SANs are dead, so I can use VSAN for VDI, only?

[hegret]

Hello,

I´m planning for a VMware VSAN setup (VDI with full VMs for about 200-250 office Windows 8.1 clients). I read (too) many recommendations about hardware, too.

some assumptions:

- I do not need any real SAN, i.e. 3Par

- I do not need 2 or 4 RAID controllers. Neither with caching, nor with a battery

- I do not need SSD only disk shelves =>  I need enough cache

- I do not need SAS drives

- I do need enterprise hardware

- I do not need redundancy within one node

- one whole node can happily break away. It doesn´t matter within that VMware VSAN cluster

- I´d like some good high availability

- I actually do not know whether I need something like NVIDIA´s GRID K1/K2 card. Will the cluster go down, when 10/50/100/200/250 of my users run google earth?

So, here it is, a first built:

8 nodes with

16x Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2, 12x 2.70GHz (192 cores, 518 GHz)

4 TB ECC Reg RAM

25.6 TB SSD (2.5“, SATA3, TBW: 14950TB)

160 TB HDD (2.5“, SATA3, 10000rpm, SATA3, NRRE: <10 in 10^16.)

So remember, instead of VMware VSAN the alternative would be to buy something like a HP 3Par. (One of our partners offered us a 3Par/DL380p G8 based setup with Vsphere/Citrix, the other one took similar hardware and suggests Vsphere/Unidesk. We asked both for a VDI setup. Well, they are both HP partners...)

It would be great if you give some hints.

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Yes, it can be used.

VDI Performance Benchmarking on VMware Virtual SAN 5.5 | VMware VROOM! Blog - VMware Blogs

[ReinerHeinz]

Not sure I share the sentiment that SANS are dead, however I like the build config you are throwing together.  Interesting to hear how you get on.

[depping]

Just some comments:

• The WD drives are not on the HCL!
• LSI 2308 Onboard controller is an excellent choice, make sure to use right firmware and driver though!
• Good ratio of SSD vs Disk

Other than that I have no comments,

[cmiller78]

The Virtual SAN config will work, but overall it's hard to judge whether or not you are being proposed a right-sized solution.

Based on your specs I'd assume your users have very heavy performance demands, correct? Otherwise you may be overbuying.

Regarding the question about K1/K2, you really should build out a POC with your specific use case to determine what level of performance is acceptable. I've helped customers get free demos from NVidia and they were happy to provide a card for test. If you have supported hardware available it wouldn't cost you anything but time to try, so reach out to NVidia.