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Optimizing VDI TCO and Performance with UCS Storage Accelerator

Ashok Rajagopalan

Product Manager, Desktop Virtualization

© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public

VDI: Impact of Infrastructure

Source: 2011 Morgan Stanley Desktop Survey

Server, Storage and Networking on average comprise 50% of solution TCO per desktop

$160

$125

$40

$150

$125

$50

Storage

Server

Networking

Endpoint

Broker

Licensing

Average Cost per Virtual Desktop ($)

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VDI Software Broker Desktop Entitlement• Non-Persistent or Pooled

‒ Generic virtual desktop assigned to users on a per session first come first server basis and then returned to the pool (possibly with profile removed) or destroyed

• Personalized

‒ Thin Provisioned Desktops with Persistence/Personalization

• Persistent or Assigned

‒ Permanently assigned to a user statically or by first to connect

Users and Groups Desktops Pool of Virtual MachinesEntitle Group to Desktop

Assign Pool

Entitle User to Desktop Assign Individual

Personalized Pooled Desktop

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VDI Shared Storage Challenges

• Cost of IOPS

• SAN and Storage Manageability

• Lumpiness for Scale (stair-step cost incr.)

• Predictability

Benefits of Server Flash for VDI

• Lower Cost of IOPS

• Improved Performance: IOPS & Latency

• Server based manageability

• Smaller bricks for scale

• Predictable performance at scale

• Power consumption and floor space

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Economics of IOPS

• For 2000 desktop solution, UCS Fusion IO Flash solution can reduce storage costs by 50% compared to standard enterprise shared storage

• A single UCS Fusion IO 785GB card can provide up to 500,000 writes (512KB) roughly 10x more write IOPS compared to typical shared storage for 2000 desktops

• A single UCS Fusion IO 785GB card can provide up to 100,000 reads (512KB) roughly 3x more write IOPS compared to typical shared storage for 2000 desktops

SAN with Enterprise Storage* UCS Storage Accelerators: UCS Fusion IO 785GB**$0

$50,000

$100,000

$150,000

$200,000

$250,000

$300,000

$350,000

294063.6

147000

½ the cost

* Includes Industry Standard Enterprise Storage to support up to 2000 desktops with 1 year support ($286,000), 4 x Ports of Nexus 5000, 4 x Storage Port licenses for UCS Fabric Interconnect, all at ASP** Includes UCS Fusion IO 785GB cards at ASP

Storage Costs for 2000 virtual desktops

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Traditional Architecture vs. Server Tier-0• Read/Writes serviced by the storage array• For IOP intensive workloads, backlogs/serialization occur at access fabric, storage controller, & storage media• Best Read/Write performance would be Read from/Write commit on storage controller write cache• Queue depths on the controller serialize IOPS

Virtual DesktopsPlatform + OS/Hypervisor Network

Server Storage

ControllerStorage Media

Write latency = ~ 600μs - 15 ms

Read latency = ~ 600μs - 10 ms

© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public

Traditional Architecture vs. Server Tier-0• Read/Writes serviced by the storage array• For IOP intensive workloads, backlogs/serialization occur at access fabric, storage controller, & storage media• Best Read/Write performance would be Read from/Write commit on storage controller write cache• Queue depths on the controller serialize IOPS

Virtual DesktopsPlatform + OS/Hypervisor Network

Server Storage

ControllerStorage Media

Write latency = ~ 600μs - 15 ms

Read latency = ~ 600μs - 10 ms

• Read/Writes serviced by the UCS Storage Accelerator (PCIe Flash)• 10x more IOPS compared to 20 x SSDs behind a RAID controller• Consistent performance of random read / write• Queue depths don’t matter

Write latency = ~ 30μs – 2ms

Read latency = ~ 70μs - 2ms

• UCS Storage Accelerator based solution can reduce average read latency by 5x compared to enterprise shared storage

• UCS Storage Accelerator based solution can reduce average write latency by 7.5x compared to enterprise shared storage

© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public

Power Consumption & Floor Space

UCS Storage Accelerator: UCS Fusion IO 785GB**

Industry Standard Shared Storage*

0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00

0.153846153846154

2.4

Watts Per Virtual Desktop

• UCS Storage Accelerator is 16x more energy efficient on per virtual desktop compared to typical enterprise storage

• UCS Storage Accelerator consumes no incremental floor space for the solution

* Typical 15K RPM SAS drive on Industry Standard Enterprise Storage consumes 8W, and assuming 20% additional overheads for controller, shelves, and management nodes ** UCS Fusion IO 785 GB card typical is 20W, and on average support 130 virtual desktops on the B 200 M3 blade server

Power consumption on per Virtual Desktop

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Template

Automate provisioning from template

On-demand provisioning

Multiple types of desktops

Persistent, Non-persistent, Individual

Apply group policies

VMware View Example: Provision desktops

View Manager

vCenter

Provision Desktops

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Standard VDI Templates vs. vClones

10GB x 15 +500MB x 15 =157.5GB

10GB +500MB + 500MB x 15 = 25GB

+

VMware View helps reduce storage costs by up to 70%

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VMware View Solution based on UCS Storage Accelerator

Replica

V1

Base Image + Snapshot

OS Data Disk User Data Disk

Virtual Infrastructure

Linked Clones

Profiles

Linked Clones placed on UCS Storage Accelerator

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Benefits of UCS Storage Accelerator for VDI

SUMMARY

• Lower Cost of IOPS

• Improved Performance: IOPS & Latency

• Server based manageability

• Smaller bricks for scale

• Predictable performance at scale

• Power consumption and floor space

$0$50,000

$100,000$150,000$200,000$250,000$300,000$350,000

294063.6

147000

Write latency = ~ 30μs – 2ms

Read latency = ~ 70μs - 2ms

UCS Storage Accelerator: UCS Fusion IO 785GB**

Industry Standard Shared Storage*

0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00

0.153846153846154

2.4

Watts Per Virtual Desktop