The world is rapidly evolving: John sites several recent milestones
1) 2010 the year the non windows applications exceeded windows application driven by the smart phone and tablet market.
2) There are 250 million dropbox users world wide.
3) 52% of employees carry more than one device
VMware's new End-User Computing Vision is: "Software Defined Workspace at the Speed of Life"
VMware's strategy is to plan for the convergence of traditional Windows Management and Delivery, Windows on Mobile and Mobile Management and Delivery in general. In addition EUC is extending to the machine space; for example the Tesla is a smart phone you can drive. John provides the example of Tesla changing the software in order disable a certain feature related to suspension.
John mentions that AirWatch was VMware's largest acquisition to date. VMware now finds itself in the leading quadrant of mobile.
Conversations shifts to Mirage: Mirage provides several capabilities and operates on the notion of layers. Fundamentally there is an IT management layer involving the Base, Application and Driver layers. The other layer can be though of as the user layer such as the Machine identify, user profile and non IT installed applications. Typically the IT management layer is the layer that gets pushed, the user layer gets pulled.
Typically in the datacenter you have a cluster of stateless mirage servers that are load balanced. Mirage supports NAS and DASD however a production implementation requires NAS.
All the administrative work happens through the Mirage console. Mirage is flexible and allows delivery of applications through a mirage layer, SCCM or App-V for example.
Mirage Server runs on Windows Server 2008 R2 and requires a database which is a required component.
Mirage Client is a lightweight client which can be silently installed. Mirage will make use of the VSS so requires 10 GB locally for the installation; 5 GB for the install and additional space to download an initial image for example. Mirage will throttle transfers based on how active the user is on the endpoint. In the next release you will be able to turn the user throttling capability off however you should be aware that it will impact user activity.
1) There is a Max. 1500 Endpoints per server physical or virtual
2) Max 20,000 Central Virtual Desktops (CVD) per Mirage Cluster
3) Deploy N+1 Mirage Servers to avoid single points of failure
4) VMware recommends Two gigabit Ethernet on the server
Replication in a typical environment is estimated 15 kbps per endpoint and approx. 150 MB per 24 hour period. This will vary considerably from client to client.
Behind the scenes Mirage Storage is a Single Instance Store in which:
1) Mirage stores CVDs, 1000 per volume is VMware's guideline
2) File and binary (chunks) are de-duped depending on file type (Mirage is smart enough to understand database files for examples)
Each Mirage server has a Local Cache which caches endpoint synchronization data. Typically there is one per Mirage Server and 100 GB of space is recommended. This cache is dedicated per server however it only benefits data which is uploaded.
On an End User PC the following layers can fall under Mirage Management
1) User Personalization Layer
2) Machine Identity Layer
3) Mirage Application layer
4) Base Layer
5) Driver Library
All this layering is done using native Windows APIs.
When deploying Mirage, the first step in the process is to build a reference machine. To do this you would add an agent, create a good base image and then centralize it. You would put everything you expect to but in a single base layer. Traditionally this is the most static parts of the desktop image. This image is then replicated up to the datacenter.
Once we have this image we create a Base Layer by applying Base Layer Rules. Once we have applied the Base Layer rules it is considered a CVD. Once we have this we can assign or deploy the base layer to our endpoints. The easiest way to distribute this base layer is to have clean endpoints.
To distribute the base layer you create Mirage groups. You can create a dynamic group by adding rules based on naming conventions for example "vdi". Every endpoint that boots with a vanilla OS and the Mirage Agent and the acronym in the name will join this collection and receive the CVD.
Before Mirage sends any data the endpoint is analyze to ensure only the delta is sent. Mirage intelligently merges Base Layer changes into the End Point using native Windows native API. To the OS it feels like an application installation. These changes can be stacked to schedule the reboot to happen on a monthly basis.
Most endpoints today have disk encryption; as Mirage works from within the OS, Mirage does not notice the encryption unless a Windows XP to 7 Upgrade is attempted. In some cases you may have to decrypt before the upgrade however Mirage has worked with many mainstream encryption software to provide full support in addition to Microsoft Endpoint Encryption Software.
Creating Application Layers is very flexible and allows you to combine applications in a single layer or have a single application layer per application. If you create a single layer then you are testing all these interdependencies. Mirage Application layers do not provide application virtualization so to the OS the application(s) are natively installed. You can combine ThinApp and Mirage Layers to get the best of both worlds.
A Driver library is used to enable a single base layer which can be applied on multiple physical devices. Drivers are combined with the base layer to deal with different vendor desktops; HP, Dell etc.
One common use case for Mirage is for a Windows XP to 7 Migration. The first phase of this process is to push the base layer components down to the XP endpoint. Before the migration is done an optional pre-deployment snapshot is done to provide a fallback point in case. This snapshot is stored on the Mirage Server. Once that is done a reboot is done which is referred to as a "pivot". What is being done is the swapping out of the XP files with the Windows 7 OS files in addition to joining the desktop to the domain to complete the migration. The benefit of this approach is that an in-place migration is done and the end user impact is minimized. While times will vary a typical migration can take from 30 - 50 minutes.
Great information today from @VirtualStef and the team
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Monday, February 10, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
The benefit of infrastructure innovation to VMware Horizon View
Virtual Desktops are expensive to deploy from a storage perspective. With the advancements in deduplication technology the footprint of a virtual desktop deployment on storage has been dramatically reduced. The issue is no longer the cost of ‘space’ alone. Deduplication removes the ‘like’ blocks and stores just one copy and references the dependent data to reduce the amount stored. In a virtual desktop environment that consists of 100s if not 1000s of copies of a Windows desktop operating system the consolidation of storage is very high. However, the IO required for a single VM can also be high; in production VMs have been observed to require 25 – 100 IOPs per virtual desktop. While the storage footprint is small the performance requirement is extremely high. The performance footprint of a virtual desktop environment can vastly exceed the performance demanded of all but a very few high performance high demand enterprise software solutions such as Oracle, SQL and large Microsoft Exchange environments.
View Storage Accelerator
VMware has introduced several technologies that increase performance while reducing cost. VMware implemented View Storage Acceleration (VSA) which is a form of local host caching. When a virtual machine is deployed a digest file is created which references the most common blocks of the VMs operating system. In operation the digest file is used to pull the requested blocks into memory on the ESXi host. This reduces the read requests that are serviced by the storage system by introducing a host based cache.
vSphere Flash Read Cache
vSphere 5.5 introduced the capability of pooling locally installed SSDs on the vSphere hosts into a logical cache accelerator that all read intensive VMs can benefit from. The vSphere Flash Read Cache aggregates all read requests so that they are cached locally on an SSD drive vs. in memory as is the case with VSA. This creates a separate caching layer across all hosts (provided they have local SSDs installed) to accelerate performance. While not specifically designed for virtual desktop environments, it will enhance any read activity across the virtual desktop compute cluster.
View Composer, Stateless Desktops and Storage Reclaim
VMware Horizon View enables the deployment of a stateless desktop. A stateless desktop essentially redirects the writes so that the majority of the desktop is read only. A stateless desktop is a much cheaper desktop to deliver and manage operationally. This is because it is not customized to an individual user and makes use of View Composer linked clone technology. Composer enables a large number of desktops to use very little space. The decoupling between the user and desktop and use of Composer allows more flexible deployment options. Stateless desktops can make use of local Solid State Drives on the ESXi host to deploy the OS disk of the VM. The benefits have been somewhat difficult to realize though as operationally the OS disk must be recreated to reclaim unused space and reduce the size of the tree.
VMware View 5.3 introduced a reclaim process that allows this to be done automatically and to take place outside production times. This enables a linked clone tree to be deployed for an extensive period of time and reduces the manual operational process of reclaiming space. In a virtual desktop environment the predominant use of stateless desktops dramatically reduces the cost of the solution.
vSAN
VMware has entered the storage virtualization market with the release of VMware vSAN. A vSAN allows the customer to completely segregate the virtual desktop environment onto a SAN that is built using local SSD and Host Hard drives (HHDs) that are collected and presented logically as a single shared storage environment. Segregation or separation of the virtual desktop environment provides the benefit of isolating the View requirements on a distinct set of physical resources so that there is no overlap at the hypervisor or storage levels for production enterprise workloads. The benefits of this approach are many:
1. Predictive hardware performance
2. No risk of virtual desktop performance impacting general Storage performance
3. Scalable, building block approach to deployment
4. Centralized Storage through logical SAN presentation
5. Native vSphere HA enabled through point (4)
6. Reducing the cost of storage while still providing all the benefits of a SAN
The solution is based on Micro Converged Infrastructure in which a physical server with local SSDs and HHDs runs the vSphere ESXi and a storage controller as shown in figure 1. For storage controllers that support pass through, vSAN takes complete control of the SSDs and HHDs attached to the storage controller. RAID0 mode is used for storage controllers that do not support pass through . This essentially creates a single drive RAID0 set using the storage controller which requires you to manually mark the SSDs within vSphere.
VMware recently announced the bundling of vSAN as part of VMware Horizon Suite. VMware Horizon Suite includes View, Workspace and Mirage and now vSAN as well. The innovation and combination of technologies at the infrastructure layer provide additional value over and above what is incorporated into the VMware Horizon View software delivering compelling value to VMware’s customers.
Friday, December 20, 2013
How do I get to the Cloud?
It is typical for IT not to have seen much personnel or budget increases over the last number of years. However, user expectations have dramatically increased because of the consumerization of IT. The new standard in the minds of the users we service is the ‘appstore’ approach for everything. In addition most IT teams are still aligned in traditional technology silos and struggle to adopt “as a service” models.
These problems are compounded by where most IT teams spend time. It is estimated that 60 – 70% of time spent is on lights on activities, straight operations or firefighting. The remainder of time is spent on new project initiatives leaving little time for proactive strategies to adopt new service models in End User Computing (EUC) or Private or Federated Cloud. How then can we break this cycle and move the blocks forward to take advantage of Cloud?
The first step is to carve out time that does not exist. The only way to do this is to spend less time in operations by undertaking the following:
1. Categorize, Automate and Orchestrate
You have two choices on where you begin; datacenter or end user services. The decision is usually dependant on what provides greater business value to the organization at the time vs. what is the right starting point.
2. Standardize a percentage of IT as a catalog
As much as we want to believe it, not everything is unique; IT departments treat everything as custom builds when not all are. Even if this starts as a very simple catalog; office applications (EUC) or a simple two tier VM configuration (Private Cloud) the important thing is to work through the process.
3. Turn over delivery
Once you have completed step 1 and 2, enable a suitable business group to self-provision. In the initial adoption this may not be end users; it may be business or application analysts. “Get it done” as this is when you reduce time in operations. Prepare yourself as this is a learning process. It may require some training to the transition team.
Once you have achieved the first three steps you can move to higher value activities in steps 4 and 5.
4. Adopt a Virtual Datacenter
The vast majority of IT shops are virtualizing OSes, however turning your datacenter into software is a huge enabler. It allows you to thin provision a host of physical devices including networking and storage.
5. Apply Security and Policy to the Virtual Datacenter
Ensure that the virtual datacenter is more secure; software can be encrypted and encoded and policy driven. Apply these to your virtual datacenter
After turning your datacenter into software you are ready to drive efficiencies by implementing steps 6 – 8. Most people would argue that the evaluation should happen first and this is true for a business case. In the execution stage, the point of evaluating after steps 1 to 5 is that your organization has matured their understanding of the process and technology and can now take better advantage of the many options. In addition, in a large enterprise it is unlikely that a environment will be all or nothing i.e. Public vs. Private Cloud.
6. Evaluate where you are doing your computing
Once your Virtual Datacenter is secure and encrypted it can be migrated anywhere so take advantage of lower cost opportunities to run your IT services
7. Evaluate the efficiency of what you are delivering
Okay we have come a long way however the journey is not complete; evaluate whether it is more efficient for you to deliver each service internally or through a 3rd party. It is important that at this point it is an evaluation; there is one more critical step to complete before farming any in-house services.
8. Brand
You are the department who has serviced your users effectively for years; your intellectual property is the knowledge and understanding of the users and the business you do. Users should continue to come to you for all requirements even if some are being delivered through 3rd party. Ensure that the users do not see whitespace between the internal IT team and service providers you select. Your role in this new model is to be the one stop shop from a provider perspective and maintain quality control no matter how services are delivered.
We did not mention Cloud or Federation or any the terms that are loaded with promise and expectations. We have described a process that does enable Cloud adoption.
These problems are compounded by where most IT teams spend time. It is estimated that 60 – 70% of time spent is on lights on activities, straight operations or firefighting. The remainder of time is spent on new project initiatives leaving little time for proactive strategies to adopt new service models in End User Computing (EUC) or Private or Federated Cloud. How then can we break this cycle and move the blocks forward to take advantage of Cloud?
The first step is to carve out time that does not exist. The only way to do this is to spend less time in operations by undertaking the following:
1. Categorize, Automate and Orchestrate
You have two choices on where you begin; datacenter or end user services. The decision is usually dependant on what provides greater business value to the organization at the time vs. what is the right starting point.
2. Standardize a percentage of IT as a catalog
As much as we want to believe it, not everything is unique; IT departments treat everything as custom builds when not all are. Even if this starts as a very simple catalog; office applications (EUC) or a simple two tier VM configuration (Private Cloud) the important thing is to work through the process.
3. Turn over delivery
Once you have completed step 1 and 2, enable a suitable business group to self-provision. In the initial adoption this may not be end users; it may be business or application analysts. “Get it done” as this is when you reduce time in operations. Prepare yourself as this is a learning process. It may require some training to the transition team.
Once you have achieved the first three steps you can move to higher value activities in steps 4 and 5.
4. Adopt a Virtual Datacenter
The vast majority of IT shops are virtualizing OSes, however turning your datacenter into software is a huge enabler. It allows you to thin provision a host of physical devices including networking and storage.
5. Apply Security and Policy to the Virtual Datacenter
Ensure that the virtual datacenter is more secure; software can be encrypted and encoded and policy driven. Apply these to your virtual datacenter
After turning your datacenter into software you are ready to drive efficiencies by implementing steps 6 – 8. Most people would argue that the evaluation should happen first and this is true for a business case. In the execution stage, the point of evaluating after steps 1 to 5 is that your organization has matured their understanding of the process and technology and can now take better advantage of the many options. In addition, in a large enterprise it is unlikely that a environment will be all or nothing i.e. Public vs. Private Cloud.
6. Evaluate where you are doing your computing
Once your Virtual Datacenter is secure and encrypted it can be migrated anywhere so take advantage of lower cost opportunities to run your IT services
7. Evaluate the efficiency of what you are delivering
Okay we have come a long way however the journey is not complete; evaluate whether it is more efficient for you to deliver each service internally or through a 3rd party. It is important that at this point it is an evaluation; there is one more critical step to complete before farming any in-house services.
8. Brand
You are the department who has serviced your users effectively for years; your intellectual property is the knowledge and understanding of the users and the business you do. Users should continue to come to you for all requirements even if some are being delivered through 3rd party. Ensure that the users do not see whitespace between the internal IT team and service providers you select. Your role in this new model is to be the one stop shop from a provider perspective and maintain quality control no matter how services are delivered.
We did not mention Cloud or Federation or any the terms that are loaded with promise and expectations. We have described a process that does enable Cloud adoption.
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