White Papers

Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 4.5
on VMware vSphere 4.1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage
ii
Table of Contents
1
Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Audience ...................................................................................................................................................... 1
1.2 The Rest of this Paper ................................................................................................................................ 1
2 Virtual Desktop Infrastructures ....................................................................................................................... 2
2.1 Benefits of VDI ........................................................................................................................................... 2
2.2 Storage Requirements for VDI ................................................................................................................ 2
2.3 Addressing VDI Storage Challenges with EqualLogic SANs .............................................................. 3
2.4 The VMware View Solution ...................................................................................................................... 4
2.5 Benefits of using Dell EqualLogic Hybrid Arrays for VDI .................................................................... 4
3 VMware View Infrastructure and Test Configuration ................................................................................. 5
3.1 Test Infrastructure: Component Design Details ................................................................................... 7
3.2 ESX Host Network Configuration ........................................................................................................... 9
3.3 Virtualized Desktop Scaling: VM Host Limits on Server and Storage .............................................. 11
3.4 VMware View Configuration ..................................................................................................................12
3.4.1 Using Linked Clones ........................................................................................................................13
4 VMware View 4.5 Characterization Tests ....................................................................................................13
4.1 Test Results ............................................................................................................................................... 14
4.2 Analysis: EqualLogic PS6000XVS SAN hosting non-persistent desktops ...................................... 15
4.2.1 The login storm ................................................................................................................................ 15
4.2.2 The steady state task worker activity phase (after the login storm) ....................................... 16
4.2.3 Host performance in the View Client ESX cluster ..................................................................... 18
5 Sizing Guidelines for EqualLogic SANs .........................................................................................................21
5.1 Using Persistent vs. Non-Persistent View Desktops ..........................................................................21
5.2 Calculating Capacity Requirements for Linked Clone Desktop Pools ...........................................21
5.3 Sizing Storage Capacity .......................................................................................................................... 23
5.4 Performance Considerations ................................................................................................................ 24
5.4.1 When to use the EqualLogic PS6000XVS ................................................................................... 24
5.4.2 When to use the EqualLogic PS6000XV ..................................................................................... 24
6 Best Practices ................................................................................................................................................... 25
6.1 Application Layer ..................................................................................................................................... 25