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VMware: the performance of horizon7 on the full flash architecture virtual San

desktop virtualization is a typical virtualization business scenario for enterprise users at present. VMware horizon 7 is the latest desktop virtualization product released at present. Its newly added just in time Desktop Deployment function uses instant cloning technology to allow administrators to quickly clone and deploy virtual machines, further improving the deployment efficiency of VDI virtual desktops

by running VDI desktop business on the virtual San platform with full flash architecture, users can effectively reduce the storage space overhead of data and further reduce the total cost of ownership of business operation through multiple space efficiency improvement technologies such as de duplication, compression and erasure code correction (RAID 5/6)

through the evaluation of horizon 7 in the virtual San 6.2 full flash architecture, this paper verifies that the full flash architecture virtual San can be used as the ideal operation platform of VDI virtual desktop whose utilization range is mainly determined according to its different materials

test introduction

in the test, we conducted detailed tests on horizon 7 combined with app volume 2.11 under the deployment of instant cloning and link cloning, including the performance changes before and after enabling space efficiency improvement technologies such as de duplication, compression and erasure code, the efficiency of storage space improvement, and the time comparison of desktop pool maintenance and management

during the test, we used a total of 12 physical servers, of which 4 were the basic servers for the implementation and utilization of 3D printing technology. They were used to build a 4-node hybrid architecture virtual San as a cluster to manage VDI virtual desktops. As shown in Figure 1, in addition to HORION's management suite, cloud management Suites such as vrealize operation manager are also installed in the management cluster to facilitate administrators to uniformly monitor and manage virtual machines in large-scale clustering. The other 8 servers are used to build a virtual San with 8-node full flash architecture for the deployment and testing of virtual desktops. Although in this test architecture, a management cluster only corresponds to a desktop cluster. However, in the real environment, a management cluster can manage multiple desktop clusters at the same time to meet the needs of large-scale desktop virtualization

horzion desktop virtualization cluster architecture diagram

in order to ensure the fairness of the test results, we use the third-party VDI performance test tool login VSI 4.1 for testing. Login VSI is an industry standard benchmarking tool for measuring the performance and scalability of a centralized desktop environment. Login VSI will gradually increase the number of simulated users in the test until the performance of the system is saturated. When the system is saturated, the increase of application response time is critical. This delay means that the system is almost overloaded. We can find the maximum user capacity of the system by approaching the overload of the system, so as to evaluate the performance of the whole VDI environment

full flash architecture virtual San specific configuration

in the test, we deployed two virtual San clusters. Since the management cluster can change according to the actual business needs, we mainly introduce the configuration of the desktop cluster that deploys the virtual desktop this time. The desktop cluster is composed of a full flash architecture virtual San, and each host adopts the following hardware configuration:

ssd:2*400gb solid state disk (Intel ssdsc2ba40) as the cache layer

ssd:8*400gb solid state disk (Intel ssdsc2bx40) as the capacity layer

each virtual San node is composed of two disk groups, each disk group is composed of a cache SSD and four capacity SSDs, The initial raw capacity of the entire virtual San cluster has reached 32tb, of which 6.4tb is the cache layer capacity and 25.6tb is the capacity layer capacity

specific configuration of virtual desktop image

in the test, the virtual machine image we used was specially optimized by VMware optimization tool. The operating system of the desktop adopts windows 764 bit Enterprise Edition. Each virtual desktop is allocated with 2 vcpu and 2GB memory, and the allocated disk size is 30GB (10.6gb actually used)

in addition, we deploy the applications required for login VSI performance test in a separate appstack, with a total capacity of 6536mb. Appstack is a unit specially used to wrap applications, which is stored in the form of read-only vmdk. These applications include:

adobe_ Flash_ Player_ 16_ ActiveX，

Adobe_ Reader_ XI_ 11.0.10，

Doro_ 1.82,

freemind,

Microsoft Office_ Professional_ Plus_ 2010, etc

test results

in the performance test of virtual desktop, we use login VSI 4.1 to call common applications to simulate the daily workload of the desktop. In general, VDI workloads are CPU tight. From the perspective of storage, if the CPU of the host is properly planned, each host of virtual San can support up to 200 desktops. Therefore, in the test of space efficiency improvement and view desktop management operation, we deployed a maximum of 1600 virtual desktops. However, during the login VSI virtual desktop performance test, we found that the test server had CPU bottlenecks under specific workloads. Therefore, our main focus is to observe the performance of 1000 desktops

performance of instant clone desktop

in order to evaluate the performance difference of instant clone desktop before and after enabling erasure code, we used login VSI to conduct performance tests on RAID 1 and RAID 5 storage policy configurations respectively. Through the test, we found that the workload of vsimax knowledge workers did not exhaust the resources of the whole system. In the connection test of 1000 desktops, both configurations can pass the benchmark requirements. The login VSI test of instant clone desktop under RAID 1 and RAID 5 storage strategies is shown in Figure 2. Through the test, we can find that the performance impact of virtual San with erasure code enabled is very small compared with the default configuration. (the smaller the test result, the better)

login VSI test results of 1000 instant clone desktops under RAID 1 and RAID 5

performance of linked clone desktops

in addition to instant cloning, we also conducted detailed performance tests on linked clone desktops. Client cache is a further enhancement of the storage cache function of virtual San 6.2 for VDI business scenarios. It adds an additional read cache in the memory of the host background. This part of the read cache only occupies 0.4% of the host memory capacity (no more than 1GB at most), but it can greatly improve the performance of VDI. This function is enabled under virtual San 6.2. In order to verify that the client cache improves the performance of VDI business scenarios, we use login VSI to test before and after the client cache is disabled, and compare the test results of virtual san under the default storage policy

as shown in Figure 3, through the test, we found that enabling client caching can significantly improve the performance of VDI desktop (the smaller the test result, the better). By analyzing the vsimax score, we found that the space efficiency improvement technology of virtual San has little impact on the performance of the desktop while improving the storage efficiency of the linked clone desktop

loginvsi test results of 1000 linked cloned desktops

enable de duplication/compression and erasure (RAID 5) and the saving of storage space by sparse exchange files

after enabling de duplication/compression and erasure, especially when unloading, we tested the space savings of VDI desktop pool deployment in the full flash architecture virtual San. The de duplication/compression technology will perform de duplication and compression operations on a unit of each disk group. This technology will de duplication various data types. While erasure codes can save storage space without reducing data availability

in order to maximize the performance of virtual San on VDI desktop, we enabled swap thick provision disabled in the advanced host settings option of the host, enabling the sparse swap file function of virtual San to further optimize the space savings of linked clone desktop pool and instant clone desktop pool. Since the capacity of the virtual exchange file is equal to the allocated memory space minus the reserved memory space, this extra space overhead will be very large in the case of large-scale deployment of virtual machines

by enabling the sparse swap file function, the swap file will be deployed in a thin configuration mode. That is, the virtual swap file will allocate disk space only when the swap file is actually used. (of course, we only recommend this function if there is enough memory space)

as mentioned above, the virtual desktop template we configured is configured with 30GB disk space. Under the default storage policy of virtual machines, deploying 1600 linked cloned desktops requires 13.47tb of storage capacity. After enabling the de duplication/compression function and changing the virtual machine storage strategy to RAID 5, the storage space used by 1600 desktops decreased to 7.94tb. The weight removal/compression ratio is about 1.91 times. Since our server has sufficient memory space, after closing all desktops and enabling the sparse file exchange function, we restart the virtual desktop. The storage space consumption of 1600 linked cloned desktops has decreased to 1.81tb, and the corresponding de duplication/compression ratio has been significantly increased to 11.6 times

the space occupation of 1600 linked cloned desktops

we also compared the storage space occupation of real-time cloned desktops after enabling erasure code and sparse file exchange. As shown in Figure 5, under the default virtual machine storage policy of virtual San (RAID 1), enabling sparse swap files can save 6.29tb of storage space for 1600 instant clone desktops. The RAID 5 storage strategy with erasure code enabled saves 0.68tb of storage space compared with the default strategy

1600 real-time cloned desktops

horizon view desktop pool management

in addition to the loginvsi performance test of VDI virtual desktops, we also evaluate the possible impact of the space efficiency improvement technology introduced by virtual San 6.2 on desktop pool management through the operation test of horizon view

horizon 7 introduces instant cloning technology, which greatly accelerates the deployment and customization of virtual desktops. Administrators can fully deploy 1600 desktops in only 37 minutes and 36 minutes under RAID 1 and RAID 5 configurations, respectively. In addition, immediate desktop cloning does not require the administrator to refresh, rebuild and other operations. When the user logs out of the desktop, the desktop will be immediately deleted and a new image desktop will be created. This process avoids the problem of startup storm often encountered by traditional VDI desktop pool. As shown in Figure 6, it takes only 38 minutes and 39 minutes to update the image of 1600 desktops in RAID 1 and RAID 5 configurations, respectively

view operation test of 1600 instant clone desktops

for the operation of link cloning, we found that after enabling the idle efficiency improvement technology of virtual San 6.2, the execution time of deployment, update, reconstruction and other operations will be relatively longer, but this operation can save a lot of storage space. Therefore, we believe that it is worthwhile to spend some time on the operation of the linked clone desktop

1600 view operation tests linked to cloned desktops

through the test, we verified that horiozn 7 and