VDI: What Does it Mean, Deploying challenges & Will It Save You Money? Jack Watts, Senior Sales Executive & Cloud Solutions Specialist Neil Stobart, Director of Sales Engineering
Distributor and Systems Integrator since 1992 HQ in UK, with offices in Germany, France, India, USA Deliver cutting edge technology for Servers / Storage / Workstations In depth understanding of the needs of the modern virtualised datacenter and heterogeneous computing
100% Software Solution, based on Open Source plus 8 Years of R&D by 130+ Top Class Engineers and strong patent portfolio Validated by Strategic Partners Including Supermicro, Dell, Cisco, VMware and Citrix 5,000+ Customer Deployments With 900PB+ Under NexentaStor Management Worldwide Service and Support Enterprise-Class, Cost Effective, Flexible and Scalable Storage Solutions Certified on Wide Choice of Platforms
Agenda What is VDI? Storage Deployment challenges for VDI How you can save money with Boston/Nexenta solution Boston Igloo storage Nexenta Connect Further research Visit Boston and Nexenta stand Links to blogs/websites for further reading Boston Nexenta Gartner Citrix
What is VDI? Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, refers to the process of running a user desktop inside a virtual machine that lives on a server in the datacentre.
Deployment Challenges Storage Performance considerations Need equal or better performance than PC Requires low latency to deliver good end user experience High Write IOPS due to user profile updates need more resources than high read requirements Boot/login storms necessitate sizing for overall peak performance requirements therefore need more spindles High performance storage required to support workload means that storage costs severely impact VDI deployment Monitoring Storage Calibration ensuring storage resources are applied for the right desktops No insight into performance at the desktop level Different categories of user require different levels of performance therefore important to understand when and where additional storage resources are required to ensure good end user experience
How you can save money with Boston/Nexenta solution Citrix Ready Capacity Validation Program Benchmark 750 Desktop Solutions http://blogs.gartner.com/gunnar-berger/the-real-cost-of-vdi-storage/
Citrix Validation Test Early in 2014, Citrix launched a new programme to assist customers to ensure they could address their storage needs for implementing XenDesktop appropriately. Citrix constructed a turnkey VDI Capacity test rig to allow customers the opportunity to assess different options in the market for storage when running VDI workloads Test rig designed to simulate 750 VDI users. Multiple vendors invited to test their solutions on this rig Tests focus on provisioning the appropriate amount of storage performance and capacity in a cost efficient design. The test runs for a period of one day to simulate all typical eventualities. Login VSI is used to generate the VDI workloads and to measure performance - 750 desktops created, launched and workload executed that simulates a typical working day.
Solution Components/Architecture Design The Citrix VDI test environment required at least 32TB of logical storage but due to the compression delivered by NexentaStor, only 16.5TB physical storage was required. The total logical storage delivered by the Nexenta solution was calculated at 118TB. http://www.citrix.com/cms/ready/files/1713/9826/9812/cr_vdi_whitepaper_nexenta.pdf
Boston Igloo NX-Stor Series Featuring NexentaStor Unified NAS & SAN, supporting iscsi, FC, CIFS/SMB, NFS & FTP Protocols Web GUI for simple operation & CLI / SSH access for advanced management Enterprise level feature set through ZFS file system High Availability cluster options for NAS, FC & iscsi High performance through integrated ZFS SSD & DRAM caching
Virtual GPU Technology NVIDIA GRID vgpu brings the full benefit of NVIDIA hardware-accelerated graphics to virtualized solutions. This technology provides exceptional graphics performance for virtual desktops equivalent to local PCs when sharing a GPU among multiple users.
GPU Accelerated VDI with NexentaConnect Key Features Boston NVIDIA Grid Host System Up to 32 High-End Users and Up to 64 Knowledge Users 20 CPU Cores @ 2.8GHz 256GB ECC-Registered 1866 DDR3 per node 4x SanDisk Enterprise Class 2TB 2.5 SAS 2.0 SSD Drives Dual Port 10/40GbE connectivity Dual Redundant high efficiency power supplies Software & Support Citrix/VMware environment NexentaConnect Installed and configured Boston 3 Years On-site Next Business Day Warranty On-Site Installation
Nexenta Connect How does it work?
Stateless (Floating) VDI Location Benefit Location Benefit Desktop Images NexentaConnect Low Latency High Performance User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache Shared Nothing Architecture Desktop Images NexentaConnect with Any Array Existing Storage Architecture Use existing storage Cached images User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache User Data User Data Desktop Images Desktop Images Workloads: Call Centers, Healthcare, Standard Office Workers, Kiosks Additional Components: User Profile Management
Persistent (Dedicated) VDI Location Benefit Location Benefit Desktop Images NexentaConnect Low Latency High Performance User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache NexentaConnect Based Architecture Desktop Images Any Array Use existing storage User Data/Profiles NexentaStor Reduced Capacity Increased Cache NexentaStor only Architecture User Data User Data Desktop Images Desktop Images Workloads: Graphics Workers, Executive Workers Additional Components: User Profile Management
Enhanced analytics and management - Improves the quality and ROI of VDI production deployments
Summary Super Micro server/storage platform combined with Nexenta software solutions provide the lowest cost per virtual desktop (based on Citrix validation methodology) Nexenta Connect provides an efficient way to deploy storage in a VDI environment utilising SSD and RAM combined with data reduction techniques to maximise performance and minimise cost Nexenta Connect provides insight into deployment and ongoing management of virtual desktop and storage usage at a desktop granular level helps with maintaining user experience and decisions on when and where to add additional resources Super Micro platform provides enterprise class performance, scalability and resiliency Solution will support all deployment options persistent and stateless Boston provide turnkey solution to address VDI workload needs
Further Research Come and visit us @ Stand H1 Stand HH1 Useful links for further reading; http://blogs.gartner.com/gunnar-berger/the-real-cost-of-vdistorage/ http://www.citrix.com/cms/ready/files/1713/9826/9812/cr_vdi_ Whitepaper_Nexenta.pdf www.boston.co.uk http://nexenta.com/products/nexentaconnect Thank you for attending, any questions?