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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View

Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid: Reference Architecture with

VMware Horizon View Document Version 2.3

June 10, 2015

http://www.pivot3.com/



Purpose This document is an explanation of Pivot3 reference architecture as it relates to VMware View. At the time

of this document’s publication, the most current version of VMware View was 6.0, which is what was used

in the described test environments.

How to Contact Pivot3 Pivot3, Inc.

816 Congress Avenue, Suite 970

Austin, TX 78701

Tel: +1 512-807-2666

Fax: +1 512-807-2669

General information: [email protected]

Sales: [email protected]

Tech Support: [email protected]

Website: www.pivot3.com

Online Support: www.pivot3.com/support

EULA & Open Source Notices During the installation of all Pivot3 software components, a copy of the Pivot3 End User License

Agreement will be placed in a subdirectory called “Documentation” located under the primary installation

directory. If applicable, the Pivot3 Open Source Notices document will also be found in the Documentation

subdirectory.

© Copyright 2007-2015 Pivot3, Inc.

All rights reserved. Specifications are subject to change without notice. Pivot3, RAIGE, Pivot3 vSTAC, Pivot3 vSTAC OS, Pivot3 vSTAC HCI,

Pivot3 vSTAC HCI P Cubed, Pivot3 vSTAC R2S, Pivot3 vSTAC Edge, Pivot3 vSTAC Manager, Pivot3 vSTAC Watch, Pivot3 Virtual Security Server

(VSS), Pivot3 Enterprise HCI, vBank, CloudBank, DataBank, and High-Definition Storage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pivot3.

All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.


mailto:[email protected]




http://www.pivot3.com/support



Table of Contents

The Pivot3 Advantage ....................................................................... 4

Getting Virtual Desktops Right ....................................................................................................4

Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure .......................................................................................4

Feature List ................................................................................................................................7

vSTAC Protection Groups ............................................................................................................7

Dynamic Scaling .........................................................................................................................8

Highest Storage Efficiency ...........................................................................................................8

Efficiency of Scale .......................................................................................................................9

Customized Configurations .........................................................................................................9

Administrative Precision .............................................................................................................9

Reference Architecture Design ........................................................ 10

Design Overview ...................................................................................................................... 10

The Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid .................................................................................... 10

Storage Configuration ............................................................................................................... 10

Network Configuration ............................................................................................................. 11

Virtual SAN Elements ................................................................................................................ 11

Design Considerations ..................................................................... 12

Data Safety .............................................................................................................................. 13

Hyper-Converged Functionalities .............................................................................................. 13

Use Case Specifics ........................................................................... 14

VMware View Reference Architecture Components .................................................................. 14

Virtual Desktops ....................................................................................................................... 15

Results & Overall Expectations ........................................................ 16

Performance Tests .................................................................................................................... 16

Automatic Self-Healing ............................................................................................................. 19

Benchmark Mode ..................................................................................................................... 19

Conclusion ....................................................................................... 20

First in Hyper-Convergence ....................................................................................................... 20

Pioneering Failover, RAID, & Critical Data Protection ................................................................. 20

Leading-Edge Performance ....................................................................................................... 20

References ...................................................................................... 21

Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed ................................... 22

Infrastructure Services .............................................................................................................. 22

Horizon View Elements ............................................................................................................. 23




The Pivot3 Advantage Getting Virtual Desktops Right

Since the introduction of virtual desktop technology (VDI), the attractiveness of hosting infrastructure for

universal remote access and simplified desktop management has been plagued with numerous

implementation challenges. Data centers that have achieved architectural excellence have not been able

to lower the cost of centralizing the management of Windows desktops. Many VDI implementations

deployed the wrong combination of traditional, a-la-carte components, thus resulting in a poor user

experience.

Recreating a virtual Windows user experience that is similar to that offered by a PC represents success for

a VDI implementation. Crafting a solution that scales well while preserving the experience is even more

difficult. One approach is to over-configure the solution to guarantee performance, but that typically

collides with budget restraints. Sizing Server + SAN resources too tightly often results in an architecture

that is easily outgrown, resulting in poor performance.

Pivot3’s hyper-converged solution for VDI inherently bypasses these complexities to provide a fast,

correctly sized, and cost-effective VDI implementation. We combine the traditional solution ingredients in

a hyper-converged architecture that drastically reduces the risk of misconfiguring the infrastructure. Our

solution comes pre-customized and pre-validated for the user experience expected at this level. Pivot3

hyper-converged appliances scale elastically to enable a pay-as-you-grow model. As user counts grow,

simply add homogenous appliances to host the virtual desktops. Through Pivot3’s unique Global Hyper-

Converged Infrastructure, all of the storage, IOPS, and high availability expected of a SAN can expand as

more nodes are added.

Pivot3 developed its hyper-converged platform by

extending its pioneering innovation in Software-Defined

Storage. This first virtual SAN was designed to have all the

qualities of a conventional SAN. The engineering team

focused on performance and efficiency from the start to

create a software platform that abstracts away the

hardware from virtual machines while remaining

extremely respectful of the server and storage resources

that coherently unify all resources as appliances are

added. The Pivot3 hyper-converged solution is unique in

that it allows more of the purchased storage capacity to

keep data and more of the purchased server power to

host workloads.

Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

The Pivot3 Hyper-Converged Enterprise HCI Desktop

solution simplifies virtual desktop deployments by

providing the storage and compute power necessary to

support many desktops with the flexibility to easily scale.

Pivot3’s unique architecture enables a customer to start

with a single appliance and grow the system by adding

appliances for more virtual desktops in a High-Availability

(HA) solution.




Pivot3’s vSTAC OS uses Scalar Erasure Coding technology, which can rebuild a failed drive or appliance

without the expense or effort of separate replication and deduplication applications. This patented

technology also provides:

Up to 92% of total installed capacity effectively available for storage

Pre-validated system configuration

Scalable, market-leading storage efficiency with exceptional fault tolerance

Unified storage and compute in a Pivot3 HCI environment starting with only one box

Extremely low compute overhead to run the vSTAC OS increases the density of virtual machines

What makes Pivot3 different?

Globally Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Traditional storage cannot successfully combine resources from

separate appliances to provide one large volume to virtual machines; in fact, when adding hardware to a

conventional DAS, a percentage of the resources added will not be technically usable due to “hot spots”

and other isolated storage space. Over time, conventional models will separate newly added storage into

“islands” that cannot be pooled for utilization. With Pivot3 vSTAC OS, storage capacity can be combined

across appliances and allocated as needed, inherently increasing the investment value of major resources.

Unparalleled Efficiency: Other vendors, whose hyper-converged solutions are only local in the sense that

they allow VMs to access resources only on the server where they reside, may use comparable hardware

in an attempt to make comparable promises. However, none of them are also able to boast the efficiency

that Pivot3 has built in from the ground up. Legacy and other hyper-converged vendors use replication

and deduplication to provide data integrity and higher effective storage capacity; however, Pivot3 has

architected a solution that protects data and provides maximum usable capacity without requiring the

footprint, expense, or advanced expertise needed to configure replication and deduplication processes.

vSTAC OS can function efficiently using as little as 6% of the local resources, dedicating the rest of the

servers’ resources to storage and compute for workloads chosen by the user. This translates to more

usable compute power to host more virtual desktops.

Exceptional Fault Tolerance: The difference between Erasure Coding fault tolerance and replication fault

tolerance can make or break a data center. Pivot3 appliances utilize patented Scalar Erasure Coding in

combination with network RAID settings (based on configuration) in order to provide the most security for

mission-critical data in the smallest resource footprint available. Drive protection becomes increasingly

critical as the number of drives increase with the server count. In the case of Pivot3 hyper-converged

appliances, the proportion of available storage space grows in direct proportion to the number of

appliances while continuing to maintain a high level of data protection.




Alternative replication-based options “copy” data over and over. That means over time, the used capacity

accelerates as the overhead for those copies increase – effectively multiplying the data footprint.

Close-to-the-metal Direct Disk Access (DDA™) Methodology: Pivot3 has increased storage access

performance (30%-40%) by going straight to the disk for disk access instead of bottlenecking through the

hypervisor IO path.

NOTE: Pivot3 has certified its Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) VIBs with VMware. See our VMware

System/Server certifications here.


http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=san&productid=37564&deviceCategory=san&details=1&keyword=Pivot3&isSVA=0&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=server&productid=38018&deviceCategory=server&details=1&keyword=Pivot3&page=1&display_interval=10&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc



Feature List

Efficient, truly useable storage by utilizing Pivot3’s patented Scalar Erasure Coding instead of deduplication & replication

No single point of failure: High Availability protects up to (5) drive failures or a full appliance and 2 additional drive failure with predictive and virtual sparing

Self-healing architecture

LUN-selectable protection levels

5 simultaneous drive failures or a full appliance failure and 2 drives 3 simultaneous drive failures or a full appliance failure and 1 drive 1 disk failure or a full appliance failure

Virtual distributed drive sparing across appliances for undisrupted performance

Direct Disk Access (DDA™) technology for performance

Dynamic expansion of logical or physical capacity

Scale-out, non-volatile SSD-based write cache aggregated across appliances; performance is automatically load-balanced across all elements

Background media verification for uncompromised data integrity

Lowest virtual CPU consumption & storage overhead available

VMware storage and Pivot3 system certifications

Full-time Active-Active Controllers with linearly additive bandwidth

vSTAC Protection Groups

Each Pivot3 appliance hosts both storage and compute functionalities, and appliances are arranged into

vSTAC Protection Groups where several levels of built-in controls protect critical data. A Pivot3 vSTAC

Domain can consist of multiple Protection Groups, and storage in one Protection Group is accessible to a

VM in another Protection Group.


http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vcl/poc.php#Pivot3



NOTE: vSTAC Protection Groups are optimized for 12 HDD nodes or 16 SSD nodes per group. There is no

limit on how many vSTAC Protection Groups can be created and utilized within a customer’s

vSTAC Domain.

Dynamic Scaling

Once new appliances are added to a vSTAC Protection Group with vSTAC Manager, the space becomes

automatically mapped and ready for allocation as shown in Section 3. The new storage capacity may be

added to the existing volume(s) using the Dynamic Capacity Expansion feature in vSTAC Manager or

separated into other volumes, as desired. A Dynamic Capacity Expansion on existing volumes allows newly

added storage space to be included in the relevant volume; vSTAC Manager Suite will take care of the

details behind the scenes, and all the end user has to do is decide how to use the additional space and

instruct vSTAC Manager in a simple wizard UI.

Highest Storage Efficiency

Hyper-Convergence is a relatively new concept to IT, but is not at all a new concept to Pivot3. Since 2007,

we have been combining storage and compute in an easy-to-deploy infrastructure for customers in many

industries all over the world. Scalar Erasure Coding, the patented foundation for Pivot3’s hyper-converged

technology, provides a lower overhead than any other hyper-convergence solution currently on the

market. This means for every TB or PB of Hybrid server bought, up to 92% can be available depending on

configuration, as opposed to the typical 50% considered the norm in a conventional storage environment

with replication-based backup.

Even other hyper-converged solutions on the market have significantly more overhead, providing less

useable space in a consumer environment – even less when considering the “90% best practice” as the

maximum available space. Pivot3 provides a powerful but simple solution to a complex problem.




Efficiency of Scale

Desktop virtualization can be one of the most demanding storage environments in the industry. High

performance allows a PC-level experience with five-nines reliability for 24/7 mission critical uptime.

Expanding the user count and server/storage combination should be seamless and simple. This is what

Pivot3 created a decade ago to host high-demand storage and compute workloads that today is known as

hyper-convergence. We have architected ways to superimpose best practices with the needs of the most

demanding storage environments for the most efficient data-protected solution on the market. The low

cost of Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Solutions can optimize storage and compute for any business at any size.

Customized Configurations

Pivot3 supports a wide range of configurations that vary by CPU capacity, RAM, storage size, and data

type. vSTAC OS can easily handle the extreme IOPs in a VDI environment, and is also well equipped to

handle continuously high throughputs in data as well, such as surveillance. Many Pivot3 configurations can

be combined to handle differences in workloads that may be heavier in areas of complex deployments.

Administrative Precision

At Pivot3, we strive to reduce the potential for user error, so our management systems are designed to

take the complexity out of administrative tasks. Appliance additions, drive replacements, LUN allocations,

automated data organization and reorganization, and much more are all easily managed through an

intuitive, tool-tip-assisted GUI.


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Reference Architecture Design Design Overview

This Reference Architecture goal is to provide a scalable architecture for floating, non-persistent, linked-

clone desktops in a rack-based hardware model. This allows dynamic scaling by simply adding additional

appliances to expand a current Rapid Desktop environment in the Enterprise HCI space, therefore

reducing desktop sizing calculation errors.

The Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid

Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances deliver both server and shared storage requirements for

VMware View customers and eliminate the need for a standalone SAN. vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid

Appliances can be "stacked" together to dynamically scale the number of supported virtual desktops while

offering a familiar server appliance model and self-healing architecture.

Each appliance, called a vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance, is a high-performance server running both

the VMware vSphere Hypervisor and the Pivot3 vSTAC Operating System.

vSTAC Enterprise HCI node appliances are designed to scale up and scale out in vSTAC Protection Groups.

Enterprise HCI Hybrid-based vSTAC Protection Groups are optimized for 12 appliances, and additional

vSTAC Protection Groups enable scaling to meet customer needs that exceed single-group capacity.

NOTE: All vSTAC Protection Groups are managed cohesively through a single vSTAC Manager.

Storage Configuration

Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliances use SATA hard disk drives that contain linked clones, user

data, parent base images, and swap files (.vswp extensions) for each desktop.

User data is separated from the desktop images by redirecting key folders that use roaming profiles.

Folders redirected include:

Application Data

Documents

Media

Desktop

Favorites

NOTE: These folders should be located on shared network storage. Datastores and other VM resources can

also be shared between Protection Groups.


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Network Configuration

Multiple networks are used and configured to provide the necessary environment to achieve the Plug-and-Play

Scalable Architecture mentioned earlier. These networks consist of a redundant SAN network for storage, a

redundant or balanced production network for desktop connectivity, and a redundant Management Network

for HA/DRS-enabled vSTAC Protection Groups.

The vSphere virtual network within each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance has:

Two storage networks, each connected to individual 10-Gigabit NICs

Two 1-Gigabit NICs available for Production Networks

Two 1-Gigabit NICs available for Management Network with Redundancy

The 10-Gigabit SAN network consists of two Layer 3 Enterprise Class 10-Gigabit Switches. The pair of 10-Gigabit

switches provides redundant networks for storage, allowing for switch/cable failures and better load balancing

of I/O. Each 10-Gigabit switch provides one SAN port for each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliance.

Redundant 10 GbE SAN Switch Architecture

The 1-Gigabit network consists of several Layer 3 Enterprise Class 1-Gigabit switches. The 48-port switches

provide fan-out to the desktop clients.

Virtual SAN Elements

Pivot3_VM: Pivot3 Storage Virtual Appliance

The Pivot3_ VM contains the vSTAC Operating System (vSTAC OS), providing an intuitive appliance approach as

it manages data distribution across Pivot3 vSTAC Appliances. With this feature, vSTAC OS is able to provide

scalable availability, performance, and capacity. The vSTAC OS runs on each appliance to aggregate the physical

resources of the appliances, automatically balance loads across the appliances and protect against component

failures.

Advanced disk protection from the vSTAC OS includes RAID 1p, RAID 5e, RAID 6e and RAID 6x:

With RAID 5e, one disk failure or one appliance failure will not affect data

With RAID 1p and RAID 6e, up to three simultaneous disk failures will not affect data

RAID 1p and RAID 6e also protects data in the case of an entire appliance failure and up to one drive failure

With RAID 6x, up to five simultaneous disk failures will not affect data

RAID 6x also protects data in the case of an entire appliance failure and up to two drive failures

As with any centralized resource, it is important that the data stored be available and accessible. The Pivot3

storage-centric approach for application environments characterized by high-capacity needs and I/O-intensive

workloads offers higher performance, lower cost and higher availability than traditional alternatives.

NOTE: For new customers without a current infrastructure, Pivot3 also offers the Pivot3 P Cubed starting

point as explained in Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed.


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Design Considerations vSTAC Protection Groups set up using vSTAC Manager Suite are able to pool unused resources together and

treat the sum as one resource or more configured resources. The following elements are the foundation for

Pivot3’s design architecture, which was validated using VMware Horizon View 6.0 and VMware ESXi 5.5.

1. Load-Balanced Performance: In a use case scenario of (3) 2U vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances,

concurrent VMware View non-persistent virtual desktops can be serviced with a Pivot3 unified storage and

compute vSTAC® Protection Group. In this situation, each virtual desktop receives IOPS, SATA Tier storage,

RAM and vCPU allocated resources as determined by workload.

2. Automatic Self-healing: An appliance failure will not affect SAN storage, and VMware HA will restart

affected virtual desktops within the vSTAC Protection Group without user intervention.

3. Dynamic Scaling: Virtual desktops can be added dynamically. Adding a vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid

Appliance to a live vSTAC Protection Group will provide compute and storage resources for additional

virtual desktops, which can be easily added without affecting the initial virtual desktops.

4. Data Safety: Pivot3 has diligently tested and re-tested configurations to ensure the #1 priority remains data

retention and protection; each solution offered has been tailored to provide maximum performance with

minimal customer-side administrative or architectural effort.

5. Dynamic Volume Expansion: To help prevent user error during complex administrative tasks (e.g.,

appliance additions, drive replacements, data organization/reorganization, LUN allocations, etc.), the Pivot3

vSTAC Manager Suite automatically incorporates new appliances as they are added and takes care of the

mapping quietly and efficiently, lessening the potential for human error during load balancing.

Rem

Physical View Logical View

Three-Appliance vSTAC Protection Group Summary with Maximum Logical Volume Allocation

Same vSTAC Protection Group Summary + (1) Appliance added in vSTAC Manager

Same vSTAC Protection Group Summary + Two(2) Appliances added in vSTAC Manager


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Data Safety

Our customers depend on five-nines, 24x7 uptime on petabytes of storage in thousands of deployed appliances

worldwide. Because we always look at the total quality of service coming from the storage system, Pivot3

provides the following safety capabilities in our scale-out architecture:

1. Constant Media Scanning – Ongoing surface and performance scanning runs constantly in the background.

2. Drive Sparing – We use patented Virtual Global Sparing that gets provisioned by default for a drive’s worth

of capacity to step in should a drive fault occur, preventing downtime or performance degradation, and

getting the system back to its optimal levels of failure supported.

3. Pre-Emptive Alerts –vSTAC OS can “fail out” drives that aren’t working properly and may be affecting

performance of the overall vSTAC Protection Group. Our Virtual Global Sparing pre-empts data loss by

automatically reallocating data to the spare space, and vSTAC Manager is responsible for alerting local

administrators and Pivot3 for end users who have signed up for the “Phone Home” option.

4. Read Quality Detection – Subtle performance problems that arise from a drive getting “sick” may not yet

trigger a full failure, but we constantly evaluate every drive. Leveraging our Globally Hyper-Converged

Architecture, vSTAC automatically redirects reads to alternative drives to sustain performance and informs

administrators of the drive being in a degraded state. This type of preventive monitoring can help extend

the life of a sick drive by enabling a more graceful service event.

5. Phone Home – Sends support notification alerts to administrators and (optionally) Pivot3 technicians when

a problem needs attention.

6. High Availability Data Protection – All hardware has a shelf life, so we design for failure. Fault tolerance

should not be a tradeoff for performance or safety. The Pivot3 vSTAC platform uniquely supports up to FIVE

simultaneous drive failures or a complete appliance failure plus two additional drives failing.

Hyper-Converged Functionalities

Utilizing high-speed SSD storage for desktop images, linked clones, etc. improves the overall system

performance by allowing higher numbers of desktops per appliance. In some cases, however, storing user data

and profiles can be challenging if the required capacity for that data exceeds what is available from the SSD

storage pool (e.g., for graphics or multi-media files). In these cases, Pivot3 recommends configuring the

Enterprise HCI system with a second Pivot3 Protection Group to meet user-specific needs.

The extra Protection Group help keeps all the storage managed from a single “pane of glass,” and maintains

high levels of availability throughout. For example, a Protection Group of (3) 12TB vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid

appliances would allocate approximately 50GB for each of 450 users on top of existing resources, while

protecting data from drive and appliance failure. Protection Groups can be easily scaled out or expanded as

user and application needs change.


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Use Case Specifics VMware View Reference Architecture Components

Pivot3 offers self-healing for both server and storage resources in the case of an appliance failure. From the

storage perspective, a Pivot3 vSTAC Protection Group of N appliances remains fully operational when an

appliance fails, leaving the vSTAC Protection Group at N-1. VMware vSphere applications provide a separate

layer of protection under supported configurations.

For this reference architecture, the desktop count is sized to take into account all real-world possibilities of

hardware failures (power supplies, processors, Memory DIMMs, motherboards, etc.) that may force an entire

vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance failure.

Each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance provides CPU, memory, and storage resources for a number of

virtual desktops. Therefore, the minimum configuration of three vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliances

supports a number of failover-protected virtual desktops depending on expected workload chosen during

configuration.

Additional vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances can be dynamically added to a vSTAC where each additional

appliance provides resources for additional virtual desktops along with the load-balanced shared storage

needed for the new load.


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Component Purpose/Usage

VMware View Desktop Host

(3) Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances

Dual Intel® Xeon ® E5-2640 v3 CPU @ 2.6 GHz

128GB Base + 128GB upgrade = 256GB RAM

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 or higher

Application Configuration VMware View Desktop Client Stores:

ISOs, Software, VM Templates

P Cubed Infrastructure

(1) Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance(s)

Dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 v3 CPU @2.6 GHz

128GB Base + 128GB upgrade = 256GB RAM

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 or higher

Application Configuration Infrastructure Server (vCenter Server, Domain Controller, Active Directory,

View Connection Manager)

Network Switches (2) SAN Switches DELL PowerConnect 8024: 24-port 10GbE copper port switch

(1) Application Switch Cisco Catalyst 3750G: 48-port 1GbE switch. Add as needed.

Software

VMware View 6.0 VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Application. Premier Edition enables

View Composer, which is required for Linked Clones and Tiered Storage.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard For vCenter Server, View Connection Manager, View Composer, and Domain

Controller

Management Pivot3 vSTAC Manager 6.6.2 or

higher Physical and logical storage configuration, dynamic expansion, security

access, RAID and tier setting by volume.

SNMP Alerts Set traps for physical state changes within the Pivot3 vSTAC Protection Group

Server Virtualization VMware vCenter Server 5 Standard

Test Component Purpose/Usage

Test Servers

1x LoginVSI Test Server Windows Server 2012 R2 Running:

5 LoginVSI Launchers @25 desktops each

Test Software LoginVSI version 4.2.1.1205 With LoginVSI Picture Viewer and Notepad

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP 1, 64 bit

View Client OS for characterization testing

P Cubed For MS SQL server, Exchange 2010 and other infrastructure VMs

Applications used to generate user workload Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Microsoft Office 2013

Adobe Acrobat Reader 11 Adobe Flash Player

Java/FreeMind Doro 1.82

Virtual Desktops

Each desktop image is a user instance of Windows 7 and has been optimized following the VMware View

Optimization Guide for Windows 7 (VMware, 2014). The number of desktops allocated per appliance will

depend on the variables chosen during setup configuration as explained in Section 5.


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Results & Overall Expectations Performance Tests

Pivot3 conducted tests on concurrent VMware View non-persistent virtual desktops with three vSTAC

Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances in a Pivot3 unified storage and compute vSTAC Protection Group to validate

workload settings.

Tools such as LoginVSI, the industry standard load testing solution for centralized,

virtualized desktop environments, are critical for simulating “like” production workloads

and are a worthwhile investment as a part of evaluating different solutions.

Login VSI, Inc., delivers industry-standard testing solutions for virtualized desktop and

server environments. The world’s leading virtualization vendors use the flagship product,

Login VSI, to benchmark the performance and scalability of their solutions. Enterprise IT

departments use LoginVSI products in all phases of their virtual desktop deployment – from capacity planning

to load testing to change impact prediction – for more predictable performance, higher availability, and a more

consistent end user experience. With minimal configuration, LoginVSI products work in VMware Horizon View,

Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and any other Windows-based virtual

desktop solution. All Pivot3 tests described here using LoginVSI were run with Benchmark Mode enabled.

For more information, download a trial at www.loginvsi.com.

1. Task Worker Profile For testing and benchmarking purposes at the lightest possible user resource requirement, LoginVSI built the

Task Worker workload profile around multiple common applications such as Outlook, Adobe, and various copy

and zip actions. This profile has changed since it was referred to as LoginVSI’s Light Workload profile to more

closely approximate the reality of the resources required for a user at this level.

2. Office Worker Profile The Office Worker profile is a new addition to the LoginVSI resource testing environment. The Office Worker

environment is based on the Knowledge Worker profile, but decreased to one vCPU per VM for a more

representative resource allocation.

3. Knowledge Worker Profile The Knowledge Worker workload is used as the baseline by which to measure all other workloads. For a more

resource-intensive workload testing environment, LoginVSI defines the Knowledge Worker profile as their new

definition of a “Medium” workload, with the Knowledge Worker profile allotted two vCPUs.

4. Power Worker Profile Pivot3 solutions were tested with the Power Worker profile using LoginVSI v4.1.2.1205. The Power Worker

profile attempts to replicate (and test for) the heaviest resource allocation normally seen in a regular working

environment (LoginVSI, 2015).

LoginVSI Workload Definition Breakdown

Workload Applications CPU Disk Reads Disk Writes IOPS Memory # of vCPU

Task 2-7 70% 79% 77% 7 1 GB 1

Office 5-8 82% 90% 101% 8.1 1.5 GB 1

Knowledge 5-9 100% 100% 100% 8.5 1.5 GB 2

Power 8-12 119% 133% 123% 10.8 2 GB 2


http://www.loginvsi.com/

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5. Login Storm LoginVSI’s VSImax test is designed to constantly initiate new sessions. The system initiates with zero sessions

active, and the LoginVSI launchers establish a new session every desired interval period as the test progresses.

(This increment is configurable, but the common default value is 30 seconds.) New sessions are established

every interval (30 seconds in this example) until the maximum number of sessions specified has been reached,

at which point the test ends. Latency data is collected from all sessions that were able to log in during the test.

New sessions are being established throughout the duration of the test, consuming considerable resources by

logging in and/or booting up VMs, depending on how the host VM pool was configured initially. If VMs in this

environment take longer than the launch interval to log in and/or boot up, multiple VMs will be consuming

even more resources. This ensures that the load of the VSImax test comprises workloads running on VMs as

well as VMs booting up and/or logging in. This is the essence of tests referred to as “boot storm” or “login

storm” tests.

VSI Index Average Results

LoginVSI test results show the range of Pivot3 appliances for several variables. Rigorous testing allows Pivot3

developers to understand how the system will react in certain situations and tweak architectural variables for

future performance enhancements.

The chart below details the average VMs supported per appliance for each workload type according to Pivot3’s

LoginVSI testing of each setup. (The Task Worker workload is not included here because the resources allocated

– 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM – are lighter than the workload representative of typical Pivot3 customer base needs.)

Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid – Typical Expected Workloads LoginVSI Workload VM CPU Allocated VM Memory Allocated Avg. VMs Per Appliance

Power Worker 2 4 GB 85

Knowledge Worker 2 2 GB 119

Office Worker 1 2 GB 132


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To determine the average number of VMs that an appliance can support for each workload type, multiple tests

were run and the results of these tests were compared. Repetition in testing ensures consistent results.

Knowledge Worker Test Comparison Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)

Other graphs generated during these tests will show the CPU and Memory usage for the same configuration. In

the chart below, LoginVSI shows that while the CPU response time starts to spike just before 100 active

sessions, the previous result of 119 desktops as the VSImax limitation is shown as a consistent result in CPU

usage and overall resource allocation. For this particular deployment and configuration, we can be confident

that 119 desktops will function as expected. Further result interpretations give insight into other system

elements, as shown below.

Knowledge Worker CPU Test Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)


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Knowledge Worker RAM Test Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)

As with CPUs, the LoginVSI test measurement of RAM usage per active session distribution shows resource

usage to be consistent with expected numbers.

Automatic Self-Healing

This functionality test validates that when one of the vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances is powered off:

The storage is unaffected, and

VMware HA (if applicable) will relocate and restart the affected virtual desktops without user intervention.

Pivot3 performs this critical test to ensure that in a datacenter environment, the unplanned loss of one

appliance will not compromise the entire vSTAC Protection Group or domain. Once the failed appliance is

replaced, vSTAC Manager Suite will restore VM, appliance, and network settings to match those that were in

place before the appliance was removed from the vSTAC Protection Group.

Benchmark Mode

Benchmark mode is a restricted test mode within LoginVSI that is used to create a test environment for easily

comparable industry results (LoginVSI, 2015). This ensures that the settings used for test results are

predictable, attainable elsewhere, and realistically applied for the most industry-accurate test results possible.

More information on Benchmark Mode is available in the LoginVSI documentation library.


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Conclusion First in Hyper-Convergence

Pivot3 is a pioneer in the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure world, delivering the first such product in 2008 to the

physical security market. Our patented Scalar Erasure Coding allows up to 92% of existing resources available,

compared to the 50% actual capacity available in other hyper-converged environments using replication. With

the patented vSTAC architecture, storage capacity is combined across appliances to provide scalability and fault

tolerance. CPUs are also shared among appliances and across Protection Groups, making CPUs yet another

resource easily integrated with additional vSTAC Appliances.

Pioneering Failover, RAID, & Critical Data Protection

We offer custom RAID levels that allow up to 5 disk failures simultaneously, or 2 disks and 1 full appliance

failure. Through dynamic scaling, Pivot3 expands existing Protection Groups automatically, allowing existing

volumes to be expanded or create new volumes with the newly added capacity.

In hyper-converged deployments, we have provided protection for critical data in major industry spaces such as

commercial, retail, corporate, government, gaming, military, and others. Pivot3’s Protection Groups can sustain

failures without losing data or access to data. Protection Groups have the ability to self-heal during and after a

failure to recover to the highest levels of fault protection.

Pro-active, constant monitoring of disk quality and IO throughput ensures system health; the Pivot3 “Phone

Home” option provides a partnership with skilled Pivot3 personnel to help monitor system health before

problems occur.

Leading-Edge Performance

Extensive LoginVSI testing shows Pivot3 system setups to be stable as well as robust. vSTAC Appliances can be

stacked and scaled to provide a superior class of load-balanced storage and compute; the user-centric “Plug-N-

Play” attributes provide our customers with transparency, security, and ease of use. Pivot3 diligently tests and

configures the solutions we offer so that end users may begin working upon installation without months of on-

site trial and error attempts at integration.

Thank you for choosing Pivot3.


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References LoginVSI. (2015, April 13). Changes old and new workloads. Retrieved from LoginVSI Wiki:

http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/Changes_old_and_new_workloads

LoginVSI. (2015, April 20). LoginVSI Management Console. Retrieved from LoginVSI:

http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/Login_VSI_Management_Console

LoginVSI. (2015, February 16). LoginVSI Workload Mashup. Retrieved from LoginVSI:

http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/index.php?title=Workload_Mashup

VMware. (2010). Workload Considerations for Virtual Desktop Reference Architectures. Retrieved from VMware:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-WP-WorkloadConsiderations-WP-EN.pdf

VMware. (2012, September 14). Technical Papers. Retrieved from VMware:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-stateless-virtual-desktops-ref-arch.pdf

VMware. (2013). The VMware(R) View(TM) 4.5 Floating Reference Architecture. Retrieved from VMware.

VMware. (2014). VMware View Optimization Guide for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Retrieved from VMware:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf


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Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed Pivot3’s P Cubed is preconfigured for storage, and ready to scale out with the addition of vSTAC Enterprise HCI

Hybrid Appliances.

Infrastructure Services

AD01 provides Microsoft Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, and DNS forwarding.

Management Station includes vSTAC Manager, and is a handy VM to manage the infrastructure with Pivot3 and VMware tools. vSTAC Manager is the configuration and management software for Pivot3 STACs. The Management Station provides NAT and SMTP roles for POC deployments.


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Horizon View Elements

vCenter: VMware Virtual Center for Virtual Desktops

The vCenter Server is a server that acts as a central administrator for ESX/ESXi hosts that are connected on

a network. A vCenter Server provides the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual

machines in the datacenter.

View Composer is installed as a software service on the vCenter to allow VMware View to rapidly deploy

multiple linked-clone desktops from a single centralized base image.

ViewConnection: VMware View Connection Server

The VMware View Connection server is a software service that acts as a broker for client connections by

authenticating and then directing incoming user requests to the appropriate virtual desktop.

Golden_Desktop: Reference desktop for Windows 7

The Virtual Desktop has a View Agent that is a software service that is installed on all guest virtual machines

in order to allow them to be managed by VMware View.
