Taking the I/O guesswork and risk out of VDI

 

THE PROBLEM

VDI allows IT administrators to centralize and simplify the provisioning and administration of user desktops. Estimating the I/O performance you need across hundreds or thousands of consolidated desktops is a considerable challenge. Average I/O utilization is not a good metric because it does not account for I/O spikes such as “boot storms” and “login storms,” which slow performance and frustrate end-users. Allocating too much I/O per user increases hardware costs, while allocating too little I/O per user reduces productivity.

Because VDI performance is so difficult to reliably simulate, many organizations cannot truly know whether their storage system can cope until they actually expose users to their VDI deployment. Many array vendors address this issue with claims that they can scale performance with added controllers and disk shelves. However, performance scaling is far from linear, making it impossible for them to guarantee a number of supported users at a given cost. Centralized storage also has high up-front costs that are often disproportionate to the initial user base.

 

THE FUSION-IO SOLUTION

Fusion Powered VDI servers deliver uncompromised I/O to support a guaranteed number of users at a far lower cost than centralized storage. Performance and cost scale linearly with each VDI server added, whether you are supporting 100 or 10,000 users. HA is handled transparently. In the unlikely event a server fails, users simply reconnect and the connection broker re-instantiates their desktop on another server. Due to the speed of ioMemory, rebooting takes a fraction of the time it otherwise would have.

Implementing VDI on Fusion-io hardware consists of the following steps:

• Direct the hypervisor to store virtual desktop images on an ioMemory device as you would a hard drive.
• Store user data and profile information on shared storage (typically a NAS device, which could be powered by ioMemory to enhance the VDI environment further).

 

CONFIGURATION OVERVIEW

• Without Fusion-io: a two-rack SAN is required to support 1000 desktops
• With Fusion-io: 10 ioDrive Duos support 1000 desktops
• For use with: VMware View, Xen Desktop, and Hyper-V

Example Configuration – IO for 1,000 desktops

BENEFITS

• Removes I/O guesswork from sizing VDI
• Eliminates I/O storms and provides every user plenty of I/O headroom
• Much faster response time and at a lower cost
• Removes need for high-performance shared storage to support desktop images
• Scales costs and performance linearly per user, over time
• Massive savings on enterprise shared storage, power, cooling, rack space, and associated operational costs

 

SUMMARY

With Fusion-io, customers can now safely and inexpensively transition to a virtual desktop environment, while eliminating I/O storms, maximizing performance, and minimizing infrastructure and operating expense.

 

CONTACT

For more information, please call 801.424.5953 or visit http://www.fusionio.com