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Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 4.5
on VMware vSphere 4.1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage
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o Allocate space equal to the memory size of the VM for swap usage
o Allocate space for linked clone delta files. The size of the delta file allocation is
determined by the amount of change that occurs between the desktop VM and the
base image. Determine the maximum change expected (percent of base image size)
and use that value for the delta file allocation. (Note: The setting for storage over-
commit level
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o Allocate at least 100MB for VM log files (if VM logging is enabled)
will also affect the capacity calculation.)
o If using persistent desktops then you need to allocate additional space for persistent
storage. (Note: you can place persistent storage for desktops in a different datastore
than the one used for the desktop VM images.)
The following formula may be used for calculating the datastore capacity requirement:
Capacity (GB) = (NumVM * (VMMem + Log + RepSize*(C%) + PDisk) + 2*RepSize * NumDS) * OF%
Table 5 describes the formula components and provides a sample calculation. We assume a parent VM
replica image size of 15GB.
Variable Description Non-
Persistent:
1000 desktops
Persistent:
1000
desktops
RepSize Size of the linked clone master replica
image. We allocated space for two replica
images: one for the linked clone master
replica, and a second for use by View
Composer
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2 * 15GB
.
NumDS Number of datastores (dedicated for
images or shared with linked clones)
hosting the replica image
2
NumVM
Number of View Client desktop VM
images
1000
VMMem Amount of memory provisioned to the
desktop VMs
1GB
C% The maximum expected percent change
in the linked clone images from the
master replica image (ie. the growth rate
of the linked clone delta disk). See note (1)
below.
7.5% 4.0%
PDisk For persistent desktops, this is the
maximum expected size of the persistent
storage used by the desktop VM. For non-
0 0.5GB
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See
Storage Overcommit for Linked-Clone Desktops
section in the VMware View Online Library
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View Composer was not actually used in our test configurations.