View Eval Setup

[Bahou]

Hello,

I'm looking to deploy View for evaluation purposes for the organization.  We currently have a vSphere 5 environment for our servers.  Will I need to setup a completely separate environment or host cluster rather to deploy view to?  I have hardware resources available in the existing vSphere cluster and would prefer to use it if possible.  I would also prefer to deploy to actual server hardware and not use something like Workstation to host the environment so I can get a feel for "real world" performance metrics within our environment and what to expect should View become our production VDI implementation.

Also if you have any advice/pointers/suggestions as to a test/evaluation deployment of View, I'm all ears.

Thanks,

[dvhorvath]

If you're going to keep your eval to 5 or 10 VMs, just to prove the concept, you should be able to host it on the same infrastructure you're using now for vSphere. In the long run, if you decide to go with View in production, it would be a good idea to use a separate vCenter for it, and essential to use a dedicated host cluster just for View. If you can afford to use dedicated shared storage for View, that's even better.

The big performance hit with View is on the storage, in terms of the IOPS it generates. But it can also be pretty hard on a vCenter, especially if that server is trying to do double duty as a vSphere and View vCenter. Composer can be a pretty busy component, and that can definitely bog down a vCenter as the VM count grows.

Dave

[Bahou]

Yeah, we were only thinking 10 or so just to confirm performance for different departments and their respective applications.

[dvhorvath]

For that sort of thing, you should be fine using your existing hardware and vCenter. Just a word of caution, though: don't let it grow beyond about 10 or 15 desktops. It's soooooo easy to let that happen without even realizing it, so I just want to throw that out there.

Do you have any need to test remote access through a Security Server at this stage? The VMware virtual hardware requirements for View 5 are pretty daunting: 2 or 4 vCPUs and 10 GB of RAM for each Connection or Security Server. For a small POC like you're talking about here, you can definitely get by with less. I would still say 2 vCPUs, but knock the RAM back to 4 GB per server.

Are you using a dedicated SQL server for your vCenter database now, or is that local to the vCenter Server? You'll need a View Composer database at a minimum, and will probably want to create a View Events database as well. If the composer database is local to the vCenter Server, you can use integrated Windows Authentication for that. If it's a remote database, it will have to use SQL Authentication.

Good luck with your eval!

Dave

[Bahou]

Wow Dave thanks. Good things to consider. We would be testing remote users and have dual quad procs in each server along with 120GB RAM per host. Much of the RAM is not currently utilized.

We have a SQL 20008 R2 db server separate from the vCenter server. Can you create an express db for View Composer?

-Jack

[dvhorvath · Accepted solution]

I like this kind of conversation about these things. I think it's what makes this community so great. I don't know what you have running on those hosts now, but as long as you're not overcommitting the cores on them (I would try to stick to about 8 vCPUs per logical core) you shouldn't have any problems at all with those specs. They sound like really nice servers.

You can definitely use a local SQL Express installation for the View Composer database, and that would work fine. But cleanup will be easier and less messy when you finish the eval if you just create a new database on your SQL server. That way, when you're finished, you can just delete that database. If you decide to carry on with View afterward, you can set up a new database for Composer and not carry over any of the data from the POC.

Dave

From: Jack <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>

Reply-To: communities-emailer <communities-emailer@vmware.com<mailto:communities-emailer@vmware.com>>

Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2012 07:00:00 -0800

To: David Horvath <david.horvath@dmctechgroup.com<mailto:david.horvath@dmctechgroup.com>>

Subject: New message: "View Eval Setup"

VMware Communities<http://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa>

View Eval Setup

reply from Jack<http://communities.vmware.com/people/Bahou> in VMware View™ (with View Manager) - View the full discussion<http://communities.vmware.com/message/2004523#2004523

[Bahou]

I conquer with your remarks on the Composer database. The servers are Dell R710s that we beefed up the memory in.

Thanks again for all your input dvhorvath it really helps me conceptualize the process in my mind.

-Jack