Vmware View Server Requirment

jasonlightman

Hello we are looking into creating a vmware view system i am unsure how powerful i need to go. it will have 3000-4000 people but i am planing on having it generate the desktops and then delete after logging off. there shouldnt ever be more then 1000-1500 people on the system at a time. does anyone have any suggestion on what i need i need?

meadIT

With that many users, you will need more than 1 physical server, some backend storage, networking, blah, blah, blah.

Do you know how many IOPS per desktop you currently generate. IOPS are going to be your biggest bottleneck to a successful implementation. Just a quick calculation, at an average of 12 IOPS per (optimized) desktop, your storage will need to support 18000 IOPS. This will drastically increase if you are deleting and recreating the virtual desktops as people log in and out. You're probably looking at a hybrid array(s) with some SSD tiering.

Your server cluster will need 1.5 to 3 TB, yes terabytes, of RAM. Your cluster will also need around 125+ cores.

This is not a small undertaking by any means. I would suggest having a VMware Partner or at least someone with View experience to come in and design the infrastructure for you.

QHalo

meadIT wrote: »

This is not a small undertaking by any means. I would suggest having a VMware Partner or at least someone with View experience to come in and design the infrastructure for you.

Wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Get a partner to help you. Save yourself some heartache and pain if you don't know where to begin undertaking something like this.

jasonlightman

Thank you, i was just trying to get a idea for cost i would get someone in to do it

MrAgent

Its going to be expensive. As mentioned before the IOPS is really what you need to keep in mind. Look into my company's products for this.
Home :: Fusion-io

jasonlightman

what you mean by your company's product? instead of vmware view? or solution for the servers?

unclerico

+1 for Fusion IO...we are doing a View deployment as well and will be using these cards.

SteveLord

CDW is a big name and a VMWare partner and might end up doing my View deployment (a fraction of the scale of yours though.) Hope you have some money laying round. You're looking at tens of thousands of dollars a week in labor I would guess.

MrAgent: What is the sticker price on one of those entry-level drives?

MrAgent

Im honestly not sure of the base price as I dont work with sales at all. I could be wrong, but I think they may start at around 7k.

jasonlightman

Okay thank you, we were trying to put together a budget looking at vmwares site and documents i looks like i going to need around 250k

Zaits

jasonlightman wrote: »

Okay thank you, we were trying to put together a budget looking at vmwares site and documents i looks like i going to need around 250k

If your company is willing to fork over enough money to support that type of infrastructure, I highly recommend doing a Proof of Concept first and benchmark other VDI solutions like XenDesktop. I've used both products extensively and they both have pro's and con's. The best part by doing the Proof of concept you might getting better pricing if VMware or Citrix knows you are testing a competing product.

QHalo

Agreed. That kind of investment deserves looking at all the best of breed products to find the one that fits your organization. We're doing that currently from looking at XenDesktop, App-V, XenApp, Thinapp, etc. Find the solution that fits.

AlexNguyen

Zaits wrote: »

If your company is willing to fork over enough money to support that type of infrastructure, I highly recommend doing a Proof of Concept first and benchmark other VDI solutions like XenDesktop. I've used both products extensively and they both have pro's and con's. The best part by doing the Proof of concept you might getting better pricing if VMware or Citrix knows you are testing a competing product.

If you're a big company enough, the pre-sale guys from Citrix or VMware will send over their engineer to help you doing your proof of concept for free.