilities for VDI
• Near Term
• Tech preview availability of VSAN in a near future View Release
• View and VSAN will be available for Customers to download and try
• Medium to Long Term
• Future release of View will fully support and integrate with VSAN GA
 Pricing/Packaging - TBD

16. 16
Architecture

17. 17
Virtual SAN – Architecture
vSAN cluster
ESX ESX
VM
virtual disk
vSAN object
replica-1 replica-2
Storage policy
• Each ESX host contributes SSD and
magnetic disk capacity
• Virtual SAN aggregates these resources
into 1 global Datastore per vSphere cluster
• Each VM home directory and each virtual
disk is now represented by a vSAN object
• Virtual machines run on the ESX hosts
that belong to the cluster
• HA/DRS ensures the VM is restarted if a
host crash
• Virtual SAN objects can be split into
multiple components for performance and
data protection. This is governed by the
storage policies
ESX
Witness

18. 18
Disk Group
HDDSSD
Disk Group
HDDSSD
Disk Group
HDDSSD
Disk Group
VMware Virtual SAN
Disk Group
HDDSSD
Distributed Resource Manager
Policy Engine
ESXi Cluster
Distributed Flash Caching
Virtual SAN
HDDSSD

19. 19
Virtual SAN – Policy driven management
 Virtual SAN provides a policy driven framework to manage storage
• Policies are flexible and allow granular control of Storage
 VSAN Storage policy template
• Simple, powerful set of rules control behavior of storage
Stripes: Number of stripes of data
Resiliency: Failures to tolerate
Storage Provisioning: Thick or Thin
Cache Reservation: Read Cache reservation

20. 20
View – Default Storage Policies
 View automatically creates default storage policies based on
Pool type
• Policies maintained across operations such as Refresh/Recompose – No need
to re-associate
 Full clone policies
• Failures to tolerate = 1 for persistent, 0 for non-persistent
• Provisioning: 100% reserved
 Linked clone policies
• OS disk:
• Failure to tolerate = 1 for dedicated pool, 0 for floating pool
• Provisioning: thin
• Replica disk:
• Failure to tolerate = 1
• Cache reservation = 10%
• Provisioning: thin

21. 21
View – Default Storage Policies
Default View Policies
Policy values

22. 22
Virtual SAN Setup for View – Simple 3-Step Deployment
 Step 1 – Configure cluster & enable Virtual SAN
 Step 2 – Launch VMware View
 Step 3 – Create Pool and Deploy VM’s

23. 23
Virtual SAN: Simple, Dynamic Storage for Virtual Desktops
Instantly provision
VM ‘s using View
vSphere
Hard disks
SSD
VSAN
Hard disksSSD
…………….
Hard disksSSD Hard disksSSD
Clustered VSAN Datastore
Each VM maintains
its unique policy in
the clustered VSAN
datastore.
Storage capacity
and performance
scale dynamically
with your cluster.
Hard disksSSD Hard disksSSD
VSAN
vSphere
Clustered VSAN Datastore

24. 24
Demo

27. 27
Performance Results

28. 28
Hardware Setup
 Setup has identical nodes
• 16 core 2.9 Ghz dell R720 machines
• 2 x Intel PCI R910 SSD 200G (1 PCI slot)
• 12 x 10k RPM Seagate SAS disks
• 10 G VSAN dedicated Network,
1G for VM network
• 2 x Disk groups per machine, 6 x disks
per disk group
• View default object policy
• hostFailuresToTolerate:1, stripeWidth:1
ESXvSAN cluster ESX ESX
VM
virtual disk
vSAN object
replica-1 replica-2
Witness

29. 29
ViewPlanner – VDI workload characterization with Virtual SAN
 Workload:
• ViewPlanner 3.0 Standard benchmark with 2 sec think-time (heavy user)
• Fast 720-p HD Video
• Resolution: 1900 x 1200 resolution
• Protocol : PCoIP
• Windows 7 Desktop’s (VM’s) and Windows XP Clients.
• VDI workload is known to be CPU intensive but sensitive to I/O latency.
 View Planner QoS Scoring:
• 95th percentile of all the operations in a Group have to be below the thresholds
• Group A: Interactive Operations (CPU intensive) < 1 second
• Group B: I/O Operations (Disk latency sensitive) < 6 seconds
• QoS passes when both Group A and Group B pass
• Consolidation:- Number of VDI Users supported on given Hardware with QoS passes

30. 30
Virtual SAN Delivers IOPS Required by VDI
• Virtual SAN can meet the IOPS required by VDI workload

31. 31
Virtual SAN Scale..
275
460
667
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
3 node 5 node 7 node
NumberofHeavyVDIUsers
Virtual SAN scale
VSAN Linear (VSAN)

32. 32
Virtual SAN vs SAN vs All-Flash-SAN…
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
VSAN SAN all-flash-san
N
u
m
b
e
r
o
f
H
e
a
v
y
V
D
I
U
s
e
r
s
VSAN vs SAN vs All-Flash-SAN

33. 33
Group A Score Comparison
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
Avg
Application
Latency
Group A
VSAN
SAN
• Impact to Group A application latencies is marginal
• Virtual SAN uses very few cycles of Host CPU.

34. 34
Group B Score Comparison
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Avg
Application
Latency
Group B
VSAN
All-Flash-SAN
• Group B application latencies are close to All-Flash-SAN
• Virtual SAN can meet the IOPS required by VDI workload

35. 35
VDI workload does not require a SAN
Group B Score Comparison
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Avg
Application
Latency
Group B
VSAN
All-Flash-SAN
• Group B application latencies are close to All-Flash-SAN
• Virtual SAN can meet the IOPS required by VDI workload

36. 36
Summary - Benefits of Using VSAN for VDI
 VSAN simplifies storage sizing and design for VDI environments
• No need to size and manage storage as an independent entity
 VMware View integrates with and simplifies using VSAN
 VSAN provides both the performance and density required by VDI
 VSAN lowers VDI capex costs - <$135 per desktop
infrastructure costs
 VSAN enables granular scaling - Scale your deployment by adding
a single Server
 VSAN accelerates VDI deployment – Customers can now start
small and scale out based on their business needs
 View + VSAN = Fully integrated ultra-low cost VDI solution in
the market

37. 37
Related Sessions
 STO-5027 : VMware Virtual SAN Technical Best Practices
 EUC-4764 : What’s New and Next for VMware Horizon View
 EUC-5434 : Enterprise Architecture Design for VMware Horizon
View 5.2
 EUC-5708: Low-Cost, High-Performance Storage for Horizon
Desktops

38. 38
Q&A

39. THANK YOU

41. Lowering TCO for Virtual Desktops with
VMware View and VMware Virtual SAN
Jad Chamcham, VMware
Narasimha Krishnakumar, VMware
EUC4688
#EUC4688

42. 42
BACKUP

43. 43
VMware View on Virtual SAN
 VMware Virtual SAN aggregates
server attached storage
• One Datastore per cluster
• SSD is a caching tier – Read and Write
Caching
• Spinning disks used for persistent
storage
 Benefits of using VMware View on
VMware Virtual SAN
• Lower TCO
• Tightly integrated distributed local
storage design for VDI
• Improved End User Experience – SSD’s
improve application performance
vSphere
Virtual SAN
Virtual SAN Aggregated
Datastore
Highly Available Scale Out DAS
SSD Caching

44. 44
Key Takeaways
 VSAN simplifies storage sizing and design for VDI environments
 VMware View integrates with and simplifies using VSAN
 VSAN provides both the performance and density required by VDI
 VSAN lowers VDI capex costs - <$150 per desktop
 View + VSAN = Fully integrated lowest cost VDI solution in
the market

45. 45
Other VMware Activities Related to This Session
 HOL:
HOL-SDC-1308
Virtual Storage Solutions
HOL-MBL-1301
Horizon View from A to Z
 Group Discussions:
EUC1002-GD, EUC1003-GD
Overall EUC with Scott Davis or John Dodge