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Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 4.5

on VMware vSphere 4.1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage

• Align guest desktop OS vmdk image files to 64K block boundaries (Windows 7 performs this

automatically)

6.3 ESX Host Configuration

The following steps are recommended for configuring the ESX host:

• Install the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module (MEM) for vSphere 4.1. This is supported

with both the ESX software iSCSI initiator or any supported iSCSI hardware initiator on the

host.

• You should configure separate virtual switches for VM network traffic and iSCSI storage traffic

on the ESX hosts

• Jumbo frames should be enabled on the iSCSI vSwitch and the vmkernel ports. At least two

server NICs dedicated for iSCSI traffic need to be configured as uplink NICs to the iSCSI

vSwitch

6.4 Host Server Resources

It is important that you properly configure your servers to provide the optimal number of NICs for your

VDI I/O workload. You could consider the following:

• We recommend that you configure your servers to provide dedicated NICs for VDI

client/server I/O and separate dedicated NIC/iSCSI hardware initiators for iSCSI SAN I/O.

• To provide for redundancy, you should provision at least two NICs per server for each path.

• Additional NICs/HBAs should be provisioned for iSCSI SAN I/O as needed, based on

throughput and IOPS requirements.

• You should also configure servers with appropriately sized CPU and memory resources for the

VDI workload.

• Dell and VMware provide additional resources to assist in planning and server sizing in support

VDI workloads. See:

www.dell.com/flexiblecomputing for more details.

6.5 SAN Design

We recommend the following SAN design best practices:

• You should design redundant SAN component architectures. This includes the NICs on the

servers and switches for the storage network (including server blade chassis switches and

external switches).

Note: Detailed steps for configuring MEM and the ESX host initiator with EqualLogic storage

are provided in the following document:



Configuring and Installing the EqualLogic Multipathing Extension Module for

VMware vSphere 4.1 and PS Series SANs

http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=9823