Best Practices for Architecting VDI with Flash Storage

SSD & VDI

How Storage Performance Determines Success

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY WHIPTAIL 2012 2

Who Am I?

VP & GM, Americas Benefit from joining very early Citrix & Symantec/VERITAS Attempt to be student Honestly tried to keep this vendor

neutral


Fifty Shades of VDIPublished

Apps

Thin Client Computing

Server Based

Computing

Published Desktop

Virtual Desktop

OS

Virtual Desktop Broker

User Virtualization


We’re Talking “Real VDI” Today Hypervisor Desktop OS LAN/WAN/WWW Broker Any Device Apps Personality Data Storage


The Virtual Desktop Storage Performance Matters

Viru

s Sc

anni

ng

Patc

hing

Bo

ot S

torm

s

Logi

n St

orm

s

Virtual Desktop operating systems demand high I/O along with fast read and write bandwidth from storage.

CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY WHIPTAIL 2012

How Demanding is It?

20 – 40 – 100 IOPS each 80% write, 100% random at 4k sustained Relentless problem (does not get better

with scale) Basically the worst data pattern

imaginable


2000 2005 2010 Today

Infrastructure Performance

Broadband Wireless Network Processors Bus Memory Hard Disk Drive

HDD Storage ≠ Fast DataBusinesses can't wait for slow desktops • 200 IOPS per HDD• 6-8 milliseconds latency


Real World I/O Demands

Cost of using HDDs for performance: ($ for 2 racks of HDD storage)/(1,000 users)

=$300 - $500 per VDI user for storage JUST for Operating Systems! Will it write fast enough? What else is on that array?

1,000 Users=== 20-40 k

Write IOPS 200 HDDs

2 racks of HDD… + software, hardware,

maintenance, etc.

Rinse, Repeat as you scale…


Can’t Jam It All In

NetApp• Cache• 2 Storage Tiers • 20,000 IOPS• $$$$

EMC• Cache• 3 Storage Tiers• 20,000 IOPS• $$$$$


Two Types of VDI Data

User Data – Not FastOperating System - Fast


Must SeparateLowers Cost – Delivers Performance

Virtual Desktop OS Silicon Storage Array 250,000 write IOPS Performance Matters Lun ‘n’ Done

User Data Traditional Storage Capacity Matters


Flash Has Issues, You Say?100X faster, no moving parts, but…

Higher cost per GB natively All flash wears out Not bit-addressable = slow writes Bottlenecks at the controller


NAND Flash Cost ExplainedApples to Oranges

NAND Flash storage is the most cost effective IO performance

solution for business

HDD Short Stroking marginally improves IO performance while dramatically increasing the cost

per GB, power and cooling.

NAND FLASH substantially out performs Short Stroked HDDs at

a lower cost per GB.

Hat Tip: Enterprise Storage Array Manufacturer

HDD vs.

NAND Flash

HDDLow Capacity Utilization

vs.High Capacity Utilization

HDD Short Stroking vs.

NAND Flash

Cost per IO Cost per GB Cost Per GB


Two Types of VDI OS Deployment

Persistent

15GB – 40GB Each For Security For Developers Or Lost Battle w/Users

Non-Persistent

2GB – 6GB Each User Profile Tools App Deployment Tools Ideal Method


Silicon Storage Array withCitrix XenDesktop

Citrix Provisioning Server

WHIPTAIL Storage Array •PVS vDisk Library •Windows XP•Windows Vista•Windows 7

User Data

Citrix XenServer

VMWare Host

Hyper-V

Citrix XenDesktop

Citrix XenApp

Citrix License Server

DHCP/DNS Server

SQL Server

XenDesktop Infrastructure Virtualization Hosts Provisioning & Storage


Silicon Storage Array withVMware View

VMware Infrastructure

•Master Image•Low I/O and Capacity

•Replica Image•Read I/O

•Linked Clones•Write I/O

User Data

VMware Data

WHIPTAIL


SRP

NAND SSD x

8

RaceRunnerBlockTranslation Layer:

Alignment | Linearization

What About Write Speed & Wear?RACERUNNER OS

Fabric

iSCSI

Unified Transport

NAND SSD x

8

HBA HBA HBA

2. Write request passes through the transport stack to BTL.

1. Write request from host passes over fabric through HBAs.

4. Request is written to media.

Data integrity Layer

Enhanced RAID

3. Incoming blocks are aligned to native NAND page size.

NAND SSD x

8

FC


WHIPTAIL Silicon Storage Array Software Solution = Lower Cost 250k – 650k write speed, over the

fabric, with protected drives, at 4k 100% random write

7.5 drive wear guarantee Performance Scales


ACCELA

Height 2RUCapacity 1.5TB-12TB

Silicon Storage NAND Flash - MLCIOPS 250,000 W & 200,000 R

Bandwidth 1.9 GB/sLatency 120 MicrosecondsPower 180 Watts

Interfaces Fibre ChannelGigabit Ethernet

Infiniband

ProtocolsFibre Channel

iSCSIInfiniband QDR

NFS & CIFS

FeaturesRAID Protection

Protected Write BufferHot Spare

Asynchronous Replication

Options vCenter Plug-In INVICTA Node Kit

Acce

lera

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our A

pplic

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ns

Revolutionize the performance of virtualized infrastructure and applications with ACCELA. The fastest write performance in it's class.

ACCELA


ACCELADesktop Virtualization

12TB 12TB

680 VMs 680 VMs 680 VMs 680 VMs 680 VMs 680 VMs 680 VMs 340 VMs5000 VMs40 IOPS Each60 UCSBlade Servers

5000 VDI Users at $50 per user2 ACCELA Arrays = $100 per userMore N+1 equals <$100 per user

Cisco UCS


Move data at the speed of life

High IOPS•Virtual Desktop (VDI)•Transaction Databases

•VMWare Clusters

High Bandwidth•Video Streaming•Batch Cycles•Database Dump/Loads

•Transcoding

Low Latency•High Frequency Trading•On Line Websites•Application Databases

•VMWare Clusters

Symmetric Read/Write •Database Batch Loads

•Web Database Batch/Online

•Database Dump/Loads

•New Applications

ACCELA

INVICTA

1.5TB-12TB

6TB-72TB


INVICTA Modular, Scalable & Tunable

Silicon Storage Router

Silicon Storage Nodes

Min/Max Capacity 6TB - 72TB

Base Models ISSA-6, ISSA-12, ISSA-24 6TB 12TB 24TB

Silicon Storage NAND Flash - MLCHeight 6RU-14RU

Silicon Storage Router

Multi-Path Architecture 250,000 - 650,000 IOPS

5GB/s - 7GB/s R/W Bandwidth*200 Microseconds Latency

Power: 440W

Interfaces4/8 Gb Fibre Channel

1/10 Gb Ethernet40 Gb Infiniband

Protocols Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SRP

Silicon Storage Nodes

Protected Write CachePower: 180W each

FeaturesMulti-Tenant and Multi-Protocol

Capacity PoolingRAID Protection and Hot SparingLUN Mirroring and LUN Striping

Acce

lera

te y

our B

usin

ess

*fully configured system


Up to 650,000 IOPS

Up to 7GB/s bandwidth

Up to 72 TB of Capacity

LUN mirroring

LUN Striping

INVICTAScalability and Virtualization

Fibre Channel or Ethernet Switch

15,000 VMs 40 IOPS Each = ~$100 per user680 VMs per Blade Chassis120 Blade Chassis85 VMs per Blade ServerEach Blade is Multi-Pathed


Alternatives to SSA for VDI Software Optimization

Too cumbersome and expensive Appliances

Not scalable or enterprise Caching

Doesn’t help writes Tiering

Processor bottleneck, HDD write performance, cost, footprint

Other SSA No one else comes close in cost, write, wear


1,000 XenDesktop Users

1,500 VDI Users 3,000 VDI Users

2,500 VDI Users

VMware View


XenDesktop


XenDesktop


XenDesktop1,000 XenDesktop Users

OVER 4 YEARS OF VDI SUCCESS


Questions and Answers

Ryan [email protected]

Thank You

Technology

Best Practices for Architecting VDI with Flash Storage