What is all this talk about VDI?
VDI is a virtual desktop infrastructure designed to provision desktops as a service to the end user. The desktops are stored in the datacenter typically using a Host – Shared Storage scenario. End Users can connect to these Virtual Desktops using Hardware thin/zero client endpoints or a variety of software clients on PC, Mac, iOS, or Android. You can do a P2V for existing machines or build out “Pools” of desktops for specific use cases or by departments.
VMware’s VDI solution is called Horizon View, which is now part of the Horizon Suite. There are various components that make up Horizon View, I’m not going to go into that here because we are focusing primarily on VDI performance. I’ve included a diagram of what a typical VDI environment would look like.
Our company made the decision to deploy VMware’s VDI solution Horizon View (as of 5.2) about 18 months ago. The adoption rate has been incredible, we began with a small test group of 15 users, mainly administrative, task workers and some advanced workers. Our test group rapidly became our production group as we went from 15 to over 100 in less than 6 months.
Fast forward to today and we have almost 200 desktops deployed on View and there isn’t any sign of us slowing down, we have about 80% of our staff on VDI and the other remaining users begging for the “black box”. They just flip out when they can swtich from a Zero Client station to their iPad to a conference room and back again!
With fast growth comes scaling problems, and we have encountered our fair share of them. First it was battery backup, then it was inadequate cooling, now it is performance. VMware has some great articles about industry Best Practices when deploying View, but there is much more information out there, some from VMware and not.
My goal is to lay out the hurdles that we have overcome with VDI performance, the lessons I’ve learned and what we are planning on doing in the future.
Part 2 – PCoIP Best Practices
Part 3 – Persistent vs Non-Persistent
Part 4 – Storage
Part 5 – End User Experience
Part 6 – Wrap Up and What’s Next
Look for the 6 Parts over the next several weeks.
