The VDI armageddon (or: the impact of VDI on Storage!)

[brugh2]

We implemented several VDI sites. As it turns out, the impact of VDI on the central storage is much bigger than most whitepapers say!

I wrote a whitepaper to summarize our findings so far. I think it's a must-read for anybody who wants to design a VDI infrastructure. check it out on http://virtuall.eu/download-document/vdi-storage-deep-impact. if you have any comments or other additions, let us know!

[fletch00]

Thanks for writing this

We are launching a 30-60 desktop View 4 pilot on Netapp NFS storage

And I will be closely monitoring the IOPs via vscsistats

VCP

[dturner71]

Well the subject of this post certainly go my attention. This is a definite concern of mine. What I've found in my research on this is that we should expect somewhere between 5 - 8 IOPS per View user. We run an EqualLogic iSCSI SAN and have the headroom there for our project provided those IOPS estimates are correct.

I'm wondering if there is a tool available to simulate the VDI load on a SAN?

[brugh2]

actually, that's exactly what's going wrong. using tools to simulate load (read: lab environment) is what's skewing the numbers. the only way to be sure is to run a pilot. but because that is usually not a real option, go by other people's experience. i wrote a small tool to give you a general idea what the impact of the numbers from the whitepaper is. check out the VDI sizing tool on http://virtuall.eu/whitepapers/solutions.