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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ................................................................................................................. 2
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3
Citrix XenDesktop ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Machine Creation Services (MCS) ........................................................................................................... 4
Citrix Profile Manager ............................................................................................................................... 5
Microsoft Hyper-V Server Core ................................................................................................................ 5
Dynamic Memory (SP1) ....................................................................................................................... 5
Atlantis ILIO Storage Optimization Software Overview ............................................................................ 6
Atlantis ILIO Deployment Options ........................................................................................................ 7
The Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI Solution ................................................................................................ 7
Key Benefits ......................................................................................................................................... 7
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................22
Page 1
Executive Summary
Hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
(HVD) has the potential to transform
desktop computing and modernize the
desktop experience that IT
organizations provide to their
employees, increasing productivity and
lowering desktop computing costs.
However, making the successful
transition from physical to virtual
desktops requires an understanding of
the business requirements, existing
environment, and proven reference
architectures that can be tailored to each
organization and validated in the
customer environment.
At a Glance
Reference Architecture Components
Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
Citrix Profile Manager
Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)
Microsoft Hyper-V Core 2008 R2 SP1
Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI 3.2
Test Results Summary
Cost Per Desktop
(Server + Atlantis ILIO License)
$195
140 desktops
Page 2
Introduction
Hosted Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (HVD) refers to the process of running an end-user desktop
inside a virtual machine that lives on a server in the datacenter. HVDs are only one model of
desktop virtualization that should be considered during the strategy and design phases of desktop
virtualization. Different types of workers across the enterprise have varying performance and
personalization requirements. Some require simplicity and standardization while others need high
performance or a fully personalized desktop. XenDesktop 5.6 can meet all these requirements in a
single solution with Citrix FlexCast delivery technology. Atlantis ILIO supports both Citrix
XenDesktop VDI (Hosted VDI) and XenApp (Hosted Shared) desktop virtualization solutions.
Deploying Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a multi-phased process including strategy, design
& planning, implementation and transition into operations and management of the solution. This
reference architecture provides IT organizations with a proven and tested architecture for Citrix
XenDesktop that acts as a starting point to accelerate the deployment and eliminate the operational
risks of desktop virtualization. This document includes a Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 an Atlantis ILIO
Diskless VDI 3.2 Reference Architecture for stateless (pooled) VDI deployments - a validated
virtual desktop solution with datacenter infrastructure. The goal was to design and validate a
standardized building block capable of supporting an unlimited number of virtual desktops.
Included in this document is a description of the test environment and equipment, samples of actual
test results and a detailed analysis of the cost per desktop, performance and density. Validation for
the reference architecture was performed at scale in a lab environment simulating a 140 concurrent
user virtual desktop environment building block of one server, executing a realistic desktop
workload using Login VSI. The reference architecture is designed to scale the server infrastructure
modularly using as many server building blocks as necessary to reach the desired scalability level.
With validated architectures, customers can have confidence that a virtual desktop environment can
be efficiently implemented and that it will perform as expected. The document also includes specific
information necessary for Citrix XenDesktop customers to replicate the reference architecture in
their environment.
Page 3
Citrix XenDesktop1
Citrix XenDesktop is a desktop virtualization and VDI solution that delivers a complete Windows
desktop experience as an on-demand service to any user, anywhere. Whether users are task workers,
knowledge workers, or mobile workers, XenDesktop can quickly and securely deliver individual
applications or complete desktops while providing a high-definition user experience. Citrix
XenDesktop has many different deployment models. In this reference architecture, we have used a
pooled desktop model using Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) and Profile Manager.
A user authenticates using a web interface and selects their virtual desktop. Once the user
authenticates to Web Interface, the XenDesktop Controllers manage the desktop groups by
building, starting and shutting down the desktops as required. The XenDesktop Controller will rely
on Machine Creation Services (MCS) to deliver the appropriate desktop image to the Pooled and
Dedicated desktop groups. In this reference architecture, we are testing pooled desktops (also
known as non-persistent or stateless virtual desktops).
MCS does not require additional servers; it utilizes integrated functionality built into the Microsoft
Hyper-V hypervisor. A master desktop image is created and maintained within the hypervisor pool.
The XenDesktop Controller instructs the hypervisor to create a snapshot of the base image and thin
provision new virtual machines through the built-in hypervisor functions. MCS utilizes special
functionality within the XenDesktop Controller and XenDesktop Agent (installed within the virtual
desktop image) to build unique identities for each virtual machine, which is stored within the virtual
desktops identity disk. This functionality allows each virtual desktop to be unique even though it is
using the same base image.
When the pooled desktop reboots, the differential disk is deleted and the user starts with a brand
new virtual desktop. When the base image is updated, the pooled desktop utilizes the latest snapshot
upon next reboot. In this reference architecture, a Pooled virtual desktop is used. The pooled
random mode connects a user to any available virtual desktop image randomly and then streams in
1
http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop/xd-library-wrapper.html
http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/25558-102-665162/Reference%20Architecture%20%20XenDesktop%205.pdf
2
Page 4
the user profile which contains document and settings. This is the most common option as virtual
desktops are considered disposable after each use, helping to keep a clean and consistent
environment.
3
4
http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/technologies/upm-wrapper-all-versions.html
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29554
Page 5
Atlantis ILIO Center Deployment Services provides push-button, fully automated deployment,
sizing, and configuration of multiple racks of servers for thousands of users in less than one hour.
Atlantis ILIO virtual machines are automatically created and registered as NFS data stores that are
ready to use by Citrix XenDesktop or VMware View to complete the desktop provisioning process.
Analyzing & Processing IO Traffic
Atlantis ILIO performs content-aware analyses of IO operations in real-time at the NTFS file
system and block levels. Atlantis ILIO can service all IO requests made by the virtual desktop
operating system using only software and a small amount of server RAM before writing to storage
(SAN, NAS, Local Disk, RAM). Processing most or all IO from local server RAM reduces latency
and improves the virtual desktop user experience.
Graphic above illustrates the impact of ILIO on traffic sent by hypervisor to storage for 200 desktops
Inline Deduplication
Atlantis ILIO performs inline deduplication in real-time on-the-wire before IO transactions reach
the storage fabric. With Atlantis ILIO, the storage capacity required per virtual desktop decreases by
up to 95%, enabling the storage array to support up to 20 times more desktops with the same
amount of storage capacity. The combination of ILIOs traffic processing and its Inline
deduplication technology typically results in cutting the amount of traffic sent to storage by up to
90%.
Page 6
Atlantis ILIOs approach to storage optimization converts small random blocks generated by the
Windows operating systems and hypervisors often referred to as the IO blender affect into
larger blocks of sequential IO before sending the data to NAS, SAN, DAS, flash storage or RAM.
Compression
Atlantis ILIO compresses the optimized blocks before writing them to their ultimate storage
destination. In the case of Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI, this is critical as it reduces the amount of
RAM required per desktop by approximately 50% from 1 GB per virtual desktop to 300-600MB per
desktop.
Atlantis ILIO Fast Clone
Atlantis ILIO Fast Cloning solution can create new full clones of virtual desktops in as little as 10-40
seconds per desktop, while reducing the size of virtual desktop images to 500MB. For a typical
server hosting 100 desktops, the provisioning would be completed in between 15 minutes and 1
hour. Since provisioning is performed on all servers at the same time, this equates to deploying an
unlimited number of virtual desktops in 15-60 minutes with Atlantis ILIO instead of 10 hours for
every 100 desktops with traditional VMware vSphere full clones provisioning. Unlike other storage
cloning, Atlantis ILIO Fast Clone creates new virtual desktops using its metadata rather than
copying data from storage and is as a result extremely fast
Atlantis ILIO Deployment Options
The Atlantis ILIO software virtual machine is deployed on each VDI or XenApp server on the same
hypervisor used by the virtual desktops to process storage IO traffic locally and perform inline
deduplication of virtual desktop images. Atlantis ILIO runs in a dedicated virtual machine that is
logically placed between the Virtual Desktop VMs and the storage for the Virtual Desktops. The
Atlantis ILIO VM presents an NFS or iSCSI storage interface to the Virtual Desktop VMs and
connects to either local server memory (Diskless VDI), local storage (SAS/SATA/SSDs) or shared
storage (SAN/NAS) through NFS, iSCSI or Fiber Channel.
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Software only Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI is a purpose-built solution that allows virtual
desktops to use RAM as primary storage, completely eliminating the need for storage or
SSDs. Scale-out VDI infrastructure with just servers and software.
Amazing user experience 300+ IOPS/user faster than PC user experience.
CAPEX of $195/user Keep infrastructure cost under $200 per desktop including the
server hardware, RAM and Atlantis ILIO.
Lower OPEX Enable lower operating expenses by eliminating rack space, power
consumption, cooling and repair costs, and daily operational tasks of maintaining disk-based
storage.
Automated multi-rack deployment Automatically install, size, and configure Atlantis
ILIO on hundreds of servers. Create and register NFS data stores that are then ready to use
by Citrix XenDesktop MCS/PVS to complete the provisioning process.
Complements Citrix Solutions Complements Citrix FlexCast models including pooled,
dedicated, and hosted shared with Machine Creation Services (MCS), and Provisioning
Services (PVS).
Design Approach
Designing a VDI architecture starts with establishing requirements and objectives for the VDI
deployment and then making a series of design decisions to achieve those objectives using the best
available software and hardware solutions. In this reference architecture, the objectives were to
deliver a cost-effective, high performance, scalable, secure, and resilient VDI architecture that can be
deployed quickly in order to realize the cost, security and agility benefits of desktop virtualization.
Goals
The primary goal of this reference architecture is to provide IT organizations with a validated Citrix
XenDesktop architecture that leverages the latest optimization technologies from Citrix and Atlantis
Computing to reduce storage costs and increase desktop performance at scale.
Performance and Cost
The objective was to develop a reference architecture with IO performance that is equal or better
than a physical PC with a lower cost than a physical PC.
Scalability
The objective was to develop a VDI reference architecture with server and storage infrastructure
that scales out easily to meet growing demand for thousands of users without requiring additional
storage.
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/12/23/iops/
Page 9
With Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI, the IOPS per desktop are virtually unlimited because the virtual
desktops run in server RAM, which is the fastest possible storage media. Therefore, the primary
sizing parameter for storage is to understand the amount of server memory required to store the 140
virtual machine images.
The per-VM memory requirement for Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI is dependent on the number of
virtual desktop sessions and the type of workload. The formula below approximates the memory
requirements for a medium Login VSI workload using a 13.8GB Windows 7 base image with the
desktops re-provisioned on logoff. Depending on the virtual desktop image size and memory
allocated to the virtual machine operating system, the amount of RAM required per desktop for the
Atlantis ILIO RAM disk will vary. Because all images in a pooled VDI deployment are created from
a shared base image, the time to re-provision desktops is minimal.
Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI has the option to enable or disable compression. With compression
enabled, the amount of memory consumed is approximately 50% less but it consumes slightly more
CPU cycles. Therefore, if the configuration is memory bound, it is recommended that you enable
compression to maximize density. If the architecture is CPU bound, then you should disable
compression to maximize density.
In this reference architecture, the configuration was memory bound and the Atlantis ILIO virtual
machine was configured to use compression. The sizing of the Atlantis ILIO datastore was initially
set conservatively at 64GB of RAM for Atlantis ILIO (6GB + 430MB of RAM per desktop) to store
the optimized virtual desktop images. However, Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI only used 23.4GB of
RAM (6GB + 129MB per desktop), leaving 63% of the RAM disk available at after a combined 72
hours of Login VSI workload.
For a similar base image configuration where users are re-provisioned on logoff, the RAM disk for
the Atlantis ILIO virtual machine could be sized much smaller with 48GB RAM to free up more
memory for the virtual desktops and still have more than 50% of the RAM disk available for growth.
See the Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI Administrators Guide for sizing guidelines.
Networking Design
For the reference architecture, the design used the Atlantis ILIO On-Each-Server deployment mode
with local server RAM as primary storage, which services all of the storage IO traffic for virtual
desktop images within the physical server without generating network traffic. As a result, the amount
of network traffic leaving host and traversing the network is minimal. Therefore, a 1Gb network was
selected from the VDI host servers running the virtual desktops into a switch. In this case, a 1Gb
network connection to shared storage would be sufficient as only the user profile is stored on a file
server or shared SAN/NAS storage.
Page 10
$195
140 desktops
16 seconds
6 min.
(2.5 sec. per desktop)
18GB
(129MB per desktop)
Quantity Description
VDI Server
Atlantis ILIO
140
Total Cost
Cost Per Desktop
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Benchmarking: Make the right decisions about different infrastructure options based on
tests.
Load-testing: Gain insight in the maximum capacity of your current (or future) hardware
environment.
Capacity planning: Decide exactly what infrastructure is needed to offer users an optimal
performing desktop.
Change Impact Analysis: To test and predict the performance effect of every intended
modification before its implementation.
Login VSI is the standard tool used in all tests that are executed in the internationally acclaimed
Project Virtual Reality Check (for more information visit www.projectvrc.com).
Page 12
Page 13
IOPS
In order to deliver a consistently high-performance virtual desktop experience that is equal or better
than a physical PC, virtual desktops require constant access to storage with a sufficient number of
low latency Inputs/Output operations per Second (IOPS). IOPS are the number of operations or
transactions that the storage system services per second. IOPS can be reads from the storage system
or writes to the storage system. They can also be random or sequential. The amount of IOPS a
storage system or disk can provide varies based on the type of disk, RAID level, block size,
random/sequential blocks and the workload.
The VDI workload has very different IO patterns during different stages of virtual desktop use. For
example, when you boot up a virtual machine, the IO is 80-90% reads and 10-20% writes. During
normal steady state operation of the virtual desktops when users are logged into their computers and
using applications, the inverse is true with a 80% writes and 20% reads.
The VDI workload is also highly randomized due to the IO Blender effect. When the Windows 7
operating system generates IO, it optimizes that IO so that data is read from and written to disk
sequentially, maximizing overall system performance. In VDI environments there is no direct
connection between the desktop operating system and any physical disk (with local or shared
storage). Therefore, the disks are shared amongst the virtual desktop operating systems. As a result,
the hypervisor converts sequential IO into random IO (the IO Blender effect) which decreases
storage and desktop performance and in turn reduces the effectiveness of any available storage
caching modules. With desktop virtualization, the IO blender effect is more pronounced due to the
fact that the number of desktops per physical server is much higher than server virtualization.
With Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI, the virtual desktops are stored in highly optimized local server
RAM, which provides virtually unlimited low latency IOPS.
Page 14
Key
Read IOPS
Write IOPS
Performance Monitor IOPS Chart Showing Stacked Read/Write IOPS During Boot Storm6
The boot storm of 140 virtual desktops was initiated by powering on all virtual desktops at 9:40AM
in Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). Boot Storms are the most IO
intensive part of a virtual desktop workload and are 89% reads vs. 11% writes on average. The chart
above shows the read IOPS in red and the write IOPS in blue. The 140 virtual desktops generated a
peak of 14,309 IOPS during the boot storm or 106 IOPS per desktop. Boot time is a function of
many resources including CPU, Memory, Disk and the method used by the hypervisors
management system to start the VMs. However, boot storms often overwhelm the storage system,
triggering queuing and increasing latency, and resulting in extremely long boot times and degrading
the performance of any other virtual machines sharing the same storage system during the boot
storm. Because Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI was able to handle the 14,309 IOPS locally from
memory, all 140 virtual desktops were able to boot in exactly 6 minutes (2.5 seconds per desktop).
Booting a single VM with all the other desktop running took 16 seconds. Because each server
running virtual desktops has its own Atlantis ILIO datastore, a boot storm is isolated to a single host
server and does not affect the rest of the virtual desktops.
The Performance Monitor Graph does not show the peak values in the table unless you zoom in to
see a smaller time window.
Page 15
6,070
Avg
Read/Write Max
Ratio (%)
89%
10,388
Max
Read/Write
Ratio (%)
73%
751
6,821
11%
-
3,921
14,309
27%
-
Read IOPS/VM
45
89%
77
73%
Write IOPS/VM
11%
29
27%
Total IOPS/VM
51
106
Avg
Key
Read IOPS
Write IOPS
Performance Monitor Stacked Read/Write IOPS During a Login VSI Medium Test
The Login VSI Medium test run was started at 3:58PM with new virtual desktops logging on at 30
second intervals and then automatically beginning the Login VSI Medium workload until at 5:08PM
all 140 virtual desktop were running simultaneously. In contrast to the boot storm test, you can see
that normal operation in the virtual desktops generate predominantly write IOPS (blue area) with
88% write IOPS and 12% read IOPS on average. The total IOPS during the Login VSI test run
peaked at 1,738 IOPS7. As a result of showing the entire test run, the chart above does not
graphically capture the peaks during the last 10 minutes of the Login VSI run.
The Performance Monitor Graph does not show the peak values in the table unless you zoom in to see a smaller time
frame.
Page 16
The chart below provides a snapshot of the last 10 minutes of the Login VSI test run and shows the
peaks at a more detailed level. In addition, it is important to note that the read/write ratio becomes
more write-intensive during the peak period.
Login VSI
Medium
Read IOPS
(All)
Write IOPS
(All)
Total IOPS
(All)
Avg
Avg
Read/Write Max
Ratio (%)
Max
Read/Write
Ratio (%)
57
12%
517
30%
413
88%
1,221
70%
470
1,738
Key
Read IOPS
Write IOPS
Performance Monitor Read/Write IOPS During Login VSI Final 10 Minute Peak
Page 17
18GB
(140 desktops)
Storage Consumed
Per desktop
0.129GB
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CPU Utilization
The chart below shows the CPU utilization on the host throughout the Login VSI workload. The
server used in this architecture has 12 physical CPU cores with a clock speed of 3.33GHz, which
was allocated between each of the virtual desktop (10 cores) and the Atlantis ILIO virtual machine
(2 cores). This chart shows that throughout the entire test the CPU utilization was consistently
under the 60% CPU utilization level with one spike to 79%.
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Memory Utilization
The chart below shows the available physical memory in MB on the host throughout the entire
virtual desktops lifecycle including boot, logon and steady state usage with the Login VSI workload.
The server used in this architecture has 256GB of physical memory, which was allocated between
each of the virtual desktop and the Atlantis ILIO virtual machine using Microsoft Hyper-V
Dynamic Memory. This chart shows that throughout the entire test there was at least 25GB of
unused memory headroom in the tested configuration including the amount of memory required to
store the virtual desktops images in Atlantis ILIO.
Memory Available (MB)
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Testing Configurations
Environment Overview
Citrix XenDesktop 5.6
Pooled desktops
Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)
Citrix User Profile Manager
Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 Core
Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit SP1
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2
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Server Hardware
CPU 3.33GHz Intel Xeon X5680 130W CPU/12MB CACHE/DDR3 1333MHZ
RAM 256GB RAM DDR3-1333MHz (32x8GB)
Hard Drive 2 x 146GB 15K SAS drivers in RAID 1 (used only for booting Hyper-V and
Atlantis ILIO VM, which could also be done using Boot-from-SAN with no local disks)
Networking Broadcom 5709 Dual-Port Ethernet PCIe Adapter
Hyper-V Configurations
Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 SP1 Core
Default configuration with Dynamic Memory enabled
Virtual Desktop Image and Configurations
Windows 7 SP1 32-bit
Applications required by the Login VSI medium no flash workload including Word,
Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Bullzip PDF, and 7zip
A minimum of 1GB of RAM and a Maximum of 2GB of RAM were allocated per desktop
with Hyper-V dynamic memory enabled
Atlantis ILIO Configuration Information
Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI 3.2 On-Each-Server with local server RAM as primary storage
The Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI virtual machine was allocated 6GB of RAM and 2 CPU
(default)
The Atlantis ILIO RAM Disk was configured to 58GB (18GB was used during the test)
Atlantis ILIO storage was presented back to hypervisor as using iSCSI.
Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI compression was enabled (default configuration)
Atlantis ILIO was configured to boot from Local SAS drives. However, administrators
could choose to boot from SAN to eliminate all disk requirements from the architecture.
This wouldnt change the run-time performance of Atlantis ILIO in any way.
Conclusion
This reference architecture provides IT organizations with blueprint for deploying a low cost, high
performance and highly scalable Citrix XenDesktop architecture using Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI
to ensure a user experience that is much faster than a physical PC at a cost of $195 per desktop.
Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI is the only solution in the industry to enable pooled Citrix XenDesktop
deployments without the need for traditional virtual desktop storage, which normally represents
40% to 60% of the total cost of a deployment. SSDs, SSD-based storage arrays, SAS and SATA
drives are completely eliminated from desktop virtualization deployments. Citrix XenDesktop can
now be deployed to thousands of desktops in a matter of a few hours without the cost, complexity
and risks of installing and managing storage. The flexibility in the design of the reference
architecture allows an organization to start with a single server and scale modularly as they grow.
Page 22
Acknowledgements
Citrix, Atlantis Computing and GlassHouse would like to acknowledge the following individuals for
their contributions to this reference architecture:
Citrix Systems, Inc.: David Wagner, Martin Rowan, Frank Anderson, Michael Cooper, Vishal
Ganeriwala, Patrick Carey
GlassHouse Technologies: Erwin Vollering, Jay Seaton
Atlantis Computing: Jim Moyle, Seth Knox, Mark Nijmeijer, Will Hanson
Contact Information
GlassHouse Technologies Inc.
200 Crossing Boulevard
Framingham, MA 01702
+1 508.879.5729
www.glasshouse.com
Citrix Systems
4988 Great America
Parkway
Santa Clara, CA 95054
+1 408.790.8000
www.citrix.com
www.atlantiscomputing.com
Atlantis Computing, Atlantis ILIO and Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI are trademarks of Atlantis Computing, Inc. All
other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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