euc2103 storage tips and best practices for vmware view desktop deployments

EUC2103Storage Tips and Best Practices for VMware View Desktop Deployments

Name, Title, Company

2

. . .

3

How to Plausibly Blame the Storage Team for your View Woes

4

Disclaimer

This session may contain product features that are currently under development.

This session/overview of the new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product.

Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.

Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.

Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or presented have not been determined.

5

Agenda

The Problem

Understanding Desktop IO Requirements

Assessments

Storage Solutions

6

Acknowledgements

MyVirtualCloud.net – Andre Leibovici

Ryan “Sesenata y Cinco” Grendahl

Matt Eccleston – VMware Office of the CTO

7

Disclaimers

Don’t be offended if we didn’t use or mention your stuff

Don’t stalk us about your stuff

There are a lot of really great storage solutions available

8

Your Storage Vendor…

9

Disclaimers

Don’t be offended if we didn’t use or mention your stuff

Don’t stalk us about your stuff

There are a lot of really great storage solutions available

We are primarily discussing linked clones here

All examples are just that, your mileage may vary

This is a one hour presentation, not an exhaustive symposium

10

It’s Not Rocket Science

11

But It Might Be Model Rocket Science

12

Agenda

The Problem


Assessments

Storage Solutions

13

The Problem

Most people think of storage in terms of capacity

You need to think of storage in terms of performance

Size doesn’t matter• OK, it matters a bit. Pure SSD will run into capacity problems

Implementing with a poor architecture is hard to correct later

Good user experience and user acceptance are critical for success• We need to make sure users are happy

• Virtual desktop performance should be as good or better than a physical PC

14

Desktop IO

Who in the room knows what the average & peak IOPS are for the physical PCs in your current environment?

• You are a Geek

• In general, nobody knows this

In the physical desktop world, IO generally isn’t relevant

Each desktop has its own dedicated physical spindle(s) and has exclusive rights to whatever performance the disk provides.

In the virtual world it is EXTREMELY important because now we are sharing storage between desktops.

15

IOPS Terms

Minimum guaranteed IOPS

• Total available IOPS divided by number of desktops

• Theoretical, worst case scenario

Maximum available IOPS

• Total IOPS available from storage

• Theoretical, best case scenario

Average IOPS

• Empirically observed load over time divided by number of desktops

Random IO

• Virtual desktop IO is generally going to be random

• It’s going to be slower than sequential IO

We focus on Average IOPS because it is based on empirical data.

16

The Problem – An Example - Space

6 x 450GB 15K RPM SAS drives [email protected] usable space

Linked clones conserve a huge amount of space.

You don’t want this many VMs in a single datastore.

The available IOPS won’t support them

5GB Linked Clone 10GB Linked Clone

20GB Replica 246 VMs 123 VMs

60GB Replica 238 VMs 119 VMs

17

The Problem - An Example – Performance

RAID level is important!!

Write IOPS capability is dependent on RAID Level


@1080 Total IOPS @540 Write IOPS

18

The Problem - An Example – Performance


@1080 Total IOPS @540 Write IOPS

In summary – Even though we have capacity for a large number of VMs, we only have performance for far fewer VMs.

50/50 R/W 35/65 R/W 20/80 R/W

Light – 5 IOPS 216 VMs 166 VMs 135 VMs

Medium – 10 IOPS 108 VMs 88 VMs 67 VMs

Heavy – 20 IOPS 54 VMs 44 VMs 33 VMs

19

The Problem – Real World Examples

POC – Performance great, then performance terrible.

Production assembly line – Performance acceptable during normal operations – writing files or updates took hours while it took minutes on physical machines.

Why do I need so many disks?

• We must get past “waste of space” syndrome and focus on performance.

• Size doesn’t matter

• OK, maybe it matters a little

Performance is King

20

Agenda

The Problem


Assessments

Storage Solutions

21


How do you figure out what you need?

No one will have any idea about their current physical environment

• Unless they’re a Geek

You have what you have on physical

• May have some awareness because of specialized disk IO needs

So how do we get usable numbers?

• Rules of Thumb

• Calculators

• Assessments

22


Rules of thumb:

• Light – 5 IOPs – Not a lot of time at desktop

• Medium – 10 IOPs – Most of day at desktop – typical office worker

• Heavy – 20 IOPs – Developer, Power User

• You will find other rules of thumb guide numbers – that’s why they can be dangerous

Keep in mind these are average numbers

• Don’t forget the Write/Read Mix

• Don’t forget the Write/Read Mix

• We really mean it

Need to do some planning or management for peaks - we’ll get back to that.

Use a Calculator for a better picture

23


Calculator:

Gives a better overall picture but uses rules of thumb numbers

Here’s a great one:

• http://myvirtualcloud.net/?page_id=1076

Talk to your storage vendor about a VDI specific storage calculator

http://myvirtualcloud.net/?page_id=1076

24

Agenda

The Problem


Assessments

Storage Solutions

25


Assessments:

Best way to gather empirical data on disk IO needs

Some things it helps you understand:

• Times of day when peak disk IO occurs

• Potential areas to manage around

• Antivirus scan and updates, login, and boot storm

• Applications that are biggest disk IO consumers

• Creates understanding of IO load from different applications

May identify areas to change operationally or potential bad virtualization candidates.

Image optimization

• Turn off unnecessary services

• Indexing, Prefetching, WLAN, blah, blah, blah

• Windows 7 Optimization Guide hits all this

26

Assessment Example #1

4,417 Desktops

39543 39543.5 39544 39544.5 39545 39545.5 39546 39546.5 39547 39547.5 39548 39548.5 39549 39549.50.00

20,000.00

40,000.00

60,000.00

80,000.00

100,000.00

120,000.00

140,000.00

160,000.00

180,000.00

Disk(IO/sec) SAN

27

Assessment Example #1 Continued

4,417 Desktops

Avg I/O per desktop: 6.08 Write:Read Ratio: 2:1 Max I/O per desktop: 38 Write:Read Ratio: 1:3 Building to 95th Percentile: 14

28


5,026 Desktops

39543 39543.5 39544 39544.5 39545 39545.5 39546 39546.5 39547 39547.5 39548 39548.5 39549 39549.50.00

5,000.00

10,000.00

15,000.00

20,000.00

25,000.00

Disk(IO/sec) SAN

29


5,026 Desktops

Avg I/O per Desktop: 1.4 Write:Read Ratio: 1:1 Max I/O per Desktop: 4.2 Write:Read Ratio: 1:1Building to 95th Percentile: 3.4

30


39543 39543.5 39544 39544.5 39545 39545.5 39546 39546.5 39547 39547.5 39548 39548.5 39549 39549.50.00

10,000.00

20,000.00

30,000.00

40,000.00

50,000.00

60,000.00

70,000.00

80,000.00Disk(IO/sec) SAN

3,046 Desktops

31


3,046 Desktops

Avg I/O per Desktop: 5.5 Write:Read Ratio: 3:1Max I/O per Desktop: 22 Write:Read Ratio: 2:1Building to 95th Percentile: 17

32

Agenda

The Problem


Assessments

Storage Solutions

33

Storage Solutions - Read IOPS

Many technologies help with read IOPS

• Array based cache

• RAM based, SSD Based

• Flash Cache, FAST Cache

• Host based cache

• FusionIO/IOTurbine

• View Composer storage tiering

• Replica on SSD storage

• Offload operations

• Profile - View Virtual Profiles

• User Data – Folder Redirection for Home Directory

• Applications – Streamed ThinApp

• No Read penalty with any RAID type.

• It’s hard to overrun the Read IOPS capability since you have to build forwrite IOPS

34

Storage Solutions - Write IOPS

Helping with write IOPS is trickier

• In general you need to build out the number of spindles to support write IOPS

• Don’t forget the RAID type caveat

• SSD writes are generally slower than reads and can degrade over time

• Some vendor specific solutions may help

• FAST at Rest, WAFL for example

• Vendors with dedup and serializing write IO

• This is where the Disclaimer slide applies

• Sizing for write IOPS is probably the most critical area

• Work with storage vendor to properly size your environment for write IOPS.

35

Storage Solutions - VSA

Available as an option with vSphere 5

Look carefully at write IOPS numbers

• Take replication into account

Understand the configuration and HCL limitations

Look at it as a ROBO / SMB Solution

vSphere vSphere vSphere

NFS NFS NFS

vSphere Client

VSA Manager VSA VSA VSA

36

Storage Solutions – Dealing with the Peaks

Boot Storms

• Set Power policy to Always On

Antivirus

• vShield Endpoint

• Randomized Full Disk Scans

• No Full Disk Scans

Login

• View Virtual Profiles

• Leave users logged in

Image Optimization

Operations

• Do Builds, updates, & Disk Operations (R-R-R) at off hours

• If no off hours throttle the number of operations so as not to overrun the IOPS capabilities.

37

Storage Solutions - Tips

Latency generally the best indicator of a problem• Understand the latency baseline & have a monitoring tool in place

• 20ms latency is getting into trouble

• 50ms will have the phones at the help desk lit up

• Big latency numbers possible if you didn’t design well and will seem like service outage

Keep an eye on baseline numbers as you add desktops. Don’t use Linked Clones if you’re not going use R-R-R features

• Just use the full clones

• Over time read IOPS can grow dramatically if not refreshed.

Disk Alignment• Windows 7 automatically aligned – XP misaligned

• Create VMFS from vCenter

• Could be up to 50% performance hit if misaligned

• Manually confirm to be sure.

38

Slide with No Bullets & A Gratuitous Picture of a Yak

39

Storage Solutions – Tips Continued

Need to be aware of RAID choice impact for writes

• Writes are THE most likely constraint

• Consider RAID0 for Floating desktops?

Don’t worry about wasted space

• I still have checks so I must still have money

Look at CapEx cost per IOP

• The cheapest disks may actually be the most expensive solution

• Keep power consumption in mind on OpEx cost

NFS vs Block Based Storage

• Performance should be a relative wash

• VAAI & ATS level the playing field in terms of VM density

• No, We don’t want to have a big debate

40

Summary

Well Architected Performance = Successful Implementation

Involve partners

• Storage vendor

• VMware Partner or PSO

• Internal storage team

Do an Assessment

Get over wasted space – See First Bullet

Pilot the environment!!

• This is the only TRUE way of understanding your real IOPS situation

41

Questions??

42

Resources

Scott Lowe Blog Storage Performance vs. Cost

http://tinyurl.com/3ev597g

Andre Leibovici Blog

www.myvirtualcloud.net

Disk Alignment Blog

http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=300

Great VDI Storage White Paper from Herco van Brug of PQR

http://tinyurl.com/3sd3yx5

http://tinyurl.com/3ev597g

http://www.myvirtualcloud.net/

http://www.blueshiftblog.com/?p=300

http://tinyurl.com/3sd3yx5

euc2103 storage tips and best practices for vmware view desktop deployments

Documents