Technical data

VSPEX Configuration Guidelines
VMware Horizon View 5.3 and VMware vSphere for up to 2,000 Virtual
Desktops Enabled by Brocade Network Fabrics, EMC VNX, and EMC Next-
Generation Backup
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VMware vCenter Server Deployment.
Server capacity is required for two purposes in the solution:
 To support the new virtualized desktop infrastructure
 To support the required infrastructure services such as
authentication/authorization, DNS, and database
For information on minimum infrastructure services hosting requirements,
refer to Table 6. If existing infrastructure services meet the requirements, the
hardware listed for infrastructure services is not required.
Memory configuration
Proper sizing and configuration of the solution requires that you are careful
when configuring server memory. The following section provides general
guidance on memory allocation for the virtual machines and factors in
vSphere overhead and the virtual machine configuration.
ESX/ESXi memory management
Memory virtualization techniques allow the vSphere hypervisor to abstract
physical host resources, such as memory, to provide resource isolation
across multiple virtual machines, while avoiding resource exhaustion. In
cases where advanced processors (such as Intel processors with EPT
support) are deployed, this abstraction takes place within the CPU.
Otherwise, this process occurs within the hypervisor itself using a feature
known as shadow page tables.
vSphere employs the following memory management techniques:
Allocation of memory resources greater than those physically available to
the virtual machine is known as memory over-commitment.
Identical memory pages that are shared across virtual machines are
merged using a feature known as transparent page sharing. Duplicate
pages are returned to the host’s free memory pool for reuse.
Memory compression is a process in which ESXi stores pages, which would
otherwise be swapped out to disk through host swapping, in a
compression cache located in the main memory.
Host resource exhaustion can be relieved using a process known as
memory ballooning, which allocates free pages from the virtual machine
to the host for reuse.
Hypervisor swapping causes the host to force arbitrary virtual machine
pages out to disk.
You can find additional information on VMware’s website at
www.vmware.com/files/pdf/mem_mgmt_perf_vsphere5.pdf.
Plan virtual
machine
memory
allocations