VMworld 2013: A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2 Performance and Best Practices

A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2

Performance and Best Practices

Banit Agrawal, VMware

Warren Ponder, VMware

EUC5706

#EUC5706

2

Session Outline

Introduction

View 5.2 Shared Graphics (3D) Feature and Performance

VMware View 5.2 Enhancements and Performance Results

• PCoIP protocol Improvements

• Windows 8 performance

• SE-Sparse Performance

Performance Tuning and Best Practices

Conclusion

3

Task Worker

Basic data

entry/usage is

central to work

Productivity /

Knowledge Worker

Standard productivity

tools are central to work

Desktop Power User

Some compute

intensive apps, require

3D graphics

performance

Workstation Users

Workstation class

performance for

compute with dedicated

graphics

Image Quality

Interactivity

Cost/Seat

2D / 3D

Heavy Users

Many Applications

Light Users

Fewer Applications

vSGA

Virtualized 3D Hardware Graphics Resources

--VRAM ++ VRAM

vDGA

GPU PCI

Passthrough

Heavy Users

Native Driver

Soft 3D

Software Rendered

Accelerated 3D

Virtual Desktop User Segmentation

4

Overview

Benefits

• Supports DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2.1 apps

• No physical GPU required

• Lower initial VDI CAPEX

• No client side dependencies

Soft 3D – Basic 3D without GPU

Software renderer provides 3D to productivity apps

• Basic 3D graphics capabilities for

productivity workers

• Targeted at Task and Knowledge Workers

who need AERO or applications that

require basic 3D graphics

5

Overview

Benefits

Enable workstation class use cases

Reduce Cost - with multiple VMs sharing

3D graphics cards

Compatible with key platform features

such as vMotion, DRS

Support for mixing physical host clusters

with and without physical GPUS

vSGA - Shared 3D Graphics Among Multiple Virtual Machines

Run rich 3D applications with higher consolidation

Enables shared access to physical

graphics cards for 3D and high

performance graphical workloads.

Desktops use VMware SVGA device for

maximum virtual machine compatibility &

portability.

Cost effective with multiple VMs sharing

single graphics card for maximum benefit

6

Overview

Benefits

Full capabilities of physical GPUs

True workstation replacement option

vDGA – Direct Passthrough to a Specific Virtual Machine

Full workstation class user experience

Enables dedicated access to physical

GPU hardware for 3D and high

performance graphical workloads.

Uses native nVidia drivers

CUDA available to virtual machine

Best for super high performance needs

like manufacturing, oil & gas

7

Tracking vSGA Performance

On a vSphere host, you can execute the commands below to track

system/GPU performance

System Performance (Run “esxtop”)

GPU Stats (Run “nvidia-smi -l”)

*More details can be found in the View 5.2 vSGA performance whitepaper:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/vmware-horizon-view-hardware-accelerated-

3Dgraphics-performance-study.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/vmware-horizon-view-hardware-accelerated-3Dgraphics-performance-study.pdf















8

vSGA Configuration Best Practices

Virtual Machine Hardware

• Latest Virtual Machine Hardware Setting

• Configure VMs to use VMXNET3 NICs

In Guest Virtual Machine Settings

• Throttle the application frame rate to match the configured PCoIP frame rate.

• This configuration is achieved by using the following registry setting

(REG_DWORD):

HKLM\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware SVGA DevTap\MaxAppFrameRate

• Setting this registry entry has been found to significantly improve performance and

consolidation ratios

• Consider disabling PCoIP’s build-to-lossless mode

9

vSGA Experimental Setup

Desktop VMs Client VMs or Users

10

vSGA Workload Testing: Light 3D workload

Composed of common desktop applications

• View Planner: Office 2010, Adobe Reader, 720p video, IE9 displaying a web

album

• Google Earth

Aero Enabled

Screen Resolution: 1600 x 1200

Represents a use-case scenario typical of a knowledge worker

11

vSGA Performance: Light 3D Workload

• CPU was getting bottlenecked first while peak GPU utilization was around 20%

• 112 VMs ran light 3D workload with good response time

12

vSGA Workloads: Interactive 3D UE benchmark

Composed of common 3D and Interactive operations

• Some simple 3D rendering operations

• Dragging

• Scrolling

• Windows Maximize and Minimize

Screen Resolution: 1600 x 1200

User Experience or responsiveness metric based on frame arrival

and inter-frame delay

13

vSGA Performance: UE Benchmark

• Using hardware accelerated 3D improves responsiveness in comparison with a software solution, even at lower consolidation ratios, where CPU is not exhausted.

• Adding GPUs to an existing software-renderer solution enables the VM consolidation ratio to be almost doubled while maintaining user experience.

14

vSGA Workloads: Light CAD Workload

Composed of some common apps and CAD viewer

• View Planner: Office 2010, Adobe Reader, 720p video, IE9 displaying a web

album

• SolidWorks CAD Viewer with these models

Response metric: 95% response time and FPS

15

vSGA Performance: Light CAD Workload

• Could scale to 64 VMs without reaching the threshold

• CPU utilization less than 100% at 64 VMs signifies the View Planner threshold crossing doesn’t mean CPU needs to be pegged 100%

16

vSGA Workloads: Complex CAD Workload

Solid Edge Viewer ran in isolation

• A 3-1 reducer model was used

Response metric: Remoted Frames per sec (FPS)

17

vSGA Performance: Complex CAD workload

• We see 30 VMs scale nicely and remains with in 80% threshold of the normalized best case frame rate

• The range above each line bar shows the FPS variation in each VM – The narrow range suggests that all VMs are fairly distributed to the CPU/GPU and doesn’t show much variance.

18

Session Outline

Introduction







Conclusion

19

Overview

Benefits

Better scrolling performance

Downlink bandwidth reduction

More users supported in the same

network link

PCoIP Protocol Performance Improvements

Efficient Client size Caching to improve bandwidth usage

Improved client side caching with new

compression techniques

Improved Cache handling of progressive

build operations

Caching support of scrolling operations

Dynamic GPO settings

Relative mouse support

20

Experimental Setup: System and Network Configurations

Network

conditions

Bandwidth and

Round-trip latency

LAN 100Mbps with 1ms

latency

WAN 2Mbps connection

with 100ms latency

Extreme

WAN

300kbps

connection with

100ms latency

Host

Configur

ation

VMware vSphere 5.1

Dell T610

2.53 GHz Nehalem

48 GB Physical RAM

On local SSD

Desktop

Guest VM

32-bit Win7 desktop

1-VCPU,

1GB RAM

1152x864 resolution

32-bit WinXP SP3

1-VCPU, 768 MB

1152x864 resolution

Network link Display

protocol

21

Desktop Workload: VMware View Planner 2.1


protocol

Office

2007

Other

Apps

Workload: VMware

View Planner 2.1

22

Workload: VMware View Planner

Workload generator and sizing tool

• Platform characterization (CPU, memory, storage)

• Evaluate user experience

• Understand scaling issues and identify bottlenecks

Workload parameters

• All applications selected (PowerPoint, Excel, Word,

Outlook, Web album, Video, Firefox, Adobe, 7Zip, IE9)

• Thinktime of 10 seconds

A newer benchmark version (3.0) was just

released. For more info, send email to

• [email protected]

23

Run Configurations

Settings PCoIP (View 5.2)

Resolution and color depth 1152x864 and 32-bit color

Clear Type fonts Enabled (default)

Window-maximize transient effect Disabled

Busy animated cursor Changed to default cursor

Image Quality BTL off

Max. Initial image quality (70)

Frame rate 24

24

PCoIP Caching Improvements

Reducing cache size

• View 5.2 with 5x cache reduction can provide equivalent bandwidth savings and slightly higher compared to View 5.1 with 250MB RAM

• Good for memory constrained thin-clients and tablet devices

25

PCoIP Caching Improvements

• View 5.2 provides about 5% lower bandwidth usage in LAN and WAN and about 5-10% in extreme WAN conditions

• Lower bandwidth, more caching of display data using new compression techniques

26

Overview

Benefits

Use the latest Windows 8 OS for desktops

and clients

Windows 8 Support

Full support of Windows 8 as desktop and client

View 5.2 fully supports Windows 8 as

desktop

View clients also supported in Windows 8

27

Windows 8 Performance and Optimizations

• With the optimizations, bandwidth usage can be reduced up to 60%

28

PCoIP and RDP 8 Performance

• Windows 8 PCoIP consumes least bandwidth usage once all the optimizations are applied

• PCoIP is 10-20% better than RDP8

29

Overview

Benefits

Reduced storage capacity requirements

(lower CAPEX) for Persistent Desktops,

even on lower-tier hardware.

View Composer or Mirage can be used for

provisioning simplicity, even if recompose

is never used (e.g. knowledge workers).

SE Sparse Disk Utilization

More efficient use of storage capacity

Leverages new vSphere capability…

A new disk format for VMs on VMFS.

Reduces grain size & more efficiently

utilize every allocated block by filling it

with real data.

Unused space is reclaimed and View

Composer desktops stay small.

30

Dell PowerEdge R710 with

16-core Intel Xeon E5-

2660 @ 2.2 GHz with

392G RAM with SSD

storage

VMware

vSphere 5.1

32-bit Win7 desktop

1-vCPU

1GB RAM

32-bit WinXP SP3

1-vCPU

768 MB RAM

Dell PowerEdge R710

with 12-core Intel Xeon

E5645 @ 2.4 GHz with

296G RAM with SSD

storage

VMware vSphere

5.1

PCoIP

SE Sparse Performance: Experiment Setup

31

SE Sparse Performance: Workload and Configurations

View Planner workload with custom apps

• Install and Uninstall VI Client and VLC Player

• Download files from web and delete the files

• Copy some files and delete these files

10s think time, 2 iterations, remote mode with PCoIP protocol

Number of VMs tested : 100 VMs

All desktop VMs are placed on SSD disk

Wipe/shrink done at the rate of 10 in every 6 minutes, so for 100

VMs, it took 60 minutes (1 hour)

32

SE Sparse Disk Space Reclamation

• Since the wipe/shrink operation can be I/O-intensive for space reclamation, View administrators are encouraged to use the blackout periods appropriately (available in the View admin UI) to minimize any perturbation in the user experience.

• Also, depending upon the underlying storage, administrators can tune the concurrency level in LDAP (under OU=Properties, OU=Virtual Center) and edit the pae-SeSparseOperationsLimit for the desired vCenter.

33

View Admin Operations Enhancements

Significant acceleration of the Admin Backend by servings request

from an in-memory cache as opposed to fetching data from LDAP

• Improvements in backend time (20 pools, 10K simulated VMs):

• 2x for Inventory -> Desktops

• 4x for Inventory -> Pools

Support of cluster with 32 hosts (now with both NFS and VMFS)

Operational time of View management operations such as

provisioning, recomposing, and rebalancing has improved

significantly (by up to 2x) in View 5.2

34

Session Outline

Introduction







• Platform Best Practices

• Guest-level Optimizations

• Protocol and Network Best Practices

Conclusion

35

Platform Best Practices

Config Best Practices

View Storage Acceleration

(CBRC)

Always enable CBRC (on by default)

Will reduce bootstorm IOPS requirement by 80%

Will also reduce loginstorm IOPS requirement

Space-efficient Sparse

Disks (SE-Sparse) disks

Use SE-sparse disks and you can reclaim the wasted space.

Use the wipe/shrink operations in blackout periods as IOPS

requirement may be high

VDI replica Keep the desktop replica on SSD

Memory-overcommitment Use memory over-commitment as long as the active memory fits in

the physical memory (you can use View Planner custom apps

features to get an estimation)

Try to avoid Ballooning or Swapping

IOPS requirement Typical knowledge worker about 10-15 IOPS.

Depending on your applications, YMMV

CPU requirement About 200 to 500 MHz per user depending upon the application

requirements

36

Guest Level Optimizations

More details in the white paper: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/vmware-horizon-view-best-practices-performance-study.pdf

Parameter Best Practices

vCPU 1 for WinXP/Win7/Win8, 2 for multimedia intensive apps

Memory 512-768 MB for WinXP, 1GB for 32-bit Win7 and Win8

2GB for 64-bit Win7 and Win8, 1.5-2GB for WinXP, Win7, and Win8

32-bit, 3GB for Win7 and Win8 64-bit for memory-intensive apps

Network adapter Vmxnet3, flexible

Storage adapter pvSCSI or LSI logic SAS

VMware Tools Latest installed

Visual settings “Adjust to Best performance”, Disable Animations for Windows

Maximize and Minimize operations

Use default cursor for busy and working cursor

Disabling services Windows Update, Super-fetch, Windows Index,

Group policy settings Disable Hibernation, System restore disable, Screensaver to None

Other settings Turn off clear-type

Disable fading effects

Disable last access timestamp

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/vmware-horizon-view-best-practices-performance-study.pdf














37

All Desktop / Network Condition Tuning Recommendations

Setting Recommendation Benefit Description

Build to lossless Disable – Standard Desktops Enable – CAD/CAM – Medical Imaging

Saves 10-15% bandwidth

Used to enable / disable image quality building to fully lossless

Session Audio BW limit 50 - 100Kbps Reduces

bandwidth and CPU usage

Reduces BW usage of audio with usable quality

Maximum frame rate 10 / 15 FPS

Standard Desktops

Reduces Bandwidth and

CPU usage

In WAN conditions, this will be helpful for video playback and fast graphics operations

Client side cache size

50 – 100MB

Depending on available client RAM

Avg. 30% reduction in bandwidth

This allows you to configure the client side image cache size.
















38

Specific Network Condition Tuning Recommendations


Max Session Bandwidth

Set for LAN / WAN 1-2Mb Standard Desktops

3 – 5Mb 3D Desktops

Note: Always with your use cases for the most accurate range

Reduced Avg. Bandwidth and fair

sharing

Caps the peak bandwidth per session

Session Audio BW limit

50 - 100Kbps Reduces

bandwidth and CPU usage

Reduces BW usage of audio with usable quality

Maximum Image Quality

60-70% Reduces

Bandwidth and CPU usage

Helps in low bandwidth conditions or with heavy multimedia use cases

Configure Session Floor

Not lower than 100MB

Depending on available client RAM

Improved user experience

Helps with better bandwidth estimation and improves user experience in high packet loss scenarios or on WiFi, 3G/4G networks
















39

3D / Intense Graphics Tuning Recommendations


Max Frame Rate

Set based on client

capability

Zero Client – 30FPS

Atom based client – 15FPS

Dual Core ARM client – 20FPS

Desktop 30+FPS

Provides

consistent end to

end user

experience

Caps the maximum frame

rate encoded and sent to the

client for decode

Max App Frame Rate Set to match the Max PCoIP

Frame Rate

Sends only frames

that can be

encoded from the

app to PCoIP

Limits high frame rate

applications from generating

excessive FPS
















40

Conclusion

• View 5.2 provides support of hardware accelerated shared

graphics and we can easily scale from 32 to 100 desktop VMs with

different intensity of 3D graphics workload

• PCoIP caching improvements resulted in 5-10% bandwidth

improvements compared to View 5.1

• SE sparse disk can reclaim wasted space and provide significant

space savings

• View admin operations and UI performance enhancements

• With appropriate best practices, user experience can be improved

for different network conditions

41

Other VMware Activities Related to This Session

HOL:

HOL-MBL-1301

Horizon View from A to Z

Group Discussions:

EUC1001-GD, EUC1006-GD

View with Matt Coppinger or Andre Leibovici

EUC5706

THANK YOU

A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2

Performance and Best Practices

Banit Agrawal, VMware

Warren Ponder, VMware

EUC5706

#EUC5706

45

Backup slides

46

Performance Metrics We Care About


protocol

Desktop CPU

usage

Bandwidth

usage

User

Experience

Lower CPU usage

Better host consolidation

Lower cost

Lower BW usage

More users supported

Better user experience

Lower response time

Better user experience

Happy VDI users

47

View 5.2 Feature Pack 2

Real-time Audio Video

Flash URL redirection

48

Overview

Benefits

Improved end user experience with

broader application support

Up to 100x bandwidth reduction

Improves installation and administration of

microphone and webcam devices

Real-Time Audio-Video

Improved Microphone and Webcam Experience

Webcams and Microphones are now

generally supported with Horizon View

Windows clients

Broader application support for webcams

with Webex, Skype and GoogleTalk

Compressed audio/video reduces

upstream BW to as low as 300kbps

View

Client

V

A

V

Compressed

A/V

Skype Webex GoogleTalk

49

“Real-Time Audio-Video” Overview

Before

• Webcams were unsupported with Horizon View desktops, unless specifically

used with optimized UC vendor solutions

• USB redirection of webcams and headsets resulted in bandwidth explosion

• Single webcam stream can result in 60 Mbps upstream to remote desktop

• Some customers redirected anyway, but with poor results

After

• General support for microphones and webcams with Horizon View desktops

• Broader application support for use with webcam video and microphone audio

• Audio/video from microphone/webcam is encoded and compressed on client

endpoint

• Bandwidth reduction to as little as 300-600kbps

50

How “Real-Time Audio-Video” Works

Skype

View Client

Encoded

audio/video Compressed Webex

GoogleTalk

View Agent

• Audio and video captured on client machine

• Audio/video encoded and compressed

• Compressed audio/video sent back to remote desktop

• On View desktop, audio/video decoded and presented to virtual webcam driver and virtual audio driver

51

Flash URL Redirection

Streaming of live video events from Adobe Media Server

Adobe Media

Server

Overview

Benefits

Stream live video events optimally to

Horizon View desktops

Support for live video streaming on Adobe

Media Server

Supported with Windows

and Linux thin clients

Stream live video events to virtual

desktops without affect datacenter server

and network

Enables new multimedia use cases with

virtual desktops

Multicast stream

52

Tuning and Optimization Strategies

Disable Build-to-lossless

• No-brainer – first and easiest way to shave 10-15% bandwidth

• Only enable when there is a defined requirement for pixel perfect accuracy

(Medical, CAD/CAM, Graphic Design)

Configure the maximum session bandwidth

• For low bandwidth links set the limit at or slightly below (10%) the max link rate

• Even on the LAN it may make sense to set a max limit

Configure the session floor when…

• PCoIP is experiencing packet loss but the network link has plenty of headroom

• May not always improve user experience – YMMV

• Packet loss is seen on WiFi or 3/4G networks

• Be careful to avoid unintentional oversaturation

53

PCoIP Best Practices Recommendations

Setting Default Recommendation Description

Build to lossless On Turn Off Enables the ability to enable or disable build to lossless

Session Audio BW limit 500Kbps 50 - 100Kbps Reduces BW usage of audio with usable quality

Maximum frame rate 30 Change to 10-15 based

on network settings

In WAN conditions, this will be helpful for video playback and fast graphics operations

Maximum link rate - Set it as per network

conditions Good for better bandwidth estimation

Client side cache size

250MB

Set per client-side memory available

This allows you to configure the client side image cache size.
















54


Configure the maximum frame rate

• In almost all cases the maximum frame rate can be reduced to 18-20fps with

little noticeable impact – but also little gain.

• Settings below 15fps may be noticeable in use cases which require rich media

• Task workers without media requirements can often utilize settings as low as

6-8fps without significant visual impact

• Examine the PCoIP Server log files and WMI Image stats to determine

average frame rate for desired use case:

MGMT_IMG :log: cur_s 0 max_s 30 tbl 2 bwc 0.01 bwt 8.95 fps 5.57

MGMT_IMG :log: cur_s 0 max_s 30 tbl 2 bwc 0.01 bwt 8.95 fps 6.26

Configure the maximum initial image quality

• When on a WAN link with constrained bandwidth reduce this setting to 60-70%

• For use cases that use large amounts of multimedia/video – large impact

• Setting this value too low may result in noticeably “fuzzy” or “blurry” images

55


Configure the minimum image quality

• This value must be below the maximum initial image quality setting

• The default value of 50% is acceptable for most cases

Configure the audio bandwidth limit

• For use cases that utilize significant amounts of audio - legal/medial

transcription for example – reducing audio bandwidth may increase user

density

• Audio bandwidth limit is a target, not a literal value

• Vary the audio bandwidth limit between 450Kbps – 50Kbps until the desired

mix of bandwidth savings and audio intelligibility is achieved

Configure the Client-side cache size

• When using thin client devices with limited RAM using a larger cache size than

the device can support may lead to dropped sessions

• Reduce the cache size until connections are unaffected, typically 50-100MB

56

Overview

Benefits

Enhanced Usability: One stop shopping

for end user access to all their corporate

workloads.

Horizon Brokering of View Desktops

Horizon Supports User Entitlement to Desktops and SSO

View Desktop pools are connected into

Horizon after they are provisioned

Horizon provides single point of access for

end users to desktops, data and apps.

Horizon supports SSO brokering user to

available desktops based on entitlement

policy

Technology

VMworld 2013: A Technical Deep Dive on VMware Horizon View 5.2 Performance and Best Practices