White Papers

Sizing and Best Practices for Deploying VMware View 4.5

on VMware vSphere 4.1 with Dell EqualLogic Storage

2.4 The VMware View Solution

VMware View is one of the leading VDI solutions in the market today. It includes a complete suite of

tools for delivering desktops as a secure, managed service from a centralized infrastructure. The

components of a VMware View VDI deployment include client connection devices (desktops, laptops

or thin clients), VMware View Manager for connection brokering and virtual desktop management,

VMware View Composer for space-efficient provisioning of desktop virtual machines (VMs), and

vSphere ESX server virtualization for hosting virtual desktops.

A VMware View infrastructure consists of many different software, network and hardware layer

components. Here is a functional list of VMware View components:

Client Devices Personal computing devices used by end users to run the View

Client or View Thin Client.

View Connection Server Authenticates users via Microsoft Active Directory and brokers client

connections

View Client Software that is used to access View desktops.

View Agent A service that runs on all systems used as sources for View

desktops. Facilitates communication with View clients.

View Administrator Web-based administration platform for View Infrastructure

components.

vCenter Server Central administration platform for configuring, provisioning and

managing VMware virtualized datacenters.

View Portal Web-based service for provisioning and starting Windows PC based

View clients.

View Composer A service that runs on vCenter servers. Used to create pools of

linked clone VM images in order to reduce storage requirements.

View Transfer Server Provides the data transfer service needed by Local Mode View

Clients for offline operation.

2.5 Benefits of using Dell EqualLogic Hybrid Arrays for VDI

In VMware View, it is possible to have many linked-clone desktops sharing the same base desktop

image. This scenario creates a situation where the data in a relatively small portion of the storage

system becomes extremely hot (very high read/write I/O rates). The EqualLogic PS6000XVS and

PS6010XVS are designed to support fast access to high demand “hot” data segments. These hybrid

storage arrays have sixteen drives – eight high performance SSD drives and eight high capacity 15K

rpm SAS hard disk drives. When data becomes “hot” (accessed frequently) it is automatically moved

from the SAS tier to the SSD tier. This automatic tiering function allows the hybrid XVS SAN very

Note: For detailed descriptions for each component above, see the Architecture Planning Guide

section of the VMware View Online Library:

 http://pubs.vmware.com/view45/ol/