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Atlantis HyperScale VDI Reference Architecture with

Citrix XenDesktop

atlantiscomputing.com

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Citrix XenDesktop Reference Architecture with Atlantis HyperScale

Atlantis HyperScale | Citrix XenDesktop

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Solution Overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Why use Atlantis HyperScale for VDI? ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Atlantis HyperScale Benefits ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

All-Flash Performance ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Disruptive Costs .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Freedom of Choice .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Modular Scalability ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Atlantis HyperScale Enterprise-Class Data Services ................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Reduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

IO Acceleration ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Management .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Data Mobility .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Data Protection ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Unified Storage ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Disk Capacity with Atlantis HyperScale ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Testing Methodology ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9

VMware vSphere and vCenter ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Atlantis HyperScale .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Desktop Broker .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Workloads and Login VSI Configuration .................................................................................................................................................................. 10

Provisioning Methodology ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Virtual Desktop Configuration ................................................................................................................................................................................. 10

Test Environment Overview .................................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Benchmarking Tools ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 13

Login VSI v4.1.3 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

Iometer ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

PassMark Performance Test 8.0 .................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Test Results ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

Test Results Summary ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 14

VSIMax Login Test.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Login VSI HA Test ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18

Iometer Test ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 20

Passmark Performance Test .................................................................................................................................................................................... 21

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 22

About the Authors ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 23

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Executive Summary

Virtual desktops have tremendous benefits in terms of mobility, employee productivity and security. However, user experience, the infrastructure cost and complexity are the three key challenges facing IT organization deploying VDI. Atlantis HyperScale provides the server, storage and virtualized infrastructure required to achieve a better-than-PC user experience at a cost per desktop under $200 with the simplicity of a turnkey appliance that can be deployed in 20 minutes.

With Atlantis HyperScale, IT can quickly deploy up to 600 Login VSI Knowledge Worker virtual desktops with all the storage and compute required on a single 4-node appliance. These desktops have the disk performance of a MacBooks or Ultrabooks that come with a dedicated local SSD but cost less than $200 per desktop in infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking. This sets a new VDI value standard, allowing a virtual desktop to be deployed at a lower initial cost than physical PCs. Atlantis HyperScale also offers freedom of choice for server vendor, having defined appliance platforms based on 4 leading suppliers: Cisco, HP, Lenovo, and SuperMicro.

In this reference architecture document, Atlantis provides detailed test results including Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer benchmarks to test system scalability, performance and availability. In addition, Atlantis provides recommendations on Atlantis HyperScale appliance models and density for specific stateless and persistent VDI scenarios. The Atlantis HyperScale high availability and data protection enabled 3 of the 4 nodes to continue running without disruption to the storage system. As part of the testing, Atlantis also performed resiliency tests to provide detailed densities of desktops that will be able to continue running during a hardware failure.

Altantis HyperScale with Citrix XenDesktop

Characterist ic Result

Cost Under $200 per VDI desktop

Density 600 Desktops per appliance

Performance Login VSI baseline of 857ms with a Login VSI average 1089 (VSIMax Not Reached)

Availability Quick recovery from single node failure

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Introduction

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is one of the fastest growing markets in the IT industry. IT departments are getting pushed to virtualize their desktop users to take advantage of centralized management, mobility, and security benefits. With the success of initial VDI projects and the diversity of the desktop user community, the requirements for virtual desktop performance better than physical PC is becoming a consistent IT requirement. IT departments are faced with the demands to virtualize desktops that can provide a user experience as good as or better than a consumer devices such as Macbooks or Ultrabooks that come with a dedicated local SSD.

Delivering a better-than-PC user experience is challenging from a storage perspective, especially when attempting to deliver the thousands of IOPS available from a PC’s local SSD. To meet these challenges, Atlantis Computing® has provided a storage architecture to meet the VDI performance requirements at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage solutions. The Atlantis USX® architecture allows IT departments to meet performance and cost requirements by providing nearly unlimited IOPS per desktop and 50GB per virtual desktop of storage for over 600 persistent virtual desktops using a single 4-node Atlantis HyperScale hyper-converged appliance. For more than 600 users, IT organizations can scale out multiple appliances to deliver predictable performance and cost per desktop.

Atlantis HyperScale is a hyper-converged appliance based on Atlantis USX software-defined storage technology that can host virtual desktops with better performance than physical PC and reduce storage requirements by up to 95% in virtual desktop environments of all types. The key is Atlantis HyperDup content-aware data services, which provide inline deduplication, compression and IO acceleration using memory. The results is more a better user experience in the form of faster boot times, application launches and searches, while as the same time driving down the cost per desktop to below a PC cost.

Atlantis designed a test plan to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of the HyperScale appliance using a combination of industry standard benchmarking tools such as Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer.

The environment was tested with the following configuration:

• 600+ concurrent persistent virtual desktops running simulated desktop workloads generated by Login VSI v4.1

• 1 Atlantis HyperScale appliance (4 nodes) running with Citrix XenDesktop 7.6

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Solution Overview

Why use Atlantis HyperScale for VDI?

Atlantis HyperScale is an all-flash, hyper-converged appliance that provides all the compute, storage and networking you need to deploy VDI, delivering higher performance and lower cost desktops than traditional PCs. Instead of piecing together costly and complex SAN, NAS or all-flash array storage with servers, Atlantis HyperScale is a low-footprint, fully integrated compute and storage solution that comes preconfigured with Citrix or VMware hypervisors. Within 60 minutes, a simple configuration process sets up the required infrastructure to deploy more than 600 virtual desktops per appliance. Atlantis HyperScale is easily scalable and runs on your preferred hardware platform, minimizing data center complexity. Also, the appliances come with a single point of support and maintenance with 3 year, 24x7x365 coverage and 4 hours parts replacement.

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Atlantis HyperScale Benefits

All-Flash Performance

Atlantis HyperScale delivers the performance of an all-flash array in every appliance, enabling IT organizations to meet the performance requirements of any workload. Atlantis HyperScale features award-winning patented software-defined storage technology that performs in-memory in-line deduplication before data is written to storage, leading to extremely low latencies, high IOPS and lower storage network traffic.

Disruptive Costs

Atlantis HyperScale hyper-converged appliances cut datacenter infrastructure costs by 50-90%, while delivering All-Flash performance. Atlantis reduces costs by using its patented data reduction and IO acceleration technology to reduce the amount of physical RAM and local flash required per TB of storage capacity. Based on industry-standard x86 server hardware, Atlantis HyperScale eliminates the need for expensive proprietary hardware or multiple tiers of flash and hard drives required by other hyper-converged appliances.

Freedom of Choice

Atlantis HyperScale gives enterprises the freedom to use their preferred server and hypervisor platforms, eliminating complexity and additional investments in training, time and tools. This enables customers to simplify their datacenters and prevent vendor lock-in. Atlantis HyperScale is the only hyper-converged appliance available on four leading server platforms and multiple hypervisors.

More information on each server platform is available on the Atlantis website:

Modular Scalability

Instead of buying large and expensive storage arrays that have limited performance, Atlantis HyperScale enables enterprises to scale storage in small modular units as they grow their compute resources. Atlantis HyperScale delivers the performance of an all-flash array in every appliance with 12 or 24 TB of capacity, enabling customers to scale-out performance and capacity to meet any application requirement.

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

Specifications

Data Sheet

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_HP.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_HP.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Cisco.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Cisco.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Lenovo.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_Lenovo.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_SuperMicro.aspx

https://portal.atlantiscomputing.com/documents/solution-briefs/Atlantis_SS_HyperScale_CX12-24_SuperMicro.aspx

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Atlantis HyperScale Enterprise-Class Data Services

Data Reduction

Atlantis HyperScale provides patented, real-time, in-line deduplication, compression and thin provisioning to reduce the capacity required to store data by up to 90%. The Atlantis HyperScale Storage Guarantee ensures that customers receive at least 70% data reduction.

IO Acceleration

Atlantis HyperScale process IO in-memory before writing to its primary storage tier of local flash. This in-memory storage technology accelerates storage by minimizing the data that must traverse the network and be serviced by flash.

Data Management

Atlantis HyperScale automates the tiering of data between memory and local flash to simplify data management. In additional, Atlantis HyperScale features Fast Clone™, providing the capability to instantly provision full clone VMs in seconds without consuming additional storage capacity.

Data Mobility

Atlantis HyperScale provides intelligent volume-to-volume rapid migration of files and VMs through a unique, patent-pending, capability called Teleport™. An industry first, Teleport moves data between two virtual volumes by reconstructing the data on the target volume from existing duplicate blocks, enabling VMs to be moved between volumes in a matter of seconds even across low-bandwidth high-latency connections.

Data Protection

Atlantis HyperScale has integrated High Availability and data protection capabilities that are highly resilient and can sustain a drive failure, node failure or any individual component of the storage system. Atlantis HyperScale is pre-configured with volume-level high availability and data protection that allows for one of four nodes in the appliance to fail without affecting the datastores on the system. Even if the entire appliance loses power, all data is protected and consistent with a journaled file system. With Atlantis HyperScale appliance that feature high-endurance Intel Flash (10 drive writes per day), the reduced amount of data written to local flash provides better storage media endurance than other hyper-converged appliances.

Unified Storage

Atlantis HyperScale enables customer to create both file and block based storage volumes exported as NFS or iSCSI datastores in the hypervisor.

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Disk Capacity with Atlantis HyperScale

We tested 600 Knowledge Worker virtual desktops, which would normally require 30TB of storage capacity in total. When deploying desktop workloads on the Atlantis HyperScale, we observed only 238 GB of physical storage consumed, representing over 99% data capacity reduction. The HyperScale CX-12 appliance provides 12TB of effective all-flash storage capacity based on a 70% data reduction storage guarantee, delivering much more storage capacity than the test environment required. However, in real world VDI deployment scenarios, data reduction rates may vary with an average between 80-90%.

The highest rate of data reduction (typically 85-90%) is expected for stateless desktops, so we can recommend the HyperScale CX-12 appliance for that scenario. For persistent desktops, more unique data is typical, resulting in an 80-85% data reduction rate, requiring the HyperScale CX-24 to provide all the storage required for 600+ 50GB knowledge worker desktops. Please see the table below for more information.

VDI Desktops and Appl iance Recommendat ions

HyperScale Appliance Desktop

Type User Profi le

Expected Deduplicat ion

Max. Number of Desktops

HyperScale CX-12 (384 GB RAM) Stateless Any 85%+ 600

HyperScale CX-24 (384 GB RAM) Persistent Knowledge Worker 80-85% 600

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Testing Methodology

A series of various tests were conducted to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of Atlantis HyperScale for VDI workloads. These tests were designed to replicate recommended configurations for production environments instead of pushing the system to its breaking point.

For the first phase of the test, the Login VSI Testing Solution was used to evaluate expected server performance for scaling and sizing a virtual desktop environment. This test focused on leveraging persistent desktops showcasing an increase in system performance and stability, while dramatically reducing storage costs. During this test, system metrics including CPU, memory, and disk performance and size were measured to validate the performance, scalability and reliability of Atlantis HyperScale when used as the infrastructure for VDI deployments.

The second phase was conducted to demonstrate the raw standalone storage performance that Atlantis HyperScale provides, leveraging Iometer and Passmark configured to simulate VDI workloads. These test demonstrate the overall disk performance provided by Atlantis HyperScale.

VMware vSphere and vCenter

VMware vSphere 5.5 Update 2 was installed on all 4 nodes hosting the VDI desktops. vCenter 5.5 was also used to manage all four hosts and was installed on a separate infrastructure server. Performance metrics for the vCenter server were not measured for this test. At the time of this writing, XenDesktop 7.6’s highest vSphere support is 5.5 Update 2 and was the primary driving factor for leveraging this version to conduct the tests. vCenter DRS capabilities were not leveraged during the test, however vCenter HA capabilities were used for conducing the HA test. VMware tools were installed into each VM, and no additional performance optimizations were performed than the default configurations for vCenter, vSphere, and the VMs.

Atlantis HyperScale

Atlantis HyperScale is a turnkey appliance that is pre-installed and configured with a hypervisor and Atlantis USX storage volumes. When the customers receives the Atlantis HyperScale appliance, a simple installation wizard guides they through the process of entering system, networking and configuration information to finalize the setup of the hyper-converged infrastructure. Detailed configuration is provided below. Four service VMs are pre-installed along with four volume VMs. While only three of each are necessary for functionality, the goal of these tests were to simulate a production environment that would incorporate High Availability with the resiliency than enables one of the four nodes to fail without disruption to the system.

Atlantis HyperScale comes preconfigured with three storage volumes. These three volumes provide a guaranteed effective storage capacity of 12TB, assuming the conservative 70% deduplication percentage estimate. When deduplication rates are above 70%, customer can take advantage of the additional storage capacity.

Desktop Broker

For this test, XenDesktop 7.6 was used to broker the Login VSI launcher machines to their respective desktop session. The XenDesktop Delivery Controller, StoreFront, and Citrix Licensing server were all installed on a single node. The XenDesktop 7.6 database was configured on a separate VM running SQL Express 2014. For the purposes of this test, no metrics were measured regarding the broker or database server’s resource consumption. There were no session policies configured on the Delivery Controller for XenDesktop, therefore all connections were established leveraging the default standard configuration from Citrix with no additional optimizations.

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Workloads and Login VSI Configuration

The Login VSI 4.1.3 Knowledge Worker workload was used to conduct the tests. The VMs were balanced across each of the servers, keeping a consistent number of VMs on each node.

For the Login VSI Max test, 40 Login VSI launchers were used, launching approximately 15 sessions per host. The Login VSI launcher was configured to launch a new session every 20 seconds via the XenDesktop StoreFront and Controller components. All VDI desktops were powered on, registered, and idle prior to beginning the test.

For the High Availability test, 40 Login VSI launchers were used as well, launching approximately 13 sessions per host. This test also was configured to launch a new session every 20 seconds via XenDesktop. Once all the VDI desktops were logged in, the fourth node was powered off to simulate a node failure event. This caused VMware vCenter to recognize the VMs were in a failed state, and vCenter proceeded to automatically power on the virtual desktops on the remaining three nodes. This test allowed for observing the behavior in the event of a failed node.

Provisioning Methodology

Three VM templates were created and placed on each one of the preinstalled volumes. Scripts were then leveraged to automate the provisioning and cloning of these templates into their respective HyperScale volumes. In addition, the scripts would inject the computer name while adding the machine to the domain at first boot leveraging the Atlantis agent installed into the OS of the VM template. Each machine was booted and staged prior to the VSI Login tests to prevent any additional IO that would already be performed in a traditional production environment. Machines were then added to the XenDesktop Delivery Controller via CSV files associating the VDI VM with the AD computer account.

Virtual Desktop Configuration

The virtual desktops were persistent images installed with Windows 7 (64-bit) and Office 2007. Other miscellaneous software required to run the Login VSI 4.1.3 test were also installed. Each desktop VM’s attached disk running Windows was placed onto one of three available Atlantis HyperScale volumes (default Atlantis HyperScale configuration). The Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 VDA was installed without the desktop optimizations being used and no additional optimizations were performed. More detailed VDI VM configuration information can be viewed below.

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Test Environment Overview

Software Components

C o m p o n en t D es c r i p t io n

VDI Broker and Client Citrix XenDesktop 7.6

Hypervisor VMware ESXi 5.5 U2

Atlantis HyperScale Atlantis USX 2.2.1.38

Benchmarking/Load Gen. Login VSI 4.1.3

Hardware Components – 4 Nodes Tota l

C o m p o n en t Q u a n t i t y D es cr ip t io n

Processor (Per Node) 2 Intel Xeon 12C E5-2680v3 120W 2.5GHz/2133MHz/30MB (12 cores/socket)

Networking (Per Node) 1 Dual Port - Emulex VFA5 ML2 10GbE SFP+ Adapter

Networking (Per Node) 1 Quad Port - BCM5719 Broadcom RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet 1000BASE-T

RAM (Per Node) 384GB 16GB TruDDR4 (2 Rx4, 1.2V) PC4-17000 CL15 2133MHz (x24 modules)

Disk (Per Node) 1.2TB Intel S3700 400GB SATA 2.5” MLC G3HS Enterprise SSD (x3 drives)

Effective Capacity 12TB Atlantis HyperScale appliance effective capacity

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VDI VM Conf igurat ion


Operating System X Windows 7 SP1 – 64-bit

vCPU 2 2 virtual sockets, 1 core per socket

Networking 1 1GB – Management Network

RAM 2GB

Disk 40GB VM disk stored on the Atlantis HyperScale Volumes

Atlant is USX Manager - Update


vCPU 2 2 virtual sockets, 1 core per socket

Networking 1 1GB - Management Network

RAM 6GB

Disk 22GB Disk stored local SSD

Atlant is HyperScale Serv ice VM Conf igurat ion


vCPU 1 1 core reserved, 3 additional allocated

Networking 2 10GbE SFP+ NIC, (Storage Network) 1Gb (Management Network)

RAM 10GB

Disk 10GB

VM disk on local SSD, Second disk size based on storage remaining

Atlant is HyperScale Volume Configurat ion


vCPU 1 1 core reserved, 3 additional allocated

Networking 2 10GbE SFP+ NIC, (Storage Network) 1Gb (Management Network)

RAM 73GB

Disk 10GB VM Disk stored on local SSD

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Benchmarking Tools

Login VSI v4.1.3

Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) is the de-facto industry standard benchmarking tool to test the performance and scalability of centralized Windows desktop environments like Server Based Computing (SBC) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI). Login VSI is 100% vendor independent and is used to test virtual desktop environments like Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft VDI and Remote Desktop Services, VMware Horizon or any other Windows based SBC or VDI architecture.

Login VSI is also the standard tool used in all tests that are executed in the internationally acclaimed Project Virtual Reality Check (www.projectvrc.com).

For more information about Login VSI, or a free test license, visit www.Login VSI.com

Iometer

Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behavior of applications. In this test, Iometer was configured to simulate a VDI workload and determine the maximum available IOPS of Atlantis HyperScale environment. The VDI workload tested was configured to be 80% write, 20% read and 80% random with a 4K block size using a 20GB test file. A virtual machine with Iometer was run with this test profile determine the maximum available IOPS for Atlantis HyperScale Solution.

For more information on how to use Iometer to test desktop workload, visit:

http://blog.atlantiscomputing.com/2013/08/how-to-use-iometer-to-simulate-a-desktop-workload/

PassMark Performance Test 8.0

Performance Test is a benchmarking tool designed to measure the performance of physical PCs. Using the test, virtual desktop disk performance can be compared with hard drives of different types of physical PCs that have been previously benchmarked by individuals and uploaded to the PassMark database. The Performance Test Disk Mark test measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. For comparison purposes, a MacBook Air with an Apple SSD was selected as well as a few various server disks.

http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

http://www.loginvsi.com/

http://www.projectvrc.com/

http://www.loginvsi.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input/output

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsystem

http://blog.atlantiscomputing.com/2013/08/how-to-use-iometer-to-simulate-a-desktop-workload/



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Test Results

Test Results Summary

The tables below provide a summary of the results achieved based on the various testing methods that were used to demonstrate the performance of Atlantis HyperScale. A more in depth analysis is provided in the testing sections to explain how these results were achieved.

Phase 1 Test Resul ts ( Per Node Average)

T es t V S I M a x C P U

U t i l i z a t io n A ct iv e

M em o ry D i s k L a te n c y

Login VSI - Login Test 600* 53% 147GB 0.017ms

Login VSI - HA Test 500* 52% 108GB 0.218ms

*VSIMax not reached with availability for additional capacity

Phase 2 Test Resul ts

T es t Res u l t s

Iometer 171,715

Passmark Disk Score 5,227

Deduplication Rate 99%

Physical Storage Consumed for 600 VMs 238GB

VSIMax Login Test

Two separate Login VSI tests were conducted to determine the scalability and resiliency of the environment. The goal of the first test was to determine the VSIMax number of users that could be achieved across the four hosts. VSIMax is a number that indicates the maximum number of virtual desktops that can be used on a host before the available resources are saturated. Typically, a bottleneck occurs between the CPU, memory, or disk IO before all of these resources are consumed simultaneously. The Login VSI Testing Solution measures this by determining the response time of the virtual machines on each host as more VMs are logged in and running the desired workload. When the response time threshold is exceeded, this will indicate the maximum number of VMs that can be leveraged before user experience begins to suffer dramatically.

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Figure 1: VSIMax Knowledge Worker Test Results

Based on the findings, a conclusion was determined that although the VSIMax was not reached, system performance was at a significant level of saturation based on CPU utilization. Any additional workloads beyond this number may begin to impact user experience, especially considering that VDI workloads may periodically spike CPU utilization depending on user activities. Also, previous tests with significantly higher numbers of launched desktop sessions resulted in lower VSIMax scores than what was achieved in the test illustrated above. Overall, the test showed that 608 knowledge worker virtual desktop can be run on an Atlantis HyperScale CX-12 appliance, achieving significant density while still providing a great user experience. The average response time with Atlantis HyperScale was 1089ms, indicating an excellent user experience.

Figure 2: CPU Utilization During VSIMax Knowledge Worker Test

CPU utilization showed a steady incline as the test proceeded and additional users were logged in. The average peak CPU utilization per server across all four host reached 92% before observing a steep decline as users were logged off. The graph below shows all four hosts CPUs during the course of the test and based on the 150 desktops that were achieved on each of the four hosts, this resulted in approximately 6.25 users per CPU core leveraging the knowledge worker workload.

Memory findings showed that although most of the available memory was committed on the host, active memory was considerably less. Therefore, while the virtual machines would request to allocate memory at near capacity of the machine, only a minor portion was actually in use by the VMs. More specifically, active memory averaged 141GB per node while consumed memory averaged around 350GB per node.

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Figure 3: Memory Consumption

Disk latency was never a performance factor during this test. Due to the 171,715 IOPS made available of when leveraging the Atlantis HyperScale platform, the disk esentially never entered a queue state, always being available to write I/O on demand as required. The graph below shows a few spikes periodically during the test with the highest being 1ms and averaging 0.017ms.

Kil

obyte

s

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Figure 4: I/O Latency

The observed low latency is primarily due to the data deduplication technology that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides to the virtual machines. With traditional storage systems, heavy I/O requests can be queued causing poor system performance and a bad user experience. With Atlantis’s deduplication technology, the majority of these requests are eliminated, reducing I/O requirements while boosting performance and the user’s experience of the desktop. The graph below indicates the amount of deduplication that Atlantis is providing for this test. While 99% deduplication is unlikely in production, it illustrates the level of capability Atlantis HyperScale has to inspect and remove any duplicate I/O. In this scenario, since all the VMs in this environment are using a nearly identical image, the deduplication number is extremely efficient. Still, in a typical VDI scenario the Atlantis HyperScale platform is able to perform deduplication at a very high rate of percentage. Storage also can be a big concern when implementing persistent desktops as well. As previously indicated, each desktop was configured to leverage a 40GB image across the three storage volumes provided by Atlantis HyperScale. While typically this would equal 24TB of required storage space, all 600 desktops are only using approximately 238GB of storage due to the data deduplication and compression technology that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides.

Figure 5: Atlantis USX Console

Mil

lise

conds

Kbps

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Login VSI HA Test

This test was conducted to provide visibility into the effects of experiencing a failure of a single host in this environment. For customers who need to be able to sustain a node failure with 100% concurrent desktop usage, the deployment can be sized for 500 desktops on the same single Atlantis HyperScale appliance. To test this scenario, 500 desktops were provisioned and distributed evenly across four hosts before beginning the Login VSI test. After all desktops were logged in with Login VSI, a host was failed to further determine the impact on each of the resources on the three remaining hosts.

Login VSILogin VSI

Figure 6: VSI Max Knowledge Worker – HA Test Results

Login VSI VMs were powered on automatically by vCenter from a powered off state after the failure. Once powered on from their failed state, the VMs returned to the login screen prompt Login VSI while the rest of the machines continued to login. The VSIMax was not reached with 500 VMs despite the additional VMs being added across the three hosts.

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Figure 7: CPU Utilization – HA Test

Similar to the previous test, CPU utilization on each node is very high. The graph shows a CPU spike on the three remaining hosts after the fourth node is failed with the highest spike in utilization observed at 98%. During the CPU spike, vCenter expeditiously powers on the failed VMs across the three remaining hosts and returns them to the steady state at the windows login prompt. This process takes about 15 minutes until the CPU recovers and returns back to a normal yet higher steady state given the additional VMs. The Login VSI test continues to run for the remaining VMs until the test completes and the CPU drops down to the original idle state prior to the test.

Figure 8: Memory Consumption – HA Test

As the CPU spiked while the machines were powered up on the remaining hosts, memory consumption went up as well. Since the desktop VM will consume significant memory during the Windows boot, active memory on the host increased until the machines reached the Windows login prompt and all services were started. As the failed virtual desktops entered their idle state, the active memory usage began to decline as represented by the downward slope above.

Kil

ob

yte

s

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Figure 9: IO Latency – HA Test

As expected, I/O request increased significantly as all failed VMs were simultaneously powered on all three remaining hosts. While the average latency was 0.2ms for the duration of the test, during the HA power off failure the highest spike observed very briefly was 9ms. Initially, this spike may appear high, however considering the VMs were working heavily on the knowledge worker workload and simultaneously powering on all the failed VMs, this exceeds performance of traditional storage environments and would have no noticeable impact on user experience.

Iometer Test

Iometer is a tool that assists in determining the amount of IOPS a machine is capable of producing, leveraging both reads and writes to the disk. In this scenario, since the disk is writing to the Atlantis HyperScale volumes, the IOPS capabilities are significantly higher than traditional storage architectures. A test was performed on one of the VDI desktops provisioned in the Login VSI test environment with the configuration explained in this previous Atlantis blogpost:

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx.

This configuration simulates a VDI desktop, given the nature of read/write ratio, non-sequential heavy workload. From the results below, the desktop reported 57,238.52 which is the total number of IOPS that this volume was able to produce. Since the Atlantis HyperScale system uses three volumes, that’s a total of 171,715.56 IOPS! If one was to take the Login VSIMax test mentioned earlier and divided the total IOPS by the 600 desktops, that’s an average of 286 write heavy IOPS per desktop. Keep in mind the ability to burst to thousands of IOPS per desktop is possible when needed as well for operations such as application launches.

Milliseco

ndsK

bps

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx

https://community.atlantiscomputing.com/blog/Atlantis/August-2013/How-to-use-Iometer-to-Simulate-a-Desktop-Workload.aspx

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Figure 10: Iometer Test Results

Passmark Performance Test

Passmark is a utility that helps compare and benchmark hardware against other devices and components on the market. Benchmarks are determined using various tests incorporated into this tool, including disk testing utilities. In order to achieve results that would be closer to a desktop or VDI workload, the default configuration was altered with the configuration as pictured and configured to run over a 60 second period:

The test resulted in a much higher score for the disk stored on the Atlantis HyperScale volume than typical spindle and flash drives below, such as the Apple SSDs, etc. Overall this test provides a good baseline to determine yet again the performance that the Atlantis HyperScale platform provides when compared to traditional storage methods.

Figure 10: PassMark Settings Panel

Figure 11: PassMark Results

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Figure 12: Disk Speed

This graph indicates the disk transfer speed that was observed while the disk was performing the test as configured above. This transfer speed is significantly higher than traditional storage systems or even local storage since we’re talking directly to the Atlantis HyperScale platform for reads and writes.

Conclusion

Atlantis HyperScale is a hyper-converged turnkey appliance, deployed in 20 minutes or less, that provides the server, storage and virtualized infrastructure required to achieve a better-than-PC user experience at a cost per persistent desktop under $200. This sets a new VDI value standard, allowing a VDI desktop to be delivered at a lower initial cost than physical PCs.

In this reference architecture document, detailed test results were provided including Login VSI, PassMark and Iometer benchmarks, testing system scalability, performance and availability. With Atlantis HyperScale, 600 Login VSI Knowledge Worker virtual desktops were able to be deployed with all the storage and compute required on a single 4-node appliance. This test environment achieved a Login VSI baseline of 857 with a Login VSI average 1089 (VSIMax Not Reached). PassMark testing revealed VDI desktop disk performance 3X that of a MacBook Air and Iometer results indicated the availability of at least 286 write-heavy IOPS per desktop with the ability to burst to thousands more. Overall, all of these results indicate a very high quality user experience across all 600 desktops.

Recommendations were also provided on Atlantis HyperScale appliance models and density for specific stateless and persistent VDI scenarios. The Atlantis HyperScale high availability and data protection enabled 3 of the 4 nodes to continue running without disruption to the storage system.

Based on this reference architecture, even the smallest IT organization will be able to easily and quickly roll out up to 600 desktops at less than $200 each using a single Atlantis HyperScale appliance with full confidence in the quality of the desktop user experience and the appliance’s ability to withstand hardware failures without significant user impact.

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About the Authors

Ron Lott, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

Twitter:@rwlott99, Skype: rwlott99

Ron is responsible for VDI solutions at Atlantis. In this role, he oversees Atlantis’ VDI industry-leading software-defined storage products, counting the largest market share growth in global storage and hyper-converged solutions for VDI and SBC according to Independent Project "Virtual Reality Check" survey. Prior to Atlantis, Ron held a number of positions at Citrix Systems, including Product Marketing for Citrix XenDesktop from its inception and launch.

Patrick Brennan, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

Twitter:@vPatrickB, Skype: patrick.brennan.atlantis

Patrick leads the development of solutions and marketing campaigns around applications and platforms such as database, exchange and analytics. Prior to Atlantis, Patrick worked at Citrix as a Sr. Solution Architect for Global Systems Integrator HP where he was responsible for architecting and developing service and product offerings related to virtualization, cloud, mobility and datacenter transformation.


Atlantis Computing U.S. Headquarters 2525 E. Charleston Road, Suite 100 Mountain View, CA 94043 PHONE: 650.917.9471 EMAIL: [email protected] TWITTER: @AtlantisSDS

Atlantis Computing European Headquarters 70 St Mary Axe London EC3A 8BE, United Kingdom PHONE: +44 2034052851 EMAIL: [email protected] TWITTER: @AtlantisSDS

© 2015 Atlantis Computing, Inc. All rights reserved. Atlantis Computing is a trademark of Atlantis Computing, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective holders.

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