x iocitrix750vdireferencearchitecturera 0001 20140410 140624212549 phpapp02

High Performance 750-Seat Virtual

Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

with Citrix XenDesktop 7

Reference Architecture February, 2014

2 High-Performance 750-Seat VDI Reference Architecture powered by X-IO and Citrix

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... 3

Infrastructural Components ......................................................................................... 4

Citrix XenDesktop ..................................................................................................................................... 4

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V ........................................................................................... 4

The X-IO Intelligent Storage Element ....................................................................................................... 5

Login VSI ................................................................................................................................................... 6

Reference Architecture Configuration ........................................................................ 7

Physical Hardware Configuration .............................................................................................................. 7

Virtual Machine Configuration ................................................................................................................... 8

Citrix XenDesktop Storage Requirements ................................................................................................ 9

Windows Server 2012 R2 Configuration and Best Practices .................................................................... 9

Network Configuration ............................................................................................................................. 10

Intelligent Storage Element Test Configuration ....................................................... 11

Fibre Channel Switch Configuration ....................................................................................................... 11

LUN Configuration ................................................................................................................................... 12

Login VSI Configuration .......................................................................................................................... 13

Test Results ................................................................................................................. 14

ISE 230 Test Results .............................................................................................................................. 14

Login VSI Test Results ............................................................................................................................ 17

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Analysis .................................................................. 19

TCO versus Cost of Acquisition .............................................................................................................. 19

Sizing Storage for Actual Performance Requirements ........................................................................... 19

Storage Density and Rack Space Consumption ..................................................................................... 20

Storage Energy Consumption ................................................................................................................. 20

Storage Warranty Costs .......................................................................................................................... 22

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 22

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 23

Thin Client Computing ............................................................................................................................. 23

Citrix ........................................................................................................................................................ 23

Contact Information ................................................................................................................................. 23

Appendix A: ISE 230 Tested Configuration Details .................................................. 24


Executive Summary This document describes a fully-tested, benchmarked and proofed reference architecture for large-scale

(750+ user) virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementations.

The target audience for this document includes storage and virtualization administrators, consulting data

center architects, field engineers, cloud architects, and desktop specialists who want to implement Citrix

XenDesktop based virtual desktops. A working knowledge of Hyper-V, XenDesktop, server, storage,

network and data center design is assumed but is not a prerequisite to read this document.

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables IT to deliver a secure, mobile, manageable and less costly

end user computing platform, at lower cost. That is the essential promise of VDI.

However a large number of VDI projects fail to deliver on that promise, in most cases due to storage

performance bottlenecks. As a result:

The VDI project cannot be completed, successfully at cost.

The performance of the VDI environment is significantly worse than the performance of dedicated-hardware desktops.

The cost of storage sufficient to equalize the VDI performance deficit makes the cost of the VDI project greater than the cost of dedicated-hardware desktops.

The storage performance bottlenecks that cripple so many VDI projects are the result, in some cases, of a failure to characterize the per-VM performance requirements for a VDI environment, but are more often the result of a damaging, single-minded focus on lower cost storage capacity ($/GB).

In our view, it is absolutely critical that VDI projects balance both storage performance and storage capacity in order to be successful.

When per-VM storage performance requirements are taken into consideration along with per-VM storage

capacity requirements, during the planning phase of VDI projects:

- Traditional enterprise storage array vendors are forced to over-provision, or short-stroke, storage

capacity to deliver enough storage performance for the required number of VMs, producing a very

expensive solution.

- Flash and solid state disk (SSD) array vendors wildly over-provision storage performance to

deliver enough storage capacity to each VM.

This reference architecture and its underlying results demonstrate, without a doubt, the suitability of an

all-hard disk drive (HDD) ISE configuration without the need for higher cost all flash or hybrid arrays.


Infrastructural Components The tested VDI reference architecture described in this document is based on the following:

Citrix XenDesktop 7

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

X-IO Intelligent Storage Elements (ISEs) and ISE Manager software

Login VSI

Citrix XenDesktop

Citrix XenDesktop delivers Windows apps and desktops as secure mobile services. With XenDesktop, IT

can mobilize the business, while reducing costs by centralizing control and security for intellectual

property. Incorporating the full power of XenApp, XenDesktop can deliver full desktops or just the apps to

any device. HDX technologies enable XenDesktop to deliver a native touch-enabled look-and-feel that is

optimized for the type of device, as well as the network.

Citrix XenDesktop provides the best method available today to provision, host, manage and deliver virtual

desktops and applications. Citrix has the benefit of 25 years of advanced expertise in optimizing remote

protocols and virtualizing user workloads.

User experience is greatly enhanced with Citrix XenDesktop by providing high performance, 24x7 access

to all corporate apps and data, from anywhere, from any type of device (PC, Mac, Linux, Tablets, IOS,

Android, etc.)

For the IT department, Citrix centralizes management in dramatically more efficient ways. Rather than

maintaining the legacy approach of installing and managing operating systems, applications, patches and

customizations on every single device, Citrix allows a “One to Many” solution. A single desktop image can

service 100’s, 1000’s, or, 10’s of thousands of users providing a single point of update for the entire IT

environment. At the same time, security and performance are greatly improved by keeping the

applications close to the data in the secure boundary of the data center.

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V

Hyper-V is an important part of Windows Server and provides a highly developed virtualization platform

that lets cloud providers provision for customers, and enterprises build their own private cloud of hosted

desktops. With Windows Server 2012 R2, customers get a compelling solution for core virtualization

scenarios; production server consolidation, dynamic data center, business continuity, test and

development and most importantly, as it relates to this reference architecture, Virtual Desktop

Infrastructure (VDI). Hyper-V provides customers with better flexibility with features like live migration and

cluster shared volumes for storage flexibility. In Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V also delivers greater

scalability and improved performance with support for dynamic memory and enhanced networking

support versus other competing hypervisors or previous versions of Hyper-V.

Virtualization technologies help customers lower costs and deliver greater agility and economies of scale.

Either as a stand-alone product or an integrated part of Windows Server, Hyper-V is the leading

virtualization platform for today and the transformational opportunity with cloud computing, and hosted

desktops.


The X-IO Intelligent Storage Element

X-IO’s Intelligent Storage Elements (ISEs) – both the 700 series hybrid storage arrays and the 200 series

all-hard disk drive storage arrays – are frequently deployed for large-scale VDI projects because:

ISEs offer predictably high levels of VDI performance. Performance is critical to the success of VDI implementations. It impacts everything: user experience, application performance and the overall cost of the environment.

ISEs scale linearly. The ISE can support thousands of virtual desktops with a “scale-out” architecture design that provides modular, linear scaling as needed for VDI deployments.

ISEs offer industry-leading VDI price/performance. The ISE’s balance of performance, capacity and price significantly improves the economics of large-scale virtual desktop environments, when compared to conventional enterprise storage arrays.

ISEs offer best-in-class reliability. ISEs are highly available, supporting today’s high-availability enterprise applications reliability demands with 99.999% uptime. Redundancy at every level of the ISE ensures that

if a hardware failure occurs, all application workloads will continue unaffected. X-IO Technologies is so confident in the ISE’s technical and operational reliability that it warranties the ISE for five years at no cost to its customers.

ISEs are easy to deploy. Traditional storage systems are complex and difficult to troubleshoot, when adjusting performance in VDI deployments. By contrast, the ISE Manager software, an intuitive storage management environment that provides simple, user-friendly storage and integrated server administration, allows virtualization administrators to provision and troubleshoot the entire VDI “stack” through a single, easy-to-use graphical interface.

Figure 1 – ISE Manager Storage View


Login VSI

Login VSI is and industry standard load testing tool for Virtual Desktop Infrastructures and Server Based

Computing environments.

With Login VSI you can test the performance and scalability of Citrix XenDesktop and Citrix XenApp, by

simulating unique user workloads.

With Login VSI you can:

Benchmark different desktop, server and storage solutions and make the right decisions.

Know how much hardware you need by right sizing your XenDesktop infrastructure.

Gain insight in the maximum capacity by load testing your XenDesktop environment.

Test the impact of changes on the performance before they are implemented.


Reference Architecture Configuration The system-under-test (SUT) was configured as described below.

Physical Hardware Configuration

One Hewlett-Packard C7000 blade enclosure with 16 BL460 G7 servers, Intel Xeon X5650 (2.67

GHz, 6 cores), 192 GB memory, Windows Server 2012

o Hyper-Threading was enabled in the BIOS of all 16 blade servers

o Max Performance was enabled in the BIOS of all 16 blade servers

o Two BL460 Servers were configured for Infrastructure Services

o Three BL460 Servers were configured for Login VSI Client Workload Launchers

o Eleven BL460 Servers were configured for hosted desktop virtualization

One QLogic 5802v Fibre Channel switch

Two X-IO ISE 230 storage systems

o Eleven write cache file LUNs; one LUN per XenDesktop blade server

o Eleven user data LUNs, one LUN per XenDesktop blade server

Figure 2 shows the detailed topology of the reference architecture including the HP Blade enclosure

with server role allocations, SAN topology and X-IO ISE storage arrays.

Figure 2 - Detailed Reference Architecture Configuration


Virtual Machine Configuration

Infrastructure Services:

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

Windows Server 2012 Virtual Machines

o Active Directory, DHCP and DNS – 4 GB memory, 1 vCPU

o Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) 7.0 running SQL Server – 4 GB memory, 2 vCPU

o Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) running SQL Server – 8 GB memory, 2 vCPU

o Citrix License server VM

Login VSI client launchers:

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V

Windows 7 32-bit Virtual Machines – 1.5 GB memory, 1 vCPU

XenDesktop Server:

Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V with MPIO feature added

Windows 7 64-bit Virtual Machines – 1.5 GB memory, 1 vCPU

Virtual Machine Configuration Diagram

Figure 3 shows a topology of the tested environment for this reference architecture.

The Citrix XenDesktop 7 infrastructure was configured on dedicated hosts. The infrastructure VMs were

hosted on local server storage.

Figure 3 - Test Environment overview of Citrix XenDesktop deployment with Infrastructure components, Windows

Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V hosts and ISE volumes


Citrix XenDesktop Storage Requirements

XenDesktop FlexCast Model has two different data types (write cache files and user data) with completely

different storage performance criteria.

The following table details the tested ISE per-user storage configuration:

Data Type Per user capacity

Write cache files 8GB/user x 750 users (6TB total)

User data 41.7GB/user x 750 users (31.3TB total)

Total 49.7GB/user x 750 users (37.3TB)

X-IO Tested Storage Configuration

Windows Server 2012 R2 Configuration and Best Practices

The Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V role and MPIO feature were added using the following PowerShell

command:

# Install-WindowsFeature Hyper-V, Hyper-V-PowerShell, Hyper-V-Tools, Multipath-IO

The Windows Server power plan was set to “High performance” using the following PowerShell

command:

# POWERCFG.EXE /S SCHEME_MIN

The ISEs utilized the Windows Server 2012 R2 Multi-Path IO Microsoft Device Specific Module (MS

DSM).

Native DSM:

Does not automatically claim enterprise class storage device LUNs, by default

Uses a round-robin load balancing policy, by default

The tested MPIO configuration added “Xiotech ISE2400” to native DSM managed devices. MPIO Policy

was set to Least Queue Depth (LQD).

The following mpclaim commands were used, via PowerShell, to set all MPIO load balance policy for

“XIOTECH ISE2400” for all LUNs.

# List enterprise storage device for vendor string

mpclaim –e

# List all MPIO disks controlled by MSDSM (native DSM)

mpclaim –s –d

# Add multipath support for device

# Suppress reboot

mpclaim –n –I –d “XIOTECH ISE2400”

# Set load balance policy to LQD for all disks controlled by MSDSM

mpclaim –l –m 4


# Restart server with reconfigured MPIO settings

shutdown –r –t 00

Network Configuration

Network 4 was configured to allow for Fibre connectivity from the HP blade servers. These were connected to an 8Gb QLogic 5802v.

Four networks will be created: o Network 1 – Internal to HP Virtual Connect for PXE boot of VMs, allocated 5Gb bandwidth o Network 2 – Lab storage and management, 1Gb bandwidth o Network 3 – Production network for workload clients and XenDesktop VMs, 5Gb bandwidth o Network 4 – Fibre connection to ISE storage arrays, 8Gb bandwidth Note: There will be no HA or redundancy across the NICs

Figure 4 illustrates the HP Blade Enclosure internal network design and external storage network.

Figure 4 - Network Configuration


Intelligent Storage Element Test Configuration Two ISE 230 systems providing eighty (80) 900 GB, 10K RPM SAS hard disk drives rated at 57.6 TB

usable capacity and 27,000 IOPS were used for this tested reference configuration. The ISEs provided

that performance and capacity in 6U of rack space, while consuming less than 1.5 kilowatts (kW) of

energy. The ISEs were not tuned in any way before or during the tests described in the next section.

There are four models in the ISE 200 series, each delivering real-world performance of 13,500 IOPS and

between 9.6 and 38.4TB of usable capacity in each 3U array.

Number of ISE

Rated IOPS ISE 210 Useable Capacity

ISE 220 Useable Capacity



1 13,500 IOPS 9.6 TB 19.2 TB 28.8 TB 38.4 TB

2 27,000 IOPS 19.2 TB 38.4 TB 57.6 TB 76.8 TB

For this reference architecture, the storage configuration must deliver a mix of aggregate performance at

a minimum of 25,000 IOPS (30 IOPS per defined user VM) and useable capacity (8 GBs/user for write

cache files and 41.7 GB/user for user data): easily within the rated performance and rated capacity of a

pair of ISE 230s.

Fibre Channel Switch Configuration

A single QLogic 5802v 8Gb Fibre Channel (FC) switch with 8 licensed ports was installed per established

QLogic guidelines and user documentation. The Fibre Channel zoning was configured to be open.

For smaller number of VDI users, it is possible to remove the Fibre Channel switch from the configuration

completely and connect up to four servers directly to a single ISE via the server’s Fibre Channel host bus

adapter.

For high availability configurations, a second QLogic 5802v 8Gb FC switch is required for VDI

configurations requiring multiple ISE arrays and/or multiple servers.


LUN Configuration

In the tables below, the ISEs are identified by unit letter (A or B), by use (L for write cache file and D for

user data) and blade number (blade 01 – 11). For example, “ISE-A-L01” denotes a LUN on ISE A, used

for write cache, and mapped to Blade 1.

ISE-A

LUN Name Data Use RAID Type LUN Size Server

ISE-A-L01 Write cache ISE RAID-10 551 GB Blade 01






ISE-A-D01 User data ISE RAID-5 3001 GB Blade 01





ISE-B

LUN Name Data Use RAID Type LUN Size Server

ISE-B-L07 Write cache ISE RAID-10 557 GB Blade 07





ISE-B-D06 User data ISE RAID-5 3006 GB Blade 06







Login VSI Configuration

Login VSI is designed to perform benchmarks for VDI workloads through system saturation. Login VSI

loads the system with simulated user workloads using well known desktop applications such as Microsoft

Office, Internet Explorer and Adobe PDF reader.

Login VSI is the de-facto industry standard benchmarking tool to test the performance and scalability of

centralized Windows desktop environments. Login VSI is 100% vendor independent and is used to test

virtual desktop environments like Citrix XenDesktop.

Medium Workload

This workload is based on the standard Login VSI medium knowledge worker workload, employing a mix

of Microsoft Office applications, Internet Explorer, PDF conversion software and 7-zip. Once a test

session has been started, the workload will repeat (loop) every 12 minutes. This loop is divided in

segments, and each consecutive Login VSI user logon will start in a different segment. This ensures that

all elements in the workload are equally used throughout the test. The medium workload opens up to 5

applications simultaneously, with the keyboard type rate set at 160ms for each character. During each

loop the response time is measured every 2 minutes with only 2 minutes of idle time to simulate real‐

world users.


Test Results This reference architecture was tested in November 2013, at the Citrix Labs in Santa Clara, California, to

verify its ability to support at least 750 simultaneous VDI sessions/instances.

Two sets of tests were performed in each pass of the testing process:

Test 1 – Boot Storm Test: 750 user VMs must boot and register with a VSI broker within 10 minutes, with

boot start occurring at the rate of 75 VMs per minute

Test 2 – Login VSI “Medium” Workload Test: 750 user VMs must run the Login VSI “medium” knowledge

worker workload, with average response time latency not exceeding 3811 milliseconds (Baseline 1211 +

Tolerance 2600 = Threshold 3811), also known as VSImax.

Three test runs were performed on the configuration described in the previous section. Each test run did

not hit VSImax and was marked Pass; none of the test runs resulted in saturation or exceeded the

response time latency threshold (in this test, 3811 milliseconds), and no configuration changes were

made to the ISE storage between test passes. Server changes were made between test passes to

increase the number of active VDI sessions achievable with the configuration.

Detailed storage performance information was recorded, during each pass, with the ISE Performance

Adapter for Windows Performance Monitor. This tool, included with ISE Manager, allows for extensive

performance data capture and analysis using the Windows Performance Monitor Framework.

ISE 230 Test Results

Boot Storm Test

Figure 5 is the main performance graph of both ISEs during the “Boot Storm” phase of the testing.

Figure 5 - Boot Storm Read and Write IOPS

During this phase, the ISE storage systems can be seen regularly servicing IO spikes over 20,000 IOPS,

with peaks of over 30,000 IOPS. Write IOs comprise the vast majority of the workload, which the ISE


arrays handled easily. At peak times, the pair of ISEs delivered approximately 375 IOPS per hard disk

drive.

In figure 6, most of the Read Latencies during the boot storm test were below 3ms. Latency below 10 ms

is considered good, in a VDI environment, and the ISEs lower latencies indicate that the system is

performance-optimized for the workload.

Figure 6 - Boot Storm Read Latency

In figure 7, the Write Latencies during the Boot Storm test were below 1ms. Again, the ISEs were easily

able to handle the workload.

Figure 7 - Boot Storm Write Latency


Login VSI Medium Workload Test

In Figure 8, the vast majority of the workload is shown to be heavily write-oriented (or “write-intensive”) in

nature. Writes peaked, during this test, at over 7,000 per second, and were routinely at or above the

6000 IOPS level.

Figure 8 - User Load Read and Write Total IOPS

In Figure 9, 95% of the read latency values were below 3 milliseconds, with a single observed high value

of 10ms, indicating clearly that the ISEs were having no difficulty servicing the read-oriented portion of the

workload.

Figure 9 - User Load Average Read Latency


Figure 10 shows write latency on the ISE arrays under test. Any latency values below 5-10 ms are

considered good. The write latency results below are excellent and show the ISE arrays are able to

service these workloads with no signs of reaching a performance limit.

Figure 10 - User Load Average Write Latency

The data recorded from the ISE arrays above demonstrate a high performance, write-intensive workload.

The ISE arrays easily handle this intensive workload as evident by the sub-millisecond latency response

times. This is very important to consider as many high performance storage products on the market are

optimized for random, read-intensive operations, through the use of a flash-enabled read-cache, for

example.

Login VSI Test Results

The Login VSI VSImax chart below documents the actual number of maximum virtual desktop sessions

supported by the configuration.


Figure 11 - VSImax

Figure 11 shows Login VSI v3.7 VSImax is not reached, resulting in a successful test. With Read

Latencies mostly at 3ms and Write Latencies at 1ms, the ISE arrays are carrying the workload of the 750

XenDesktop VMs without issue.


Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Analysis The test results for this reference architecture demonstrate clearly that the configuration is a high-

performance solution for large-scale VDI workload requirements. The documented reference architecture

is also a superior economic alternative, as this total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis demonstrates.

The following analysis shows a cost savings of $91,400 of the tested ISE solution in this reference

architecture as compared to a similarly performant solution based on traditional enterprise storage arrays.

TCO versus Cost of Acquisition

The initial purchase price of any VDI system is just the beginning of the expenses that must be budgeted

and paid for. System requirements for rack space, power requirements and consumption, heat

generation, failure remediation, and more are all factors that increase the total cost of the solution when

calculated over the lifetime of the hardware (5 years).

Sizing Storage for Actual Performance Requirements

The Login VSI Medium User Workload test used to proof this reference architecture requires 6,000 to

8,000 write IOPS, while the Boot Storm test requires more than 25,000 write IOPS. Selecting storage

based on steady-state workload, rather than boot storm workload, almost always results in under-

performant VDI infrastructure and dissatisfied VDI users.

To illustrate this point: traditional enterprise storage vendors with products that utilize 10K RPM enterprise

SAS hard disk drives (the same drives used in the ISE 200 series arrays) typically rate their drives at 125

IOPS per drive. To deliver 8,000 IOPS for the Login VSI medium user workload test would require 64 of

these drives. To deliver Boot Storm (~25,000 IOPS) performance would require over 200 of these drives.

Figure 12 - Number of Disks Required for Login VSI Workloads

Purchasing a storage system based on steady-state user workload which, in this instance, results in an

under-resourced system by about 60% (136 additional drives) that are required for adequate performance

during boot storms.

And this problem is exacerbated in environments with a large number of users. These environments will

often see boot storm performance issues at the end of shifts, classes and work days, when users logoff

and the Gold Master boot image changes. If the business relies on shift workers (e.g., healthcare,

manufacturing, emergency response, customer support), or uses large numbers of VMs repetitively,

according to a schedule (as in academic and educational settings), boot storms will occur multiple times

each day.


Storage Density and Rack Space Consumption

The storage system that houses 200+ drives in our example above has significantly higher OPEX costs

than an equivalent pair of ISE 230s. In a typical configuration 200 drives require 9 disk shelves (24 drives

per shelf) and with associated storage controllers, will consume 22 rack units, as opposed to the six (6)

rack units consumed by the pair of ISEs.

In a colocation facility, where rack space costs are well-understood and passed on to end-use customers,

rack space can cost as much as $60 USD per rack unit, per month, making this 22 rack units for a

conventional 200 drive system almost $16,000 USD per year.

By contrast, the two ISEs from the configuration tested in this reference architecture deliver required

performance and required capacity while consuming just 6 rack units, for a yearly cost of $4,285 USD.

Figure 13 - Yearly Colocation Costs

To compare, the ISE solution savings over the 200 drive solution is $11,428 USD per year, or

approximately $60,000 USD over the five years a typical VDI implementation is in production.

Storage Energy Consumption

Power and cooling are significant expense lines for most data center operators.

The 200 drive solution described above typically consumes about 4.2 kW of energy per hour,

while the tested ISE 230 solution requires 1.4kW of direct power per hour.1

Indirect power (for HVAC, etc.) is assumed, for all storage arrays, to be equal to the direct power

requirements -- that doubles the energy requirement, increasing the energy consumed by the

conventional 200-drive solution to 8.38 kWh, and to 2.8 kWh for the tested ISE solution.

1 Direct power consumption for a conventional enterprise storage array is calculated as follows: 5.6 watts of power per disk drive; 230 watts of power per drive shelf; 500 watts of power per storage controller.


Figure 14 - Boot Storm Power Requirement

Of course, the price of a KwH of electricity varies widely, across the globe – gaps between high and low

spot-market prices are as high as $.40 USD per kWh. Normalizing our comparison using $.1423 per kWh

(commercial power rates in Boston, MA. USA, in November, 2013) yields the following comparative costs

for direct and indirect energy consumption over the 5 years of a typical VDI implementation.

Figure 15 - Boot Storm, Total Power Costs over 5 years

The ISE solution savings over the 200 drive solution is $34,302 USD over the five years a typical

VDI implementation is in production.


Storage Warranty Costs

Every ISE is backed by a five-year zero-cost warranty. By contrast, most enterprise storage arrays come

with a three-year warranty, and warranty costs for Years 4 and 5 can meet or exceed the initial purchase

price of the product: a cost designed to promote unnecessary upgrades well before the end of the

product’s useful life.

This TCO analysis demonstrates that, for a large VDI implementation, the ISE 200 series product is not

only a stellar price/performance option, but also that the ISE 200 series products will cost $90,000 less

than a conventional enterprise storage array to operate, over a five-year lifespan.

If comparative warranty costs are factored in to the TCO – as they should be – the cost advantage of the

ISE 200 series, in large-scale VDI environments, can approach $250,000 USD.

Summary This document highlights a proven and tested architecture for a large-scale VDI deployment based on

Hewlett-Packard blade servers, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V, Citrix XenDesktop 7 and the

X-IO Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) 230. This reference architecture readily supports the low-latency

storage performance and capacity demands of 750 medium-workload VDI users, both at boot time and in

normal steady-state operation. Additionally, the results presented in this document have been conducted

with the ISE 230 storage systems operating at 98% capacity utilization, proving the predictability of the

system’s performance for a real-world, representative VDI workload.

An ISE 230 base configuration for this reference architecture has an approximate acquisition street cost

of $90 per desktop, inclusive of a 5-year warranty. The total storage configuration in this reference

architecture has an approximate acquisition street cost of $200 per desktop, including two ISE 230

performance storage arrays for both write cache volumes and over 30 TB of user data volumes, fibre

channel networking and a 5-year hardware warranty for both systems.

For more information on how X-IO can solve some of the industry’s most prevalent performance,

predictability and reliability issues at unbeatable, industry leading costs, visit www.x-io.com.

http://www.x-io.com/


Acknowledgements

Thin Client Computing

Thin Client Computing, a leading Citrix provider of Virtual Application, Desktop and Mobility solutions to

SMB and Enterprise clients, assisted materially in the configuration and testing done for this reference

architecture. For more information about Thin Client Computing visit www.thinclient.net

Citrix

Citrix Labs, Santa Clara provided the test facilities, and assisted materially in the configuration and testing

done for this reference architecture. For more information about Citrix, visit www.citrix.com

Login VSI

To simulate the closest possible production representation of a VDI solution architecture and workload,

Login VSI was used. For more information about Login VSI, visit www.loginvsi.com

Contact Information

Website:

http://www.x-io.com

Email:

[email protected]

Get in touch with us:

Visit our website and chat with us to get more information

http://www.x-io.com/contact

Talk to us

United States »

866.472.6764

International »

+1.925.298.6061

For more international numbers please visit: http://www.x-io.com/contact

9950 Federal Drive, Suite 100 | Colorado Springs, CO 80921 | U.S. >> 1.866.472.6764 | International. >> +1.925.298.6061 ; www.x-io.com

X-IO, X-IO Technologies, ISE and CADP are trademarks of Xiotech Corporation. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or

registered trademarks of their respective companies. © Xiotech Corporation. All rights reserved. Document Number RA-0001-20140227

http://www.thinclient.net/

http://www.citrix.com/

http://www.loginvsi.com/

http://www.x-io.com/

mailto:[email protected]




Appendix A: ISE 230 Tested Configuration Details

Component Description

Storage array ISE 230

Controllers per ISE Two (2) highly redundant, active/active controllers

Drives per DataPac Twenty (20) 900 GB, 10K RPM 2.5” 6Gb/s SAS drives

DataPacs per ISE Two (2)

Total drives per ISE Forty (40)

Raw capacity per ISE 36 TB

Usable capacity after sparing 28.8 TB

Sparing 20% spare capacity

Performance with sparing User volumes are striped across both DataPacs providing performance of 40 drives

Performance per ISE 13,500 IOPS

FC Connectivity per controller Four 8Gb FC ports

Management Ports per controller

One 1Gb Ethernet port

Power per ISE 600 Watts (typical), 3.6 amps (208V)

Rack units per ISE 3U

Total drives Eighty (80)

Total DataPacs Four (4)

Total controllers Four (4)

Total useable capacity 57.6 TB usable pre-RAID

Total performance 27,000 IOPS

Total FC Connectivity Sixteen (16) 8Gb FC ports As shown in Figure 2, only four FC ports (one FC port from each controller) were used in the testing

Total management ports Four (4). Four management IP addresses were required

Total power 1.2 KW (typical), 7.2 amps (208V)

Total rack space consumption 6U

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