E-Book: Making VDIs Work for You

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Making VDIs Work for You

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Table of Contents

Setting Up Storage for Virtual Desktops Requires Planning and Perseverance

Desktop virtualization: Better data protection?

VDI project plan: Start with right applications and use pilot program

Getting started with VDI: TCO savings at finish line

Resources from Dell, Inc. and Microsoft




Setting Up Storage for Virtual Desktops Requires Planning and Perseverance

Rich Castagna

When configuring storage for a virtual desktop environment, you‟ll run into a lot of the same

issues you had to deal with when you set up storage for your virtual servers. But virtual

desktop infrastructure has its own special challenges, along with a new vocabulary featuring

such colorful expressions as “boot storm” and “linked clones.”

The benefits of virtualizing desktop PCs are pretty straightforward. You instantly get more

control over operating systems, applications and data that in all likelihood previously existed

in isolation and was left generally unprotected. But the road to realizing those benefits can

be a bit bumpy, with your storage systems having to bear bigger loads—both in terms of

capacity and performance—than they‟ve likely ever seen.

The numbers can be daunting. If you‟re virtualizing 1,000 desktop PCs and they had an

average of 300 GB of disk each, the shared storage supporting your virtual desktops may

have to provide up to 300 TB of capacity. Of course, sharing some common files like

operating systems—via linked clones—can knock that total down considerably but you‟re

still going to need a hefty chunk of disk real estate.

Capacity is only half the problem. Shared storage has to have the oomph to handle

hundreds of simultaneous requests, like when the dread boot storm occurs as scores or

hundred of users try to boot up and log on at the same time. That kind of demand can bring

a storage system to its knees, and it may take more than just a few minutes for it to

recover. And shutting down at the end of the day can have the same effect.

But both of these issues are very manageable. All you have to do is throw massive amounts

of disk capacity at your virtual desktop infrastructure and beef it up with huge caches and

some solid-state storage to boot (literally). But if you live in the real world—and you don‟t

have a bottomless budget—you‟ll have to approach configuring virtual desktop storage a

little more scientifically and with a little more precision.




The process of configuring VDI storage starts long before any desktops go virtual. You‟ll

need to understand traffic patterns and have a solid understanding of your storage systems

capabilities. Rather than a complete overhaul of the supporting storage environment, it‟s

likely that strategic upgrades to the installed gear will suffice.

Rich Castagna is Editorial Director of TechTarget‟s Storage Media Group




Desktop virtualization: Better data protection?

Virtual desktop infrastructure technology can ease the burden of data protection for laptops

and desktops, but it may not be a good fit for all types of end users.

By Lauren Whitehouse

Of all the data your company owns, data residing on desktops and laptops is often the least

protected. Why? The distributed nature of endpoints makes it difficult to centralize and

consolidate backup, and since desktop/laptop data exists outside the confines of the data

center, backup administrators often don't see its protection as their problem.

Virtual desktop infrastructure technology can address this problem by bringing data that

would otherwise live on end-user devices into the data center.

VDI products enable the centralization of entire personalized end-user desktop operating

environments so that they can be efficiently accessed, managed and protected from a

central location. This allows organizations to reduce operational costs, improve service

levels, and satisfy compliance and information security requirements, all while maintaining

an identical—and in some cases, improved—end-user experience.

One caveat is that, as with server virtualization, desktop virtualization will have an impact

on IT infrastructure. Server, storage and networking will all be impacted. Enterprise

Strategy Group (ESG) research shows that nearly two-thirds (64%) of current VDI users

have made some form of new storage purchase to support their implementation, since data

that used to reside on users' PCs is stored on data center hardware in a VDI environment.

And VDI isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. Some groups of users aren't well-suited to it, so

different measures should be put in place to protect their data.

Distributed computing's backup problem

Most IT organizations today give short shrift to protection of PC data. According to recent

ESG research, only 26% of nearly 500 midmarket and enterprise IT respondents said that

all of their desktop PCs are backed up, and only 18% of organizations back up all of their




laptops. Furthermore, 24% of respondents said they have no data protection process at all

for their desktops, and 29% don't back up their laptops. With desktops and laptops

increasingly carrying business-critical data, the expenses incurred for a system loss or

failure are much greater than simple hardware replacement—most notably, lost end-user

productivity during downtime and more time spent reconstructing lost data.

Many IT organizations take proactive steps to centrally administer backup, ranging from

manually copying files to a network share that's integrated in automated server backup

processes to directly backing up desktops/laptops via server-based backup client agents.

The former could create gaps in protection, while the latter introduces challenges due to the

sheer volume of devices and the required software licensing to protect them.

Other companies take a different approach, allowing desktop/ laptop users to do it

themselves. Users might manually copy files or use a standalone PC-based backup product

to automatically back up data to a local storage device, such as CD/DVD, USB drive or

memory stick.

Alternatively, some leverage backup software-as-a-service (SaaS) to enable automated

backup of data to a third-party location. In these situations, copies of corporate data

proliferate outside the custody and control of the IT department (and sometimes the user),

potentially introducing additional risk to the organization.

While most IT organizations don't adequately protect end-user data, the hardware that

contains that data is susceptible. With an average hard drive failure rate of 2% to 4%, a

company with 500 laptops could have as many as 20 of these devices experience a disk

crash. In addition, the portable nature of laptops makes them an easy target for theft/loss

and prone to damage from being mishandled/dropped.

In spite of these dangers, some IT organizations don't see the risk of data loss outweighing

the costs of desktop/laptop backup storage capacity and operational overhead. Moreover,

many organizations cite a lack of business or legal requirements mandating data protection

and simply procure, configure and re-image replacement hardware and let users worry

about data reconstruction.




VDI's backup remedy

VDI enables a user's complete desktop environments -- including OS, profile, applications,

user data and customizations -- to be deployed as a self-contained package, remotely

accessible from anywhere. Administrative and management tasks are, therefore,

streamlined and centralized.

While you're not likely to implement VDI just to solve the PC backup problem (a host of

difficult desktop computing challenges are driving its adoption), moving PC images to the

data center puts them under the umbrella of the data center's data protection policies,

processes, infrastructure and operational staff, which enables more efficient backup and

recovery. And as an integrated component of server backup, desktop and laptop data can

benefit from advanced features such as data deduplication.

It's important to note that VDI isn't a solution for everyone. VDI could be too “locked down”

for certain classes of users, such as knowledge workers. Organizations generally use or

expect to use VDI for distributed workers such as remote employees and telecommuters, as

well as for task workers in roles such as data entry and call center (who may require a more

limited desktop environment). And while they're not ideally suited for VDI because their use

of technology extends beyond a traditional set of limited tasks, VDI for knowledge workers

offers benefits against the leakage of sensitive company information.

However, those user profiles that aren't a good fit for VDI will remain vulnerable without an

alternative desktop/laptop backup strategy. Organizations adopting an “out of sight, out of

mind” attitude regarding endpoint protection could leave themselves open to risk.

BIO: Lauren Whitehouse is an analyst focusing on backup and recovery software and

replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass.




VDI project plan: Start with right applications and use pilot program

Experts and early adopters say a VDI project plan demands a different type of

infrastructure, and recommend starting with specific applications to gauge the effects.

By Dave Raffo

When constructing a VDI project plan, experts and early adopters advise data storage

administrators to start with a pilot or test program to gauge the changes and costs

associated with a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

With VDI storage, desktop operating systems are hosted inside a virtual machine running on

a centralized server. While this makes it easier and cheaper to manage and secure data, it

changes the game for storage capacity, performance and administration.

Because it requires hundreds or thousands of desktop images to boot simultaneously, VDI

brings about things like boot storms that stress a storage system and often changes the

way storage is provisioned, backed up and recovered, replicated and secured.

VDI adoption involves steep I/O demands

The steep I/O performance issues associated with VDI adoption almost always require

networked storage, but solid-state drives (SSDs) and a large cache are also recommended.

However, these technologies bring additional costs to an organization‟s IT infrastructure.

“A virtual desktop infrastructure requires a different style of storage than what people might

be used to,” said Ray Lucchesi, president at Broomfield, Colo.-based Silverton Consulting

Inc. “VDI begs for enterprise-class storage.”

Sam Lee, senior solutions architect at systems integrator Force 3, said storage I/O becomes

a major performance bottleneck in a typical VDI deployment, and recommends using SSDs

and spreading the workload.




A storage system for VDI needs to be able to handle peak I/O for all users simultaneously at

certain times, such as when most users‟ log on in the morning or log off at night. Lee said

SSDs must also be load-balanced for peak efficiency. To run smoothly, Lee said, VDI can

require approximately 20 to 100 IOPS per desktop during peak times.

“A lot of people vastly underestimate how much I/O a single desktop can use,” he said.

“When you use VMware View or Citrix Provisioning Server, they make a writable snapshot.

That‟s what a virtual desktop is. Every snapshot on every desktop reduces space but

increases the load on storage I/O because you centralize the I/O to one or two LUNs. When

you have 150 desktops on one LUN, that LUN gets oversaturated.”

According to Lee, “you have to spread it out; you can‟t have a single SSD for 1,000 users.

On a Fibre Channel disk, you can probably put three VDI users per spindle on a 10K drive

and five users per spindle for a 15K drive. You can get about 200 users per SSD LUN.”

VDI and thin clients improve log-in times, cut costs

Slumberland Furniture in Little Canada, Minn., has been using virtual desktops via thin

clients on its showroom floors for approximately seven years, and added its first SAN in late

2006. Slumberland uses Compellent storage systems with Cisco Systems Inc.‟s Cisco Unified

Computing System (UCS) and Windows Terminal Services for thin clients. Seth Mitchell,

Slumberland Furniture‟s IT manager, said his VDI farms can require 7,000 to 9,000 IOPS.

He expects to add SSDs to the Compellent systems next month, but has avoided I/O

problems by using 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) connectivity and spreading the load across

enough Fibre Channel drives.

Mitchell said his current setup supports 160 VDI user sessions per server, allowing one

administrator to handle 1,000 clients while giving sales people on the show floor faster

access to information.

“We have quite a few disks because we‟re latency sensitive and IOPS hungry,” Mitchell said.

“We started with 64 disks on our top tier; now we‟re at 80 disks. We get enough IOPS

without any trouble. We have yet to even make it sweat. Our log-in time is greatly

improved with VDI; it used to take 50 seconds to log in, now it‟s seven or eight seconds for

a typical user.”




One IT manager for an insurance provider said he migrated over 12,000 users globally to

Citrix thin clients for a VDI project as part of a data center overhaul that included

consolidating to three primary data centers from eight. He estimates the new setup has

saved about $10 million so far and projects future savings of about $50 million.

The insurance firm uses EMC Corp. Symmetrix storage and Silver Peak Systems Inc.‟s NX-

8504 WAN optimization devices to reduce latency. The manager, who asked not to be

identified because company policy prohibits him from speaking to the press, said VDI and a

good remote access solution makes his disaster recovery (DR) situation easier to manage.

“One of the benefits we find from desktop virtualization is that I can now support remote

users as if they‟re local. I give them a desktop if they‟re at home or sitting in the airport just

like I could if they were in the office,” he said. “That‟s totally changed the way we approach

DR. I can have people work from home instead of bringing them into a temporary DR site or

setting up a permanent DR site in a nearby building.”

Still, he doesn‟t anticipate moving the entire company to VDI.

“We see it as a specialized solution for high-profile users,” he said. “For the typical rank and

file call center people, no, we won‟t go to the expense of rolling out VDI. For people who

need a custom programming language or are doing application testing, that‟s where we see

virtual desktops.”

VDI proof of concept: Which applications are best for VDI?

In its “Storage for VDI Buyers Guides: Planning and Considerations & Storage Systems”

publication, Broomfield, Colo.-based analyst firm Evaluator Group Inc. said good candidates

for a VDI project plan are sales force automation (telephone sales, customer service),

knowledge workers (designers, developers and engineers) and officer workers who share a

standard set of applications.

Many organizations are easing into VDI by piloting it for specific applications or a group of

workers who fit one of the above categories.

Brian Diegan, vice president of network services at Hermitage, Pa.-based First National

Bank (FNB), said his bank is doing a VDI proof of concept for an application used by its




tellers across 300 locations. He expects the most common application for tellers to load

within three milliseconds to four milliseconds vs. the approximately four seconds it now

takes. FNB uses VMware for server virtualization, but Diegan said he would probably use

Citrix for VDI because it makes better use of bandwidth.

“The biggest challenge of VDI is bandwidth for us,” Diegan said. “We have 700 tellers, and

we have to work through a learning curve with them. We don‟t want anything to change for

them.”

BIO: Dave Raffo is the Senior News Director for the Storage Media Group.




Getting started with VDI: TCO savings at finish line

Data storage is a major consideration for organizations implementing a virtual desktop

infrastructure, from capacity planning to performance to costs.

By Carol Sliwa, Features Writer

Data storage is no small consideration for any organization that decides to implement a

virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Taking the VDI approach, an IT department can deliver a full desktop image to its users

from virtual machines (VMs) running on servers in the data center. Ideally, the users won‟t

notice a difference between the virtual and traditional PC desktop experience. But the

company could opt for less costly thin-client devices or even repurpose aging PCs/laptops

because there‟s no need for local storage of the operating system, applications and data.

VDI considerations

Desktop images and user data are stored and backed up centrally, and the potential

demands on back-end systems are not inconsequential, especially in a large virtual desktop

infrastructure environment.

“It requires an infrastructure build-out to occur in all the other disciplines of infrastructure,”

including servers, networks and storage, said Mark Margevicius, a research vice president at

Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn. “You can‟t just go forth and say, „This is a PC replacement,

and it‟s only about a PC.‟ On the contrary, this is really about building out your data center

to support all those clients.”

Storage costs sit like the solid mass below the water line of an iceberg, Margevicius said,

and centralized storage is more expensive than PC-based storage. It must also be backed

up, he noted.

“Network storage is very important in this virtualized environment,” said Mark Bowker, an

analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) in Milford, Mass. “Where many machines are




running on the same physical server for availability purposes and even for mobility

purposes, it‟s essential to have some type of network storage in place so those images can

be quickly restarted on a different physical machine or easily move between physical

machines.”

One of the leading virtualization vendors, VMware Inc., a subsidiary of EMC Corp., agrees

that shared storage is beneficial in a virtual desktop infrastructure environment, but the

company offers no directive on what form that storage should take. Jon Bock, a senior

manager in product marketing, indicated via an email interview that the company has seen

large virtual desktop infrastructure deployments in both storage-area network (SAN) and

network-attached storage (NAS) environments.

“There remains a fair amount of debate in the industry regarding whether NAS or SAN

scales better, including for VDI environments, but no universally accepted answer,” Bock

wrote. He added that customer‟s choices tend to be driven by their comfort level with

managing iSCSI or Fibre Channel (FC) SANs, or block storage vs. NAS system or file-based

storage.

Conserving disk space

Another option under consideration is the latest version of VMware‟s View, which Metro

Health sampled last year as part of a private beta test. The View 3 portfolio, which became

generally available in December, includes a new Composer management component that

uses VMware‟s Linked Clone technology to create desktop images that share virtual disks

with a master image to conserve storage space by as much as 70%, according to VMware.

In addition, any desktops that are linked to the master image can be patched or updated by

simply updating the master image, with no effect to a user‟s settings, data or applications.

Because a user‟s data and settings are separate from the desktop image, they can be

administered independently, according to VMware.

Chris House, a senior network analyst at MetroHealth, said View 3 could help Metro Health

to reduce imaging time from weeks to potentially a few clicks. Metro Health currently re-

images all 1,500 desktops when it needs to push out a Windows service pack update or an

important application upgrade. The client architecture team spreads the re-imaging over




several weeks to avoid storage bottlenecks because bandwidth is limited for replication

between the XP arrays, which are located in separate data centers in Grand Rapids, House

noted.

Antivirus updates now go out at random times over the course of a week, so those are no

longer a problem, he added.

House recommends that potential VDI users undertake a pilot project to analyze the

average I/O per second of a block of actual production desktops and to monitor

performance during routine tasks, such as patching desktops and installing software. Then,

he suggested, they should look for and test arrays that can deliver the necessary

performance, especially during peak I/O times.

“The most important thing to consider when planning a VDI deployment is storage. You

have to size it for performance instead of just sizing it for capacity,” House advised.

“Storage is the No. 1 common denominator across the entire environment and if it doesn‟t

perform well, everyone suffers.”

Planning and managing storage capacity in VDI environments

Virtual desktop infrastructure technology is still a work in progress, and capacity planning

and management remain among the greatest challenges confronting any IT department that

elects to employ hosted virtual desktops.

“How much storage do you allocate per user? It‟s a very tough question to answer because

what we‟re trying to do with hosted virtual desktops is to deliver an identical user

experience [to what you] would normally get on a PC,” said Mark Margevicius, a research

vice president at Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn. “If my PC that I run today in the office has a

120 GB hard drive, are users going to anticipate 120 GB of storage individually -- each and

every person? That‟s the million-dollar question. When I speak to customers, they really

struggle with this.”

The latest versions of Citrix Systems Inc.‟s XenDesktop and VMware Inc.‟s VMware View

(formerly VMware VDI) could alleviate some of the capacity issues with new features that




can limit redundant data, reduce the amount of disk space needed for desktop images and

provision users off the same image.

The future of VDI adoption

But Mark Bowker, an analyst at Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG),

remains dubious about the ROI model for VDI. He said users are still trying to figure out

how to get a return.

“Take a government agency, for example, where security is a top concern. They‟re still

willing to implement VDI for the security advantages,” he said. “But if you take a typical

corporate environment that doesn‟t have that same security challenge or mandate, maybe

there isn‟t as much of a compelling issue to deploy VDI until the technology continues to

mature.”

Gartner claims an organization implementing VDI, or what it refers to as “hosted virtual

desktops,” can save between 2% and 12% over the TCO of a traditional PC environment,

Margevicius said.

VDI-based desktops account for about 1 million units of the overall worldwide desktop

market today. Predictions call for growth to 50 million units by 2012, yet that would

represent roughly only 5% of the overall market, according to Margevicius.

But Taneja Group‟s Byrne predicted that the innovations from VMware, Citrix and other

storage vendors will help make VDI more attractive to more IT organizations and continue

to render the storage portion of the VDI TCO equation more reasonable.

“Any IT administrator or user who‟s read about the storage issues in VDI over the years,

particularly up until early 2008, really needs to take a fresh new look at what‟s happening in

this space,” Byrne said.

BIO: Carol Sliwa is the Features Writer for the Storage Media Group




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E-Book: Making VDIs Work for You