Rapid provisioning of VDI VMs...

[lettech]

Hi VDI gurus.

I have recently deployed a VDI solution based on VI3, XP Pro Desktop VMs and Leostream's Desktop Broker. My question for you is how are you building your VDI VM's? Obviously I can use template builds from Virtual Center but I may have to deploy 2000-3000 of them! NO THANKS! I know some folks are doing this by using the SDK but I am not a developer...I can string together a bit of PHP in an emergency

Can anyone tell me a smarter way of deploying our VDI VMs? And if your solution uses the SDK any pointers to documentation or links would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks as always!

Shanus

[thinkthin]

Hi,

One option is to use a streaming solution like Wyse's WSM or Citrix Ardence. Basically what you do is capture your SOE and this mounts as a single binary image on a streaming server (this can be a virtualized server on ESX). What happens then is every desktop booted streams from the single binary file, so if your XP SOE image is 10GB you can stream 1000 VM's using the one 10GB image. Now before you cancel the SAN order be aware that once a user logs in a "difference" file is maintained for each Virtual Desktop instance (at least this is how WSM works). So as users deploy apps and change the desktop you will end up with 1000 different difference files in our example.

There is still a large saving in space and also the provisioning is quick as you just clone an empty VM and boot it - all the SID change and domain membership is handled by the streaming server.

I am sure other have some suggestions on how to deal with the storage issues,

Cheers,

-TT

[admin]

I see a lot of people use NetApp flex clones.

WP

[lettech]

Thanks for the feedback fellas...I'd rather not have to purchase and maintain any more tools.

What would be fantastic is an option in VC, when you create a VM from a template (with your sysprep installed etc) that lets you specify the number of VMs that you want to deploy? How hard can that be?

[admin]

On the desktop front, this is being handle by the broker. This is part of the pooling capabilites in VDM. I am sure there is a script to do this though.

WP

[lettech]

Sure, assigning a VM that is already built is not the problem. As you say the broker takes care of that. What I am refering to is the intial build of all the VMs. I am going to post a suggestion to VMware to include functionality to build multiple VMs automatically via templates/sysprep. But in the meantime if anyone has a script for building VMs that would be brilliant.

[admin]

The broker does this already. Not only does it assigin a pre-existing desktop. It also offers the capability to create the desktops from a template and apply instance customization file aka sysprep the desktops that will be created.

WP

[lettech]

Which broker?

[lettech]

...Which broker?

Ignore this...Sorry, I see you are using VDM from your comment. However we are using Leostream...not aware of any build functionality available.

[murreyaw]

The next VDM tool from VMWare due out next year is set to take care of these needs.

[davlloyd]

Leostream is incorporating provisioning into the broker currently and is presented in the 5.x latest releases. As with the other brokers though this utilises cloning for the provisioning which is not the correct tool for mass provisioning. If you have an image ready to roll why not utilise soething like the Viper kit to create Vm's, you could then utilise PXE and TFTP to apply the image down to the machine.

We are able to provision 100's with a single task all ready for service within a couple of hours. Alternatively there is some smart image management coming with the next generation of VMware due next month.

[mreferre]

Shanus,

have you seen this ?

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/ullbergm/2007/10

Seems to be close to what you need (I had a similar question and they pointed me there).

Dave, have you succesfully been able to use the Leostream provisioning? I have 5.0.3 in my lab and I can see the fields but the currently available documentation doesn't mention it at all. The 5.1 beta docs mention the provisioning but they are far from being an how-to. Also .... are you referring to the VMware Scalable System Images technology from VMware? I don't think that would be in 3.5 ...... or are you talking about something else ?

Massimo.

[lettech]

Thanks Dave, I think that is heading down the right track. Do you have anymore details on the VIPER Kit you are refering too?

[lettech]

Thanks Massimo...still in development by the looks of things but this is something like what we are after.

[davlloyd]

Hi Massimo (I have been quiet for awhile),

We went down the bespoke path for Provisioning as we were able to utilise our existing delivery methods so there was very little deviation between standard and virtual desktops. Having reviewed the early offerings from various vendors this was able to give us the best large scale performance while ensuring image management was not an issue. it is the VMWare Scalable System I am referring to which is the Lab Manager image engine I believe that I am talking about. I thought this was coming at the same time scales as 3.5 although I may be wrong.

Cheers

David

[jrr001]

Anyone know where you can download the tool mentioned here:

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/ullbergm/2007/10

[admin]

From the looks of it . That is an in house developed tool. The tite bar at the the top says BB&T which is a large bank in North Carolina. The autor is from Winston-Salem where BB&T is based.

WP

[davlloyd · Accepted solution]

Sounds like something they are writing themselves but not neccessarily for public domain. Brings up a good point though and that is the management of storage allocation when concurrently provisioning (either through multi threading or multiple sources). It is definitely one to watch as we had to throttle ours in a way that it was aware of the space being consumed by incomplete device creations and not only those already created.