VDI solution together with server vm

[Micke09]

Hi!

I have started building (on papper) a solution that includes Win servers and VDI desktops.

Do anyone have experience on this subject?

If you look at this questions:

1. Shall I mix servers and desktops on the same storage?
   
2. Shall I mix server and desktops on the same hypervisor?
   
3. Is there anything that can give me a bottleneck even if I have really fast machines and storage?
   
4. Is ESX set to only send 32 packages at the time when accessing storage?
   

Best Regards

Mikael

[logiboy123]

1) It depends on your type of storage solution. I would deffinately use different LUN's for Servers and Desktop as a minimum.

2) VMware recommends seperation for your VDI and Server infrastructure. It depends on the size of the implementation of course, for smaller environments I'm happy to use a single vCenter with a seperate cluster for VDI. \

3) Lots of things could give you a bottle neck. The best thing you can do is to do a lot of research, build a plan and then do a pilot. Your requirements and budget will define the solution.

4) Not sure.

[Hypnotoad]

1) Storage - You can mix VDI and servers on the sane SAN but I would suggest seperate LUNs. For a Premier level VDI configuration, I would recommend using very fast disk (SSD if you have it) for the parent VM and cheaper disk 10K SCSI or SATA for the linked clones.

2) No - but this is just my opinion. You can technically do this but I would keep it seperate. In fact, you should concider sererate vCenter servers and clusters for servers and VDI.

3) Network bandwidth for the display protocol and network printing. This can be an issue in a WAN environment.

4) ?

[logiboy123]

I concur; networking especially over WAN links is probably the biggest concern you might have.

Lots of VDI solution incorporate PCoIP, which doesn't seem to work well over WAN. If anyone knows a good way to get this working in a reasonable way I'd love to hear about it.

[AdamG53]

PCoIP is certainly a great display protocol.  However, if you find that PCoIP has issues in some scenarios of high latency/low bandwidth remote connections (like over certain WANs), you can complement your VDI deployment with Ericom Blaze, a software-based RDP acceleration and compression product that provides improved performance over WANs and other slow networks. Besides delivering higher frame rates and reducing screen freezes and choppiness, Blaze accelerates RDP performance and significantly reduces network bandwidth consumption especially over low-bandwidth/high latency connections.

Blaze also works together with VMware View.  You can use VMware View with PCoIP for your LAN and fast WAN users, and at the same time use VMware View with Blaze over RDP for your slow WAN users.

Read more about Blaze and download a free evaluation at:
http://www.ericom.com/Blaze_and_View

Adam

[Micke09]

Hi!

Thanks for all your answers. I have started redoing/rethinking me VDI solution.

What is the recommended WAN speed to have good performance?

I have also started looking at Citrix. Vmware as hypervisor and Citrix for desktop and distribution. Whit ICA protocol I’ll get better performance over WAN. Do you have any experience in this field?

Best Regards

[Hypnotoad]

Read the VMware VDI design docs. They speak to bandwidth. I seem to recall the value 200Kb per session but that seems like quite a bit for many WAN users. QoS will certainly help with this. You can also some some display protocol tuning to limit Flash performance.

There are many WAN optimization products out there that would also help. Steelhead is one of the big ones. We are going to be looking at the SilverPeak solution soon. IT is rated highly and runs as either a physical or virtual appliance. We will run a pair of the bigger physical units at are mail datacenter and then use the virtual versions ar all of the remote sites.

Also you should watch out for printing. This can become an issue for users with large printing volumes.

--Patrick

[Stu_McHugh]

When looking at running this over a WAN remember that PCoIP is a UDP protocol so all WAN accelerator products will not help (correct me if I'm wrong).  You can still use View in a WAN scenario though but use RDP and WAN accelerator products could help.

Stuart