Case Study Anglia Ruskin University opts for a VDI deployment Reducing power consumption and creating an excellent user experience for over 32,000 students were both central motivators in Anglia Ruskin University s decision to opt for a VDI solution using Violin flash Memory Arrays. We needed to reduce power consumption and improve our ability to deliver software to those who need them irrespective of location. We wanted a modern and attractive desktop for our student and staff community that could take advantage of recent technology innovations to improve their experience. This all came together at a time that VDI technology was coming of age and offered a credible solution. Gregor Waddell Assistant Director, The Customer In 2011, Anglia Ruskin University needed to provide a brand new 300 seat Cambridge student IT open access area, within a new building which was built with no provision for additional cooling traditional thick clients were not a viable option. Project Motivations 1. Power consumption in the new IT open access area In common with other organisations, Anglia Ruskin University are strongly motivated to reduce or at least contain their power consumption and contribute to sustainability objectives within their corporate plan. Failure to meet such targets can result in heavy fines. The building hosting the new IT open access area assumed no need for cooling presenting a potential heat issue if traditional PCs were deployed. The increased use of IT, and in particular media-rich applications, as a foundation to much of the University s work also saw a substantial increase in overall power consumption. The provision of PC over thin or zero clients would significantly reduce the need for power and cooling. 2. Customer satisfaction Previous National Student Survey scores suggested that it was necessary to dramatically increase access to University IT services, and improve the student experience to help meet the University s goal to be technology leaders, rather than followers. In addition the use of IT significantly increasing, so was the student and staff s expectations on how that technology was delivered to them. The previous IT provision was not meeting these expectations and the University needed a step change to overcome this. They needed the end user experience to be identical but preferably better than that provided by a new standard PC, particularly in the delivery of rich content such video and audio. The new VDI environment and IT open access area needed to map more appropriately to the IT needs and behaviours of their student and staff population. 3. Desktop upgrades The University s aging Windows XP desktop needed upgrading to Windows 7, in tandem with a rolling hardware upgrade program. The estate was becoming obsolete and difficult to manage. The University were also wary of the costs and effort required to upgrade and of introducing unnecessary complexity into their new desktop. Their previous PC redeployment and upgrade strategy had been adhoc and reactive, a new VDI strategy would enable them to proactively upgrade all desktop images quickly, cost effectively and consistently across the campus whilst standardising on a minimum footprint client that would not require constant performance upgrades. VMEM.COM 2013 Violin Memory, Inc. All rights reserved. These products and technologies are protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. Violin Memory is a registered trademark of Violin Memory, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.
We were convinced by the concept and advantages of virtualisation for our server infrastructure and had already pushed almost all of our server estate over to VMWare Sphere based virtualisation. This naturally lead us to consider Desktop Virtualisation and related thin client technologies as a potential way forward. -Gregor Waddell Assistant Director, Main challenges for Anglia Ruskin University: Maintain an equal video & sound quality Provide high storage performance 100,000+ IOPS Reduce power consumption realising the potential savings Achieve target ROI Disaster recovery and resilience Provide a PC-like or better experience for their students Main challenges for Anglia Ruskin University: Technology review We were convinced by the concept and advantages of virtualisation for our server infrastructure and had already pushed almost all of our server estate over to VMWare Sphere based virtualisation. This naturally lead us to consider Desktop Virtualisation and related thin client technologies as a potential way forward. Gregor Waddell Assistant Director, Anglia Ruskin University took advice from Gartner and embarked on their own VDI technology review process. In summary, here are their findings: To cater to the heavy loads generated by hundreds of users logging on and launching apps within a short window, a traditional storage area network (SAN) based solution would have required many shelves of disks, consumed more power, required significant cooling and incurred higher maintenance costs. Increasing the investment in traditional storage arrays, didn t meet with the University s green agenda of power saving. Adding SSD drives to a SAN environment delivered disappointing results. In-server card based solutions were considered, but were assessed to be less flexible than a shared solution, and compromised availability. Some vendors were not yet ready with their VDI support strategy. Some vendors did not have as convincing references or feeling of company stability. Some technology felt less well engineered. Other options felt intrusive into the current environment and were cost prohibitive when scaled to meet their environment. After considering several options we chose a 3000 Series Violin flash Memory Array. Storage performance is key to VDI and our existing traditional spinning disk did not offer good enough performance. The virtual machines needed 80-100 IOPS per desktop in our more demanding environments, of which most were writes. Gregor Waddell Assistant Director,
After considering several options we chose a 3000 Series Violin flash Memory Array. Storage performance is key to VDI and our existing traditional spinning disk did not offer good enough performance Gregor Waddell, Assistant Director Violin flash Memory Array The Violin flash Memory Array chosen and installed by Anglia Ruskin University is capable of handling 220,000 random write IOPS in 4K blocks, more than 20 times the performance of a comparable SAN disk array. This flash Memory Array has enabled the IT department to have a scalable solution to manage its needs today and be ready to address future growth needs. Anglia Ruskin University use multiple arrays at each core site to deliver a balanced high performance solution with high availability in the event of failure. The University are even able to serve desktop images between sites in a disaster situation. ARU use VMView technology from VMware as the core broker for desktop services. Core applications are embedded in the server images, whilst specialist applications are streamed into the desktops as required. The solution uses a combination of ESX 4 and ESX 5 technology with VMView 5.1. The Violin flash Memory Array delivers key capabilities to the University s desktop solution: Delivers sustained high performance in intensive write loads. Offers ultra-low latency to maximise hosted images, and deliver outstanding user experience. Engineered from the ground up, without limitations of SSD implementations. Seamless integration into the overall solution, with no proprietary integration points. Maximises server utilisation by minimising server wait. Delivers a total VDI solution at no more cost than cyclical PC replacement, built with better service and manageability. Provides at practically unlimited number of IOPS ensuring that no effort is wasted on performance tuning of storage. Implementing the chosen VDI Solution The team developed a new technical architecture based on VMWare View to deliver a short and sharp trial to 30-40 concurrent users. They also ran a performance test to simulate 500 concurrent users which included streaming video. The design brief was to provide a solution which would scale to at least 800 concurrent users with no appreciable degradation to user experience. They also introduced a resilient architecture - avoiding single points of failure. PC over IP thin clients using VMware s View 4.6 were installed to deliver a fully managed desktop environment under Windows 7 and virtualised applications including Office 2010 using Microsoft Application Virtualisation (App-V). Initially, the University deployed a VDI supporting 500 desktops, but once the solution had proved itself, the IT department committed to replacing half of its desktop estate with virtual desktops. The changes will be implemented over the next two years. When it comes to our desktops, we need a fast, reliable platform so that teachers and students can perform at their best. A high performance storage solution is critical to ensuring that the back-end is able to support the amount of IOPS generated by VDI. Julian Luttrell Assistant Director - Media, Anglia Ruskin University
Feedback from our students and Student Union has been excellent. Our architecture has allowed speedy addition of new software such as Adobe Dreamweaver. Plus we have also realized potential software license savings where software can be licensed on a concurrent basis rather than a per seat basis Julian Luttrell, Assistant Director Media The new architecture comprised of: 3202/3205 Flash Memory Array from Violin Memory providing performance storage for the virtual machines HP Blade servers 10Gbit network back bone Low power zero clients from Samsung (LCD/LED) and LG (LED) VMWare View 4.6 Windows 7, Office 2010 in a single image Other applications streamed to the Virtual Machines using Microsoft AppV ensuring as simple and small as possible Virtual Machine PCOIP Remote display technology from Teradici and supplied with VMWare View They also provided remote Internet based access from anywhere using PCs and ipads. Results: Provided an almost indistinguishable user experience to that provided by traditional PCs. Reduced power consumption with around a 30-40% saving, per user, when compared to traditional PCs and monitors. Reduced boot times from an average of 8-9 minutes to between 30-60 seconds. Calculated that the capital expenditure would be similar to that of a PC deployment at numbers greater than around 500 concurrent users with a saving, year on year, in support and management costs. Significantly increased flexibility to deploy new software easily. Launching the new desktop September 2011 saw the successful launch of the new Hosted Virtual Desktop into the new IT open access area and library initially providing capacity for around 400 concurrent desktops. Feedback from our students and Student Union has been excellent. Our architecture has allowed speedy addition of new software such as Adobe Dreamweaver. Plus we have also realised potential software license savings where software can be licensed on a concurrent basis rather than a per seat basis. Julian Luttrell Assistant Director - Media, Anglia Ruskin University In December 2011, the University launched a new external access to the student desktop providing students with access to their software from home and elsewhere. This has proved popular with around 100 students using the new service over Christmas. The new desktop is rolling out to the rest of the University s student IT open access areas and they expect to reach around 1000 concurrent users during spring 2012. Their new desktop is also now being rolled out to our staff - with most of our specific software such as Tribal SITS being delivered using application virtualisation.
Violin Memory Arrays are very well engineered, high performance, reliable flash memory arrays. Gregor Waddell, Assistant Director Return on Investment The hosted Virtual Desktop infrastructure, associated software costs, training, consultancy and 400 thin clients had a total budget similar to that required to provide traditional PCs. This provided a server and software capability (e.g. VMWare View licenses) for around 600-700 concurrent users. The University s storage capacity is able to support around 1,400 concurrent standard users without further upgrade. Additional users may be added up to their existing server capacity of 600-700 concurrent users by either adding thin or zero clients or by re-using existing PCs. Predicted power total consumption is less than 60-70% of comparable Windows 7 based PCs (using thin client devices). This includes all server and storage power consumption. As the number of users increase, costs will reduce up to the limits of the existing SSD storage capacity around 1400 concurrent users. Of course, this is dependent on the actual workload caused by the student or staff member. Internal staff costs have not been included but averaged around two staff working for nine months to implement the new solution. Key insights 1. Keep in mind that your end user experience must be identical or even better than that provided by a traditional PC. Your internal customers will have as high expectations. 2. Storage performance is critical in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure environment. The storage performance required far exceeded what we could sensibly provide from our Storage Area Network. 3. Hosted Virtual Desktops may require a new approach to support and management to get the best out of the environment we have restructured our department to provide a small dedicated Hosted Virtual Desktop team with combined desktop, server and storage skills. 4. Some applications are better suited to a VDI environment than others, as many were originally built expecting to sit on a traditional fat PC, Photoshop for example. Prioritise what applications you need to virtualise. We do expect to see more software houses build their applications to suit VDI s in the future, but there will always be a % that need a physical PC environment. 5. We decided to host our VDI in a separate environment. As VDI is so different, the volume and scale is so intense, we wouldn t suggest sharing it with any other application that may prevent the IO that you need for the VDI to work seamlessly. 6. We have introduced application virtualisation as the default means to deploy software across our IT estate minimising complexity in our standard images whether they are virtual or traditional. 7. VDI has come of age - we consider Hosted Virtual Desktop and the other supporting technologies to be a viable and realistic alternative to traditional PCs whilst providing a range of additional benefits. Violin Memory, Inc. 685 Clyde Ave, Mountain View, CA 94043 Ph: 1-888-9VIOLIN (984-6546) Email: sales@vmem.com vmem-13q1-cs-angliaruskin-usltr-en-r02