Virtualized Storage design: local Storage

Problem Description:

Local storage has become a growing concern in recent years in the design of virtualized architectures, where local storage costs are much lower than for Sans. Whether local storage is appropriate for your environment requires specific analysis of specific issues. This article takes only one case to help you understand the pros and cons of local storage.

Demand:

The customer runs a virtual desktop environment, currently has about 500 virtual desktops, is expected to scale up to 1000 units.

The main user of the virtual machine is the call center customer service personnel. Because all users use standardized applications, use Pooleddesktop. The virtual machine's RTO (recoverytime objective) requirement is 1 hours. This means that if a virtual machine is down, the user can reconnect to a virtual desktop within 1 hours.

The customer's budget is not large and storage devices may be aborted if they cost a lot.

Assume:

N/A

Restriction conditions:

Currently, the available capacity of the customer's shared storage does not fully meet the requirements of the Virtual Desktop project

Architectural Design Trends:

Users tend to consider low cost scenarios

Schema recommendation:

The storage type of the new virtualization platform selects the way local storage and filer are mixed. The following figure is from Abrief History of Desktop Storage architecture

HOSTDASD (host Direct Access Storage Device) also refers to ESXi host local storage.

Corporatefiler for storing application and user data

Because this case is pooled Desktop, so there is no user persona, then the San will not be used.

Other alternative options:

Fc/iscsi/nfs Storage

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Choose the reason:

1 using local storage can greatly reduce the upfront input

2 because it is pooled Desktop, the application of the virtual desktop and its operation is completely standardized. The user cannot save the settings for the personality. Assuming that a virtual desktop host is down, users can immediately connect to a virtual desktop running on another host.

Ha and vmotion are not necessary in this case.

3 Customers can use a number of processes to balance virtual desktops running on all hosts. DRS is not a necessity.

4 because the 500-1000 Virtual desktop environment is relatively easy to control. When you need to maintain the host, you can use the manual change management mode. Call center has a fixed working time for each shift and can schedule maintenance periods to inform the user of the log off before maintenance

The impact of this design decision:

1. Must have the perfect capacityplanning. Ensure local storage meets the performance and capacity requirements of virtual desktops

2. When the IOPS requirements are high, consider how SSDs can be mixed with other low cost types. Or consider flash Memory such as Fusion-io

3. The perfect change Management is a must. Because the host maintenance needs to intervene changemanagement, the labor cost of operation dimension is relatively higher.

This article comes from the "Sit Watch Cloud up" blog, please be sure to keep this source http://frankfan.blog.51cto.com/6402282/1211576

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