AlwaysOn Desktop Implementation with NutanixH O W -T O G U I D E

2AlwaysOn Desktop

Solution Overview Architecture & Design Validation Result Design Components

Solution Overview Nutanix and VMware simplify your delivery of always available desktops, applications and data with a single high-performance scalable appliance.

The Nutanix & VMware AlwaysOn solution is a purpose built platform targeted for always available delivery of desktops, applications and data to end users. Utilizing application aware load balancers for session HA between connection servers and sites combined with the VMware View platform hosted on Nutanix provides the ideal 24/7 hosting platform. With its distributed architecture and native replication capabilities, the Nutanix platform takes the complexity out of designing always available architectures.

Availability at Scale

• Deliver-MaintainSLAsanddesktopdelivery

• HAinabox-Fourhighlyavailablenodesper2U

• Applicationawareloadbalancersandapplicationdeliverycontrollersforsiteandconnectionserveravailability

• Modularincrementalscale-Scalefromhundredstothousandsofdesktopsin100desktopincrements

Performance

• ControlbootandloginstormswithPCIeflashandNutanixILM

• Deliverconsistentuserexperienceandperformanceasyouscale

• EliminateanyperformancebottlenecksthedistributedNutanixmodel

• Efficientnativereplicationcapabilitiesfordataavailabilityandconsistency

Manageability

• Reducecomplexity–ManagecomputeandstoragewithasingleUI

• Timetovalue–Deliverafullyfunctionaldesktop,applicationanddatadeliveryplatformin30minutes

• Supportmultipleworkloads–Desktops,servervirtualization,andbigdataonthesameplatform

• Single,simple,product

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Solution Overview Architecture & Design Validation Result Design Components

Architecture & Design WiththeNutanixsolutionanditsarchitectureyoucanstartsmallandscale.TheNutanixCompleteClusterconsistsofmodular“blocks”thatincludecompute,storage,andnetwork.AsingleNutanixblockprovidesupto400desktopsand20TBofdatainacompact2Ufootprint.

TheNutanixCompleteClusterisapurelydistributedsystem,bothfromanetwork,computeanddatastandpoint.Onthedatafront,Nutanixwas designed ground up to be resilient in the case of any host or disk failure. This coupled with the vSphere availability features it provides (HA/FT)andredundantnetworkuplinksensureyouruser’sdataanddesktopalwaysremainsavailableanddeliversaconsistentuserexperience.ExtendingthiswithHAsitesandapplicationawareloadbalancersfurtherenhancesthisavailabilitybyprovidingactive-activesites.

Needmoredesktopsordatacapacity?Nutanixallowsyoutoscaleper-node(100desktops/5TB),per-block(400desktops/20TB),ormultipleblocks-givingyoutheabilitytoaccuratelymatchsupplywithdemandandminimizetheupfrontCapEx.

Here we show a high-level diagram of a typical AlwaysOn deployment with Nutanix and VMware View on the Nutanix platform.

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Solution Overview Architecture & Design Validation Result Design Components

Validation Result The Nutanix & VMware AlwaysOn solution provides the highest density desktop deployment footprint and with unparalleled performance. Givenourn-Controllermodel,thedesktopperformanceremainsconsistentasthenumberofnodes/blocksscale.

Withtraditional3-tierinfrastructures(compute/storage/network)you’llbegintofacelargebottlenecksasthedemandorscalegrowshurtingtheend-user’sexperience.Thisforcesyoutoscaleinlargepodscreatingphysicalsilosofresources.Nutanixisdifferent–byconverging compute and storage together we eliminate any potential bottlenecks and simplify the management at the same time.

Inthegraphbelowwecomparetherelativeapplicationresponsetimesaswescalefrom300to3000desktops(onasingledatastore).Asyou can see, application performance and end-user experience remains consistent as we scale our platform.

5AlwaysOn Desktop

Solution Overview Architecture & Design Validation Result Design Components

Design Components This solution is built on a single component:

Hardware:

• NutanixCompleteCluster

Software utilized:

• VMwarevSphere

• VMwareView

• ApplicationLoadBalancer(CiscoADC/ACE,F5BigIP)

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