VMware deployed Horizon Workspace to 15,000 employees to improve productivity and security, reduce costs, and enable BYOD. They accomplished this by designing a scalable architecture with redundant components, automating processes, and establishing best practices for data, applications, and view pools. This centralized VMware employees' access to 72 applications and 6000 virtual desktops across devices while reducing help desk tickets by 75% and improving the user experience.

1. Horizon Workspace at Scale:
Deploying to 15,000 VMware Employees
Andrew Hawthorn, VMware
Bhavin Mathia, VMware
Vishesh Nirwal, VMware
EUC5004
#EUC5004

2. 2
Agenda
 Why Horizon Workspace?
 What We Did (The Process)
 Architecture of the Solution
 Best Practices
 Lessons Learned
 Value of the Solution
 Q&A

3. 3
IT’s Objective for End User Computing Infrastructure
Deliver the right business apps and data to
user devices in a way that is efficient and
secure for IT and productive for the end user

4. 4
The Requirements We Used to Have…
Change is hard and
highly managed
Software implemented
from the center out
Difficult to adjust to
users needs
Control Through OwnershipPeople you employ
Using a network you
own to connect to…
Using software you own on a
Windows desktop you own
An application you own,
running on a server you own

5. 5
What the World Wants Now…
Control & Governance are
Becoming More Challenging
Inability to track, control or
secure information assets
Can not remove access
you didn’t grant
Serious compliance concerns
Apps live in many
clouds and are easily
procured without IT
Always connected, via
3G, 4G and public or
personal wifi
Non-owned devices and
multiple non-Windows OSs
Employees, contractors
outsourcers, partners
citizens, students

6. 6
How to Optimize Delivery of EUC Services
Manage
users, not
devices
Embrace
co-ownership
Architect for
change and
continual
improvement
Prioritize
end user
experience
Treat mobile
as a first-
class citizen

7. 7
VMware Horizon is the Platform for Workforce Mobility
Broker: Manage & secure
centrally and broker services
to your workforce by policy
300Transform: Transform
desktops, diverse
apps and data into
centralized services
Deliver: Empower your
workforce with flexible
access across devices,
locations and connectivity

8. 8
What We Wanted to Accomplish
Improve the productivity of the employees as
well as provide secure collaboration with
contractors, clients, partners, etc.
Improve security of the entire system
Deliver the freedom employees want (BYOD) with
the security and control IT needs
Horizon
Workspace will
help prepare IT
for the end of
the post-PC era
and embrace
the BYOD
movement.
Reduce IT costs:
• Optimize application licenses
• Utilize existing infrastructure, resources and skills
• Reduce helpdesk calls: application access, password resets

9. 9
The Challenges – How Big Was the Problem?
VMware
IT
15kEmployees
59kPartners
2+Devices Per
Employee
50+Internal/
Custom Apps
15kLogins
Per Day
4+File
Repositories
80+SaaS
Apps
• Siloed access management
• Multiple file repositories
• Heterogeneous application portfolio
• Difficult audit & compliance
• Weak security
• Manual provisioning
• Lack of device support
• Increased license costs
• Huge support costs
Problems

10. 10
Today: 18K Users, 88 Web Apps and 31 View Pools

11. 11
How Did We Get Here?
First Month Second Month Third Month
Week 1-2
Start Small
(12 people)
Week 5-6
Rollout to IT
(500 people)
Validated
Architecture
Week 7-8
Establish
production
processes
Week 3-4
Develop usage
patterns
Initial processes
Months 36
Rollout By
Department

12. 12
How Many IT Admins Would You Expect Run This System?

13. 13
Horizon Workspace: Staffing
Reasons
• Runs on industry standard platforms
• Works well with existing vSphere infrastructure
• Out of the box functionality
• Operational efficiencies achieved with
appropriate architecture and minimum scripting
Answer:
2FTE
just
Equivalent to

14. 14
Horizon Workspace Solution Components
• vSphere
• vCenter
• vCenter Operation Manager
• vCenter Site Recovery Manager
• View
• PostgreSQL
• Active Directory
• RSA Authentication Manager
• RSA Secure-ID
• HP BL460 G8
• EMC Isilon
• EMC VNX 7500

15. 15
Horizon Workspace Architecture
Mobile Users
Web Client
Gateway
Service
Connector
Data
Internal Users/Clients
Configurator
https://horizonwork
space.vmware.co
m/web
Port: 443
Internal VIP
Port: 443
External VIP
gw1 to gw4
conn1 and conn6
8443
RSA
Kerberos
RSA
AD
LDAP
443
svc1 and svc2
Postgress Database
postgres-db1 (Active)
postgres-d2 (Standby)
5432
5432
Preview-vip
Port 80
Preview 1 to 3
443
443
Port
443
443
443
80, 443, 7071, 7072
data1 to data11
ldap-vip
Port 8443

16. 16
Scale-Out Architecture
All supported with 3 ESX servers: 90 vCPUs, 250 GB vRAM, 2 TB
block storage, 3+ TB NFS storage in use

17. 17
Data Best Practices
• New users get synced to Workspace via
nightly script
• Every data node has a Class of Service
(CoS) attached to it
• Every CoS has one active directory
group entitlement
• Script automatically add users to one of
these security group based on their Geo
Data Provisioning
Disk Quota Mgmt.
• By default all users gets 5 GB quota
User Group
5 GB
20 GB
• Weekly script for users at 80% capacity to
get a bump in quota

18. 18
View Pools Best Practices
31pools
External
Internal
Connector
US

19. 19
Horizon Workspace: Application Catalog

20. 20
Application Best Practices
• On-board app in pre-
production environment
• Supported use cases
(SP SSO, IDP SSO &
application logout)
• Dual mode authentication
• User provisioning to apps
NEW APP
• Set-up app
for production
• Set-up group
• Entitle users as per
access policy
• Communication for
new app in workspace
PRODUCTION
• Set-up app in
workspace for QA &
UAT environments
• Verified support
use cases
QA / UAT

21. 21
The Horizon Suite: Centralized Admin and Unified Workspace
Horizon
Management
User
Management
Policy
Management
Apps
Management
(Web, Mobile)
Desktop
Management
File/Data
Management
Authentication
& User Sync
Entitled Data,
Apps & Desktops
VMware View
Files/Data
On-premise Apps
Public & Enterprise
Mobile Apps
SaaS Apps
Authentication
Unified
Workspace
(Files, Apps,
Desktop, Mobile)
Any Device
(Desktop, Web,
Mobile, VMware
View, MVP)

22. 22
VMware Horizon Workspace Serves Both IT and End Users
Get access to a secure
workspace that contains the
user’s files, apps, and Windows
desktops on any device
END USERS
Provision, populate,
manage and secure the
workspace remotely across
all users and devices
IT ADMINS

23. 23
Lessons Learned
 Design decisions are important up front
• Data – determine the number of data nodes you need
• Data – How many Class of Services (CoS)?
• What are your storage (Data BLOB needs) requirements?
• Data, Apps, View entitlements – how can you automate?
• Highly available environment – make every node redundant
 Understand your usage patterns
• 95% of users are fine with 5gb storage
 Solidify processes before rolling out to masses
 Operational efficiencies can be done with
minimal scripting
 Once deployed, minimum administration
• Admin needed for troubleshooting
• Admin needed to onboard an application

24. 24
Results
Better User
Productivity
Lower Help
Desk Costs
Improved
Security
Easier
Compliance
 85% reduction in
time to access
information.
 BYOD / Mobile
Access
 No password
resets
 75% reduction in
helpdesk tickets
related to
password resets
 No extra
overhead for
Workspace
 Strong
passwords now
applied to 88
applications
uniformly
 Enterprise-wide
compliance
strategy
 Per-user auditing
of application
access
1 32 4

25. 25
Results and Benefits
• Rolled out to 15,000 employees
• VMware employees are accessing over
72 applications, 6000 virtual desktops,
and 4 TB of data through Horizon
Workspace clients on iOS, Android,
Windows and Mac OS devices
Results
Benefits
• End-users have one AD password and
a single place to access, sync and
share data
• Strong authentication if outside network
• Single administrative dashboard
• Single place to de-provision when
employee leaves the company
405
50
January February March April May
Oracle EBS Service Tickets
Introduction of Horizon
“Nearly 90% drop in service tickets and that’s just one of
72 applications. Each of those tickets is an average of 30
minutes of helpdesk time. That’s an annual savings of
$63k—just for one application.”
Thirumalesh Reddy-IT Deployment Manager

26. 26
What We Wanted to Accomplish
Improve the productivity of the employees as well
as provide secure collaboration with contractors,
clients, partners, etc.
Improve security of the entire system
Deliver the freedom employees want (BYOD) with
the security and control IT needs
Reduce IT costs:
• Optimize application licenses
• Utilize existing infrastructure, resources and skills
• Reduce helpdesk calls: application access, password resets

27. 27
Questions?
Documentation and Technical Resources:
http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/horizon-
workspace/resources.html
Other VMware Activities Related to This Session:
 HOL:
HOL-MBL-1304
Horizon Workspace - Explore and Deploy
 Group Discussions:
EUC1005-GD
Workspace with Rasmus Jensen

28. THANK YOU

30. Horizon Workspace at Scale:
Deploying to 15,000 VMware Employees
Andrew Hawthorn, VMware
Bhavin Mathia, VMware
Vishesh Nirwal, VMware
EUC5004
#EUC5004