Rachel Zhu Blog

Hope you are as excited as we are for Insight 2014 Las Vegas! I will have 6 NetApp break sessions and a XenDesktop on Hyper-V lab. This will keep me busy.  Also you can find me at virtualization booth.  Hope I can meet you in Vegas!

MB-1-2025 – Citrix ShareFile Data Mobility for Enterprise
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10/28/14, from 13:30 to 14:30

MB-1-2025 – Citrix ShareFile Data Mobility for Enterprise
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10/29/14, from 14:45 to 15:45

VI-3-2132-TT – Citrix, VMware, and All-Flash FAS: A Reference Architecture Deep Dive
Date/Time: Monday, 10/27/14, from 13:00 to 15:15

VI-2-2024 – VDI Design, Architecture, and Best Practices for Citrix and VMware
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10/28/14, from 16:15 to 17:15

VI-3-2132-TT – Citrix, VMware, and All-Flash FAS: A Reference Architecture Deep Dive
Date/Time: Tuesday, 10/28/14, from 11:15 to 13:30

VI-2-2024 – VDI Design, Architecture, and Best Practices for Citrix and VMware
Date/Time: Wednesday, 10/29/14, from 16:15 to 17:15

VI-3-2132-TT – Citrix, VMware, and All-Flash FAS: A Reference Architecture Deep Dive
Date/Time: Thursday, 10/30/14, from 11:00 to 13:15

Design guide for Citrix XenDesktop on NetApp Storage is published today. The Citrix XenDesktop 7.5 system, which now incorporates both traditional, hosted Windows 7 or Windows 8 virtual desktops, hosted applications, and hosted shared Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2 server desktops (formerly delivered by Citrix XenApp) provides unparalleled scale and management simplicity while extending the Citrix HDX FlexCast models to mobile devices.

NetApp clustered Data ONTAP—with its key capabilities such as nondisruptive operations, unified storage, multiprotocol architecture, secure multi-tenancy, storage efficiency, read and write performance, and cost efficient data protection—is ideal for cost-effectively designing and deploying end-to-end storage solutions for desktop virtualization based on a single or mix of various XenDesktop FlexCast models.

This technical report provides key storage design and architecture best practices for deploying a mix of FlexCast technologies on a NetApp clustered Data ONTAP storage array. It also includes performance testing results and solution scalability guidelines that prove that NetApp clustered Data ONTAP can cost effectively scale to thousands of desktops without adding complexity.

As a solution architect in a storage company, I am often asked by customers and sales engineers how many IOPS per desktop. My answer is always it depends. Virtual desktop IOPS is a myth. It varies by application, the stage of the workload, provisioning methods, and hypervisors. VDI IOPS is like different size nails, some are small like 2-3 IOPS per desktop, some are big like 20-30 IOPS. The easiest way is to have a big hammer to be able to hit nails in all size.  NetApp finally revealed all flash FAS ( AFF), the big hammer.

NetApp offers All-Flash  with advanced data management delivering high performance, advanced data management, and low cost per desktop. The NetApp All-Flash FAS solution shares the same unified storage architecture, Data ONTAP OS, management interface, rich data services and advanced feature sets as the Hybrid-FAS solution. This unique combination of All-flash media with Data ONTAP delivers the consistent ultra-low latency and high IOPS of all-flash storage, with the industry-leading clustered Data ONTAP OS. In addition, it offers proven enterprise availability, reliability and scalability; storage efficiency proven in thousands of VDI deployments; unified storage with multiprotocol access; advanced data services; and operational agility through tight application integrations.

We recommend to use AFF when the IOPS is > 20IOPS per desktop or ultra low latency  like < 1ms is required.

Check our new reference architecture on All flash FAS with VMWare View. AFF with XenDesktop is coming in a couple of months. Yes, I am doing the work.  🙂

I am excited to go to Citrix Synergy every year. It is a time to get to hear what Citrix is going to say about  virtual desktop, cloud and data mobility. Also it is always so good to meet my Citrix friends.

I will present  M320 Accelerating Virtual Desktop with NetApp on Thursday May 8th at 9:30 Room with Mr. Cooper. The session will cover 3 topics: Clustered Data OnTAP with vSphere 5.1 and XenDesktop 7.1 CVD, $35 dollar per desktop Citrix ready VDI capacity program and NetApp flash technology – All Flash FAS8000.

We also have some great breakout sessions planned that will go deeper into the technology:

• “How to Build a Standardized Cloud Architecture with XenDesktop and NetApp Storage”
• “How to Best Utilize Citrix ShareFile on NetApp”

Finally, here’s a sneak peak at our booth mini-theatre sessions:

• “NetApp All-Flash Offering for VDI, Delivering Better Performance Than a Desktop with Enterprise Availability and DR for Your Apps and Data”
• “$37/Desktop for Storage: Citrix Ready Architecture for 750 XenDesktop Users, Part of the Citrix Readiness Capacity Program”
• “Storage Sizing for XenDesktop”
• “FlexPod Datacenter with XenDesktop 7.1 on vSphere”

Come by booth 201 to see our demos, meet executives, talk to customers, and mingle with technical experts.

I am looking forward to seeing you in Anaheim.

Citrix Ready VDI Capacity Program 

Citrix Ready has created an opportunity for storage partners representing several different VDI storage options to plug their storage solutions into a turnkey “VDI Capacity” test environment located in our Santa Clara, CA solutions lab. This program was created with two goals in mind:

•   Meet a defined VDI storage workload without reaching storage latency thresholds
•   Do so with a cost- effective design

As part of this Citrix program, NetApp joined Citrix at their Solutions Lab in early 2014 to stress test a NetApp FAS2240-2 hybrid storage array. The stress testing took place against a 750 seat desktop virtualization environment based on Citrix XenDesktop 7.1. The end goal was to prove NetApp can deliver a storage solution at a very economical end user storage cost of $37 per desktop.

What’s included?

–NetApp Storage HW (FAS2240-2)

–24 internal HDDs(600GB SAS, 10k RPM)

–NetApp SW licenses (iSCSI and CIFS)

–36 months, NetApp 24×7 premium support, w/ 4 hour parts replacement

 Storage Architecture

The NetApp FAS2240-2 was completely configured and setup in under two hours. Below is an outline of the entire NetApp storage solution configuration.

• NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP® 8.2 operating system
• Dual controllers with active/standby configuration. This configuration ensured high IOPS for boot, login, and steady state operations as well as consistent high performance for end users in case one storage controller fails
• Each controller has 2 10GbE ports and x FC ports that can be used for data and cluster interconnect. For this test setup, each controller was configured with:
  • 1 x 10GbE Cluster inter-connect for HA
  • 1 x 10GbE iSCSI Data Logical Interface (LIF) per controller with LIF migration established for HA
  • Jumbo Frames were not used for the iSCSI Data LIFs in this test scenario
• The 24 HDDs were configured as such:
  • Active Controller:
    • 16+2 RAID DP® configured for the main data Aggregate (16 data drives and 2 for parity) hosting the virtual machines
    • 1+1 RAID 4 for the root Data ONTAP® Aggregate
    • 1 Spare Drive
  • Standby Controller:
    • 1+2 RAID DP® for the root Data ONTAP® Aggregate
• The storage was configured with a single iSCSI clustered Data ONTAP® storage virtual machine (SVM) for hosting the virtual desktops as well as a single SVM for CIFS shares to host user data.
  • iSCSI Virtual Server contained 1 x 11TB Volume
    • 11 x 1TB LUNs created for PVS Write Cache
    • Each LUN was attached to a unique Hyper-V host which contained 85 virtual desktops booting from Citrix PVS.
  • CIFS Virtual server contained 1 x 22TB Volume
    • 1 x 22TB share created for user data

Test results:

• Boot and Login Storms
  • 935 users boot and login < than 20 minutes
• Steady state
  • 750 users, VSI Max NOT  reached during test

The environment could have supported around 800 virtual desktops.

For customers looking for an efficient, scalable, and resilient XenDesktop deployment under 1000 seats, the NetAppFAS2240-2 based storage solution excels at providing substantial performance, density and scalability at a very affordable $37/desktop. Through this Citrix Ready validation program, NetApp has demonstrated the ability to deliver a cost effective virtual desktop that provides a better user experience without impacting overall performance, scalability, or manageability. With the capability to run 750 desktops from a 2 rack unit hybrid storage array and the ability to scale without disruption to operations, this solution can be used by both small businesses and large enterprises. NetApp provides an outstanding solution for your desktop virtualization needs.