Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Flash: Reference Architecture with VMware Horizon View

Transcription

1 Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Flash: Reference Architecture with VMware Horizon View Document Version 1.95 July 7, 2015 pivot3.com July 7,

2 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. 221 West 6 th St., Suite 750 Austin, TX Tel: Fax: General information: info@pivot3.com Sales: sales@pivot3.com Tech Support: support@pivot3.com Website: Online 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 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. pivot3.com July 7,

3 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 Design Overview The Pivot3 vstac Enterprise HCI Flash Storage Configuration Network Configuration Virtual SAN Elements Design Considerations Data Safety Hyper-Converged Functionalities Use Case Specifics VMware View Reference Architecture Components Virtual Desktops Results & Overall Expectations Performance Tests Automatic Self-Healing Benchmark Mode Conclusion First in Hyper-Convergence Pioneering Failover, RAID, & Critical Data Protection Leading-Edge Performance References Appendix A Pivot3 s Comprehensive Solution P Cubed Infrastructure Services Horizon View Elements pivot3.com July 7,

4 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.com July 7,

5 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 94% of total installed capacity effectively available for storage Pre-validated system configuration Scalable, market-leading 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 for 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 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. pivot3.com July 7,

6 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. pivot3.com July 7,

7 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 (3) drive failures or a full appliance and (1) additional drive failure Self-healing architecture LUN protection for 3 simultaneous drive failures or a full appliance failure and 1 drive 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 node 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. 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. pivot3.com July 7,

8 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 2008, 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 of 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 Flash server bought, up to 94% 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. pivot3.com July 7,

9 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 sysstems 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. pivot3.com July 7,

10 Design Overview Reference Architecture Design This Reference Architecture goal is to provide a scalable architecture for floating, non-persistent, linkedclone 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 Flash Pivot3 vstac Enterprise HCI Flash Appliances deliver both server and shared storage requirements for VMware View customers and eliminate the need for a standalone SAN. vstac Enterprise HCI Flash 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 Flash 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 Flash-based vstac Protection Groups are optimized for 16 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 Flash appliances use SSD 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 Desktop Documents Favorites Media NOTE: These folders should be located on shared network storage. Datastores and other VM resources can also be shared between Protection Groups. pivot3.com July 7,

11 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 Flash 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 Flash 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 vstac OS RAID 6e: Up to three simultaneous drive failures will not affect data Protects data in the case of an entire appliance failure and up to one drive failure 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. pivot3.com July 7,

12 Rem Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Flash with VMware View 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 Load-Balanced Performance: In a use case scenario of (3) 2U vstac Enterprise HCI Flash 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, SSD 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 Flash 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. 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 + (2) Appliances added in vstac Manager pivot3.com July 7,

13 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. 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. 3. 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. 4. Phone Home Sends support notification alerts to administrators and (optionally) Pivot3 technicians when a problem needs attention. 5. 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 three simultaneous drive failures or a complete appliance failure plus one additional drive 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. pivot3.com July 7,

14 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 Flash Appliance failure. Each vstac Enterprise HCI Flash Appliance provides CPU, memory, and storage resources for a number of virtual desktops. Therefore, the minimum configuration of three vstac Enterprise HCI Flash appliances supports a number of failover-protected virtual desktops depending on expected workload chosen during configuration. Additional vstac Enterprise HCI Flash 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. pivot3.com July 7,

15 Component VMware View Desktop Host (3) Pivot3 vstac Enterprise HCI Flash Appliances Application Configuration P Cubed Infrastructure (1) Pivot3 vstac Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance(s) Purpose/Usage Dual Intel Xeon E v3 GHz 128GB Base + 384GB upgrade = 512GB RAM VMware vsphere ESXi 5.5 or higher VMware View Desktop Client Stores: ISOs, Software, VM Templates Dual Intel Xeon E v3 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 Management Pivot3 vstac Manager or higher SNMP Alerts Server Virtualization Test Component Test Servers 1x LoginVSI Test Server Test Software LoginVSI version Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP 1, 64 bit P Cubed For vcenter Server, View Connection Manager, View Composer, and Domain Controller Physical and logical storage configuration, dynamic expansion, security access, RAID and tier setting by volume. Set traps for physical state changes within the Pivot3 vstac Protection Group VMware vcenter Server 5 Standard Purpose/Usage Windows Server 2012 R2 Running: 5 LoginVSI desktops each With LoginVSI Picture Viewer and Notepad View Client OS for characterization testing For vcenter and other VMware Horizon View 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. pivot3.com July 7,

16 Performance Tests Results & Overall Expectations Pivot3 conducted tests on concurrent VMware View non-persistent virtual desktops with three vstac Enterprise HCI Flash 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 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 v 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 % 79% 77% 7 1 GB 1 Office % 90% 101% GB 1 Knowledge % 100% 100% GB 2 Power % 133% 123% GB 2 pivot3.com July 7,

17 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 in a 4-appliance Protection Group by 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 Flash Typical Expected Workloads LoginVSI Workload VM CPU Allocated VM Memory Allocated Avg. Users Power User 2 4 GB 547 Knowledge Worker 2 2 GB 766 Office Worker 2 2 GB 850 pivot3.com July 7,

18 Pivot3 allows customers to scale by adding single servers to expand deployments. User counts scale linearly by adding single servers based on average VMs per appliance found during LoginVSI testing: Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Flash Typical Expected Users Per Appliance LoginVSI Workload VM CPU Allocated VM Memory Allocated Avg. Users per Appliance Power User 2 4 GB 137 Knowledge Worker 2 2 GB 192 Office Worker 2 2 GB 212 To determine the average number of users 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 spikes between 700 and 800 active sessions, the previous result of approximately 766 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 this number of 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) pivot3.com July 7,

19 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 Flash 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. pivot3.com July 7,

20 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 94% of existing resources available, compared to the 50% resource 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 3 disk failures simultaneously, or 1 disk 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 The Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Flash configuration achieves exceptional high performance and high density user counts. This unmatched, performant efficiency starts with choosing a vstac platform. 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 onsite trial and error attempts at integration. Thank you for choosing Pivot3. pivot3.com July 7,

21 References LoginVSI. (2015, April 13). Changes old and new workloads. Retrieved from LoginVSI Wiki: LoginVSI. (2015, April 20). LoginVSI Management Console. Retrieved from LoginVSI: LoginVSI. (2015, February 16). LoginVSI Workload Mashup. Retrieved from LoginVSI: VMware. (2010). Workload Considerations for Virtual Desktop Reference Architectures. Retrieved from VMware: VMware. (2012, September 14). Technical Papers. Retrieved from VMware: 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: pivot3.com July 7,

22 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 Flash 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. pivot3.com July 7,

23 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. pivot3.com July 7,