CISCO UCS B230 M2 BLADE SERVER: UNCOMPROMISED VIRTUAL DESKTOP PERFORMANCE u When deploying your virtual desktop solution, choosing hardware powerful enough to support a large number of virtual desktops is crucial. The more virtual desktops your server can support, the fewer servers you need to buy to provide virtual desktops to your desired number of users. To find the virtual desktop capacity of a single Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server, we used the Login Consultants Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) 3.
MORE VDI SESSIONS ARE BETTER Choosing the right combination of hardware and software for your virtual desktop solution can significantly affect your bottom line. A robust hypervisor, top-of-the-line virtual desktop software, and a server built on powerful processors with an expansive memory footprint all work together to ensure you can meet the needs of your employees without your spending money, space, and time on additional hardware.
Response time for virtual desktops on a single Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server 5,000 Milliseconds 4,000 Average Response 3,000 VSI Index average 2,000 1,000 6 14 20 27 34 40 47 54 61 68 74 80 87 94 100 106 112 119 125 132 138 144 150 157 163 169 175 0 Number of virtual desktop sessions Figure 1: Average virtual desktop response times at various numbers of virtual desktops on the Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server.
Figure 2: Bandwidth usage for 175 virtual desktop sessions over the hour-long test. Lower numbers are better. In our testing, the aggregate workload never exceeded 5 percent of available compute fabric bandwidth. For information about Login VSI and the pieces of the solution we tested, see the What we tested section below. For server and storage configuration information, see Appendix A. To see the step-by-step process we used for testing, see Appendix B.
WHAT WE TESTED About the Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server We used a VDI-optimized, dual-socket Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server with a pair of Intel 10-core, 2.4 GHz Xeon (2800/4800 series) processors, two 32GB Intel X-25E SATA SSDs, and 512 GB of system memory. We installed a Cisco M81KR Virtual Interface Card (VIC) into the server, which is a dual-port 10Gb Converged Network Adapter (CNA) optimized for virtualization. The M81KR supports up to 128 PCIe-compliant virtual interfaces and Cisco VNLink technology.
provisioning and maintenance of desktop images and applications. The end-user enjoys easier access to his or her View desktop from a variety of locations, less downtime, a customizable desktop, and robust multimedia capabilities. In our tests, we implemented a new feature of View 5, that of PCoIP Optimization Controls.
Microsoft Internet Explorer instance two: Navigating a Web site, maximizing, and scrolling Microsoft Word (UserRead): Reading and typing text, and printing to PDF Bullzip: Generating a PDF Adobe® Reader®: Reading a PDF Microsoft PowerPoint®: Watching a presentation and adding a slide Microsoft Excel®: Reading and minimizing 7-Zip: Saving a ZIP file Login VSI Version 3.
SUMMARY A server that will support greater density of hosted virtual desktops without sacrificing performance will minimize the cost of your infrastructure and improve ROI. In our tests, the Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server running VMware View 5 with VMware vSphere 5 provided impressive virtual desktop hosting density. The Cisco UCS solution delivered 175 concurrent VMware View 5 virtual desktops with acceptable user response times and minimal bandwidth usage.
APPENDIX A – SERVER AND STORAGE CONFIGURATION INFORMATION Figure 3 provides detailed configuration information about the test servers. Note that we used the Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server for the systems under test and used the Cisco UCS B200 M2 Blade Server for our testbed infrastructure. Figure 4 details the storage we used in our tests.
System Size (GB) Number of RAM module(s) Chip organization Hard disk Vendor and model number Number of disks in system Size (GB) RPM Type Controller Operating system Name File system Kernel Language Network adapter (mezzanine card) Vendor and model number Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server Cisco UCS B200 M2 Blade Server 16 32 Double-sided 8 12 Double-sided Intel X-25E SATA SSD 2 32 N/A SATA LSI™ MegaRAID® 9240 Seagate ST9146803SS 2 146 10,000 SAS LSI Logic® SAS 1064E VMware vSphere 5 (504890) VMFS 5.0.
APPENDIX B - HOW WE TESTED To determine the number of virtual desktops the server could support, we ran incremental tests increasing the virtual desktop load until the processors on the Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade Server were nearly saturated. We ensured that the total response time for the seven office tasks never achieved a Login VSI Index average of 4,000 ms (VSI Max).
Figure 5: Our test environment.
Figure 6: Our logical network layout. Setting up the infrastructure server (infra), and server under test (SUT) BIOS settings We used Cisco UCS firmware manager to set all UCS firmware to version 2.0(1s). Installing VMware vSphere 5 (ESXi) on the Cisco UCS B200 M2 (infra) 1. Insert the ESXi 5.0 disk, and select Boot from disk. 2. On the Welcome screen, press Enter. 3. On the End User License Agreement (EULA) screen, press F11. 4.
4. 5. 6. 7. Select Enable SSH, press Enter, and press Esc. On the System Customization screen, select Configure Management Network. On the Configure Management Network screen, select IP Configuration. On the IP Configuration screen, select Set static IP; enter an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway; and press Enter. 8. On the Configure Management Network screen, press Esc. When asked if you want to apply the changes, press Y. 9. Log into infra as root with the vSphere client. 10.
6. On the Enter a Root Password screen, assign a root password, and confirm it by entering it again. Press Enter to continue. 7. On the Confirm Install screen, press F11 to install. 8. On the Installation Complete screen, press Enter to reboot. Configuring ESXi after installation (network) 1. On the ESXi 5.0 screen, press F2, enter the root password, and press Enter. 2. On the System Customization screen, select Troubleshooting Options, and press Enter. 3.
7. Type infra for name, and view5.com for domain. 8. Enter 172.0.0.10 for preferred DNS. 9. Close DNS. Setting up a VM to host Microsoft Windows Active Directory® server (DC1) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. From a Microsoft Windows server or workstation, connect to the infra server via the VMware vSphere client. Log in as root to the infra server. In the vSphere client, connect to the vCenter Server, and browse to the ESXi host. Click the Virtual Machines tab.
13. Run diskmgmt.msc. 14. Select the 20 GB secondary volume, format it NTFS, and assign it drive letter E 15. Set up networking for the data network: a. Click StartControl Panel, right-click Network Connections, and choose Open. b. Right-click the VM traffic NIC, and choose Properties. c. Uncheck TCP/IP (v6). d. Select TCP/IP (v4), and choose Properties. e. Set the IP address, subnet, gateway, and DNS server. Installing Active Directory and DNS services on DC1 1. Click StartRun, type dcpromo and click OK.
6. In the GPO, browse to Computer ConfigurationAdministrative TemplateClassic Administrative Template (ADM)PCoIP Session Variables Not Overridable Administrative settings, and click Turn off Build-to-lossless feature. Right click, and click Edit. 7. Select the radio button for Enabled, and tick the box next to I accept to turn off the Build-to-lossless feature. 8.
3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Choose Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (Full Installation), and click Next. Accept the license terms, and click Next. Click Custom. Click the Disk, and click Drive options (advanced). Click NewApplyFormat, and click Next. After the installation completes, click OK to set the Administrator password. Enter the administrator password twice, and click OK. Connect the machine to the Internet, and install all available Windows updates. Restart as necessary.
6. Enter composer for the name of the ODBC name with the View5\administrator User id and password, and click Next. 7. Accept the default SOAP port, and click Next. 8. Click Install. Setting up a VM to host the VMware View 5 connection server 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. Log into vCenter with the VMware vSphere client. In the vSphere client, browse to the ESXi host named infra. Click the Virtual Machines tab. Right-click, and choose New Virtual Machine. Choose Custom, and click Next.
Installing the VMware View 5 server 1. Log into the server named view5. 2. Click Install Media for View Connection Server. 3. To begin the install wizard, click Next. 4. Agree to the license agreement, and click Next. 5. Keep the destination directory as C:\Program Files\VMware View\Server\, and click Next. 6. Select View Standard Server, and click Next. 7. Allow View Server to configure the firewall, and click Next. 8. Click Next. 9. Click Finish. 10. Open a command window, and type gpupdate /force 11.
27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. Click Install, and the setup begins. Type user for the username and change the computer name, and click Next. Enter no password, and click Next. For system protection, select Use recommended settings, and click Next. Enter your time zone, and click Next. Select the Work Network setting, and click Next. Use Windows Update to patch the Windows 7 installation. Install VMware tools. For more information, see http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.
Assign the name gold_image to the virtual machine, and click Next. Select NFS-VDT, and click Next. Choose Virtual Machine Version 8, and click Next. Choose Windows, choose Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit), and click Next. Choose one virtual processor, and click Next. Choose 2 GB RAM, and click Next. Click 1 for the number of NICs, select E1000, and click Next. Leave the default virtual storage controller, and click Next. Choose to create a new virtual disk, and click Next.
3. In the target setup wizard, type \\dc1\share 4. Wait for the install to complete. Installing the VMware View agent on gold_image 1. Log into the gold_image. 2. Browse to the VMware View agent media. 3. At the Welcome screen and License agreement, accept the terms, and click Next. 4. Accept install defaults, and click Next. 5. Select Do not enable the remote desktop capability on this computer, and click Next. 6. Keep default install directory, and click Install. 7.
14. Click Finish to create the pool. 15. Highlight the pool named Pool, and click Entitlements. 16. Click Add, select login_VSI/view5.com, and click OK. 17. Ensure all 175 desktops have a status of ready. Running the Login VSI benchmark We used six launchers configured in parallel to run a medium workload of 175 user sessions on the VMware View 5 pool. For more information on how to run a Login VSI test see: http://www.loginvsi.com/en/adminguide/performing-tests.
APPENDIX C - LOGIN VSI INI FILES USED FOR TESTING VMware View 5 launcher.ini [Launcher] Servername= Username= Password= Domain= ConnectionType="Custom with CSV file" ConnectionNumber=User CCL=c:\program files\VMware\VMWare View\Client\bin\wswc.exe -serverURL http://VIEW5 -username %CSV_User% password Password1 -domainname View5 -desktopname pool -Standalone -logInAsCurrentUser False connectUSBOnStartup False CSV=\\DC1\Share\csv\view5-user.
APPENDIX D – PROCESSER UTILIZATION DETAILS Figure 6 shows the processor utilization throughout the 1-hour test. With 175 simultaneous users, nearly all 20processor cores were at 100 percent utilization. The graph line below represents the average utilization across all 20 cores (40 threads).
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