Technical data

Solution Architectural Overview

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

Backup and recovery configuration guidelines

See Design and Implementation Guide: EMC Backup and Recovery

Options for VSPEX End User Computing for VMware Horizon View on

available on EMC Online Support.

Sizing guidelines

The following sections define the reference workload used to size and

implement the VSPEX architectures discussed in this document, and

provide guidance on how to correlate those reference workloads to

actual customer workloads. They also explain how that may change the

end delivery from the server and network perspective.

You can modify the storage definition by adding drives for greater

capacity and performance and adding features like FAST Cache for

desktops and FAST VP for improved user data performance. The disk

layouts have been created to provide support for the appropriate number

of virtual desktops at the defined performance level. Decreasing the

number of recommended drives or stepping down an array type can

result in lower IOPS per desktop and a less satisfactory user experience due

to higher response times.

Reference workload

Each VSPEX Proven Infrastructure balances the storage, network, and

compute resources needed for a set number of virtual machines that have

been validated by EMC. In practice, each virtual machine has its own set

of requirements that rarely fit a pre-defined idea of what a virtual machine

should be. In any discussion about virtual infrastructures, define a

reference workload first. Not all servers perform the same tasks, and it is

impractical to build a reference that takes into account every possible

combination of workload characteristics.

To simplify the discussion, we have defined a representative customer

reference workload. By comparing your actual customer usage to this

reference workload, you can extrapolate which reference architecture to

choose.

For the VSPEX end-user computing solutions, the reference workload is

defined as a single virtual desktop. Table 16 shows the reference virtual

machine has following detail characteristics:

Defining the

reference

workload