IBM FlashSystem and Atlantis ILIO

Transcription

1 IBM FlashSystem and Atlantis ILIO Cost-effective, high performance, and scalable VDI Highlights Lower-than-PC cost Better-than-PC user experience Lower project risks Fast provisioning and better management at scale Challenges with traditional VDI implementations To be successful, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) projects must please three constituents: the users, the IT organization, and the CFO. Users are looking for the same experience they enjoy with their current physical desktops, plus the mobility to access their desktops and applications from any device. IT organizations want proven solutions that help simplify operations, lower deployment risks, and ensure high availability and disaster recovery. The CFO wants predictable capital expenditure (CapEx) costs that are comparable to physical PCs with tangible reductions in data center operational (OpEx) costs. With traditional server, network, and storage infrastructures, VDI projects can be fraught with risk and hidden storage and network costs that prevent them from meeting the expectations of any of these constituents. Many IT organizations prefer to deploy persistent virtual desktops because that provides the easiest transition from physical PCs, with minimal disruption to the IT organization. A persistent VDI allows users to install their own applications and keep their personal desktop environments, while desktop administrators get the benefits of centralized control without having to modify existing desktop images. These types of deployments are popular in vertical markets such as financial services,

2 legal services, and others where knowledge workers require customized desktop images with dedicated, persistent storage and the ability to support a variety of different applications. Other organizations prefer stateless virtual desktops that users cannot maintain on their personal desktop. Stateless environments can increase mobility, centralize control of corporate data, and streamline desktop management. They are often used in hospitals, call centers, schools, or any environment where users don t require personalized desktops or need to install their own applications. Implementing virtual desktop environments of either type comes with unique challenges. While VDI implementation pilots may go well, deployment risks related to storage and networking bottlenecks often arise during rollouts. As projects scale, the risks of VDI often lead to poor user experience and cause infrastructure costs to skyrocket unexpectedly, delaying or entirely derailing VDI projects. In the event of hardware failures or disasters, centralizing virtual desktops in the data center can cause outages, making high availability and disaster recovery critical for these projects. A better VDI solution Together, IBM FlashSystem storage and Atlantis ILIO optimization software deliver a unique solution that addresses the challenges of virtual desktop environments. The integrated solution delivers consistently better-than-pc performance as projects scale, while reducing storage infrastructure requirements by up to 95 percent. Built on fully validated reference architectures, the FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution supports centralized management with flexible deployment options that can scale to tens of thousands of users. Primary Site Secondary Site Virtual Desktops VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM Atlantis ILIO VM Atlantis ILIO VM Virtual Desktops Hypervisor Hypervisor Servers IBM FlashSystem IBM Storage Replication IBM FlashSystem Atlantis ILIO optimizes virtual desktops stored on IBM FlashSystem using IBM FlashCopy for disaster recovery. 2

3 Delivering lower-than-pc cost The biggest barriers to desktop virtualization involve the CapEx costs associated with VDI storage and the poor user experience resulting from undersized storage. One of the major reasons organizations hesitate to adopt VDI is because the cost for each desktop using traditional storage can be 50 percent percent more than a physical PC to achieve the same performance level. The FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution reduces the infrastructure costs of virtual desktops to below the cost of physical PCs, while delivering performance that is significantly faster than a PC. Better-than-PC user experience When IT organizations deploy virtual desktops, whether persistent or stateless, users expect that the performance of their desktops in terms of boot/logon time, application launch time, desktop or Outlook search, and overall desktop response time will be equal to or better than their physical PCs. However, when VDI is deployed with traditional storage technologies, IT can t cost-effectively provide the storage performance required to meet users expectations. FlashSystem provides performance levels that can significantly reduce wait time in common knowledge worker applications like putting an SSD in every machine, only faster which increases VDI project success and user acceptance. When Atlantis ILIO software is added, the economics of the joint solution become compelling, while at the same time delivering better-than-pc user experience. Fast provisioning and better management at scale The FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution simplifies and automates the deployment of an infrastructure that can support thousands of virtual desktops, while enabling high availability and disaster recovery. Deployment automation addresses the challenges of sizing storage and networking, helps prevent configuration mistakes, and eliminates the time-consuming process of integrating servers, storage, and networking. Atlantis ILIO seamlessly integrates with the hypervisor s high availability capabilities to provide automated recovery when a server or rack encounters a failure. In addition, Atlantis ILIO minimizes the amount of data that needs to be replicated between data centers across the wide area network (WAN) to enable highly efficient disaster recovery for all virtual desktops. Where required, FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution provides business continuity with replication services and data protection that works in combination with Atlantis ILIO to efficiently keep disaster recovery sites up to date and meet recovery time and recovery point objectives. Automated ILIO Deployment Lower project risks The FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution provides IT organizations with a simple, powerful, and scalable platform for deploying a VDI that eliminates the risks of the storage and network bottlenecks that often derail VDI projects. As the project scales, the solution consistently delivers high desktop performance without the risk of storage cost overruns. View Composer Provisioning Auto-Sizing & Configuration Auto-Create Datastores for View Composer VMware View 3

4 Atlantis ILIO deployment services have been used in some of the largest desktop virtualization deployments in the world to rapidly deploy and scale up virtual desktop implementations. Atlantis ILIO deployment services provide: Benchmark testing summary Test Atlantis ILIO with IBM Flash Systems Automated virtual desktop deployments across multiple data centers. A push button automation process that enables virtual hosts to be deployed with Atlantis ILIO virtual machine (VM) storage and networking configurations, as well as provisioning VMs on each host from master VM templates. Faster cloning technology that can provision 1,000 full clone VMs in as little as 12 minutes. Distributed architecture that eliminates single points of failure. VDI test results The IBM Innovation Center Silicon Valley conducted extensive performance, scalability, and reliability testing of the FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution. The testing measured: The storage density and optimization that could be achieved. Reliability and availability during server outages. Desktop performance using industry standard benchmarking tools such as PassMark Performance Test 8.0 and Iometer Storage capacity per desktop Storage density IOPS per desktop 382 Desktop performance (PassMark 8.0) Recovery Time 99 percent reduction Up to 4,000 users per 2U of storage 6x faster than MacBook Air (PassMark) 1 minute 14 seconds Benchmark testing summary: The test results showed that the FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution was able to achieve a storage density of up to 4,000 users per 2U of storage space while maintaining a server density of 125 virtual desktops per server (2x Intel Xeon E with 256GB RAM). When tested using Iometer with an industrystandard VDI input/output (I/O) profile (80 percent write, 20 percent read, 80 percent random, 4K blocks), the Atlantis ILIO VM was able to deliver 47,825 I/Os per second (IOPS) per server. With a server density of 125 virtual desktops, this means that each virtual desktop has access to a minimum of 382 available IOPS and the ability to burst up to thousands of IOPS per desktop when needed. High availability testing using Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI 4.1 was able to achieve automated fail-over and recovery in one minute and 14 seconds. Performance testing using Iometer and PassMark showed desktop performance that was 13 times faster than typical physical PC user experience and six times faster than a MacBook Air equipped with a solid state drive (SSD) Without Atlantis ILIO With Atlantis ILIO VDI storage capacity required per desktop. 4

5 PassMark Performance Test 8.0 PassMark Performance Test is a benchmarking tool designed to measure the performance of physical PCs. Using the test, virtual desktop disk performance can be compared to physical PC hard drives of different types that have been previously benchmarked by individuals and uploaded to the PassMark database. The Performance Test Disk Mark test measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. Persistent VDI PassMark Performance Test benchmark: Atlantis ILIO persistent VDI storage performance comparison (SATA, SSD, FlashSystem) 5

6 Iometer Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for dual controller and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmarking and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behavior of applications. In this test, Iometer was configured to simulate a VDI workload and determine the maximum available IOPS of the joint Atlantis ILIO and FlashSystem solution. VDI single server Iometer test showing 382 IOPS per virtual desktop (80 percent write, 20 percent read, 4K blocks, 100 percent random, 800 GB test file) 6

7 Broad solution portfolio and flexible deployment configurations Every organization has unique business and technology needs. The FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution is designed to address a broad range of desktop virtualization requirements using the following integrated technologies: IBM FlashSystem For your business to gain actionable insight from data and transform it into competitive advantage, your data-driven applications must operate at high availability and peak performance. FlashSystem delivers extreme performance to derive measurable economic value across your data architecture servers, software, applications, and storage. FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution offers advanced storage services such as business continuity with replication; data protection with IBM FlashCopy services; and higher storage efficiency with thin provisioning, IBM Real-time Compression, IBM Easy Tier, external virtualization, and space-efficient copies. Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI and Atlantis ILIO Stateless VDI Deploy a VDI easily using existing images to support persistent and stateless desktops while enabling virtual desktops that are faster and less expensive than PCs. Atlantis ILIO offers the first solutions that automate the deployment of thousands of virtual desktops across dozens of racks to enable customers to go live in weeks instead of months. Atlantis ILIO optimization enables disaster recovery by making it cost-effective to replicate virtual desktops between data centers using IBM storage, further reducing deployment risks. IBM FlashSystem and Atlantis ILIO Validated Architecture The following configuration is designed to support up to 4,000 virtual desktops with 50GB per desktop of storage. The configuration scales to tens of thousands of virtual desktops by adding additional FlashSystem capacity. One 20TB IBM FlashSystem 840 (2U) for virtual desktops. An optional additional FlashSystem 840 for disaster recovery sites. Two IBM FlashSystem V840s (8U) as an option for disaster recovery to provide synchronous or asynchronous storage replication. Atlantis ILIO Persistent VDI or Stateless VDI storage optimization software for up to 4,000 virtual desktops. One Atlantis ILIO VM per server running virtual desktops with one vcpu reserved and one vcpu allocated with 30GB of RAM reserved. IBM FlashSystem 840 7

8 Why IBM and Atlantis Computing? IBM has been a leader in large-scale virtualization for four decades, building strong intellectual capital and experience as a trusted adviser of end-user services to more than 4,000 companies. Atlantis Computing has also brought innovation to virtualization and shares a strong track record across virtually every industry. Together IBM and Atlantis Computing offer worldclass solutions to help customers implement and manage a more cost-effective, centralized, and virtualized desktop environment. Atlantis Computing is recognized as an industry expert in desktop virtualization and storage based on their success in designing and implementing some of world s largest desktop virtualization deployments. The Atlantis ILIO In-Memory Storage technology is acclaimed by industry experts and analysts as one of the most innovative solutions for desktop virtualization and is the only product to have swept the Best of VMworld U.S, Best of VMworld Europe, and Best of Citrix Synergy awards in the same year. For more information To learn more about the IBM FlashSystem-ILIO VDI solution, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/systems/storage/flash/ecosystem/isv.html Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the IT solutions that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We ll partner with credit-qualified clients to customize an IT financing solution to suit your business goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. IBM Global Financing is your smartest choice to fund critical IT investments and propel your business forward. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing Copyright IBM Corporation 2014 IBM Corporation Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY Produced in the United States of America July 2014 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, FlashSystem, FlashCopy, Real-time Compression, and Easy Tier are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data discussed herein is presented as derived under specific operating conditions. Actual results may vary. It is the user s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other products or programs with IBM products and programs. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. Actual available storage capacity may be reported for both uncompressed and compressed data and will vary and may be less than stated. Please Recycle TSW03267-USEN-00