HPE Reference Configuration for building a VMware AlwaysOn Digital Workspace with HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers

Reference Architecture

Reference Architecture

Contents Executive summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Solution overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Solution components ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 12

Hardware ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Storage .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Software ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

Best practices and configuration guidance for the solution ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 General considerations ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 14 Storage guidance ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14 Server design and optimization ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 14

Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 Resources and additional links ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16

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Executive summary With the advent of the new digital workplace, IT managers are exploring solutions to replace legacy distributed desktops with a centralized solution enabling access anywhere and on any device. Combined with application and device management tools, user authentication, and increased security features, these centralized solutions are ideal for both on-premises and remote office environments. Indeed, for many use cases, removing both the data and the application from the client device and enabling remote access from the safety of a data center is the only method to achieve the desired business outcome and remain true to compliance mandates.

Long-term success, however, is largely dictated by how resilient the solution proves to be. With end-user dependency shifting to a centralized environment, any prolonged outage could have significant business impact. Simply put, system downtime is unacceptable.

This Reference Configuration lays out an approach to architecting a highly available, active/active end-user computing solution that is built on HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers, HPE StoreVirtual VSA, HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SAN, VMware® Horizon 7 Enterprise Edition, and VMware’s Cloud Pod Architecture utilizing VMware’s AlwaysOn Digital Workspace solution. As a multi-site disaster recovery solution, end users can expect to maintain secure, reliable access to virtualized applications and desktops; and IT managers who are interested in moving to a virtualized environment, but concerned about uptime metrics, can:

• Modernize desktop services with HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers and VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise Edition in order to create a secure, anywhere, any device centralized application and desktop delivery architecture

• Ensure continuous resource and data availability across both clusters and instances with HPE StoreVirtual storage

• Provide secure, local remote user access and authentication to resources with VMware Identity Manager

• Improve data control and enhance data loss prevention by removing data from the client and safeguarding it within the data center

This document is based on VMware’s AlwaysOn Design and Cloud Pod Architecture and highlights how the architecture is built with HPE servers and storage running VMware vSphere and VMware Horizon 7. The AlwaysOn design delivers:

• Resilience within management and end-user VM clusters as well as across sites

• Automatic failover for individual servers as well as instances of management software within the solution stack

• Ability to connect to end-user resources involving VMware Instant Clones, App Volumes and hosted Microsoft® Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) Linked Clones during an instance failure

• Ability to host a multi-site cluster that replicates data across instances

Target audience: This document is intended for IT decision makers and other technology professionals who require a highly available and fault tolerant multi-site design that can be used to deliver a variety of experiences to end users. The reader should understand desktop and application virtualization, including infrastructure elements such as VMware vSphere, shared storage, networking, load balancing and user authentication mechanisms.

Document purpose: This document discusses a resilient architecture for VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise Edition on Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers and storage. The design highlights VMware’s Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) and AlwaysOn Design which combine to offer a repeatable and highly scalable set of end-user resources that can easily be adapted to specific environments and requirements.

Introduction Client virtualization is now a mature and well understood set of technologies that enable IT to deliver a secure and performant experience to a variety of devices while meeting the needs of the business. What started as a loose collection of methods for securing user data in the data center and gaining greater control over images and devices has morphed into an integrated suite of solutions that presents a unified digital workspace that can be made available wherever, whenever and to what devices IT chooses.

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Today, end-user computing solutions that are driving the move to a digital workspace are able to deliver on the performance expectations for all end-user types; from the simplest task based roles to high-end graphics users that require workstation levels of performance and visualization. Figure 1 below is an overview of the current user landscape.

Figure 1. The graphic above shows client virtualization technology landscape as it exists today

Moreover, the suite of applications powering these environments has matured enabling highly customizable configurations with support for a wide variety of end-user client devices, access preferences, management methods, and security tools. However, despite the fact that many of the traditional issues associated with delivering end-user experiences have been addressed, maintaining consistent resource availability after moving to a centralized architecture remains a concern. This document addresses questions on how to deliver a highly available solution to the full range of end users as shown in Figure 1.

At the core of this solution is VMware Horizon 7. VMware Horizon 7 securely delivers virtualized or hosted desktops and applications through a single platform to end users. These desktop and application services – including Remote Desktop Services (RDS) hosted apps, packaged apps with VMware ThinApp, and SaaS apps – can all be accessed from one digital workspace across devices, locations, media and connections without compromising quality and user experience.

Following are the core features of VMware Horizon 7. These core features help IT control, manage and protect all of the Windows® resources end users want, at the speed they expect, and with the efficiency business demands:

• Unified Digital Workspace

With Horizon 7, IT can support real-time validation, streamlined identity management across identity sources like Active Directory and LDAP, and provide end users with contextual and customizable access to resources through a single unified workspace.

Horizon 7 supports 2-factor, smart card and biometric authentication. It is designed and certified to meet the most demanding compliance regulations including those of the U.S. Federal Government.

With VMware Horizon 7, desktops and applications that can be securely delivered and accessed through the digital workspace include:

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– Horizon virtual desktops

– Citrix® XenApp 5.0 and later

– RDS-hosted apps and desktops for Windows Server® 2008 and later

– SaaS applications

– ThinApp 5.0 and later

– VMware Horizon Cloud Desktops and Horizon Cloud Apps

• Just in Time Platform (JMP)

JMP includes the following technologies combined together with the goal of delivering a dynamic virtual desktop and apps to end users:

– Instant Clones for ultra-fast desktop provisioning

– App Volumes for real-time app delivery

– User Environment Manager for contextual policy management

• Blast Extreme Adaptive Transport (BEAT)

BEAT is a new UDP-based transport which is part of VMware’s Blast Extreme protocol that is designed to ensure great user experience across varying network conditions – especially those with low bandwidth, high latency and high packet loss.

• Smart Policies with Streamlined Access

VMware Horizon Smart Access policies improve end-user satisfaction by simplifying authentication across all desktop and application services while improving security with smarter, contextual, role-based policies that support:

– Contextual, role based security for end users that maps policies based on user, device or location with ease

– True SSO delivers one-click, password-free access to Windows desktop services

– Streamlined identity management across identity sources and provide end users with easy access to resources through a single unified workspace

• User Environment Management and Personalization

VMware User Environment Manager offers personalization and dynamic policy configuration across any virtual, physical and cloud based environment and can provide the following benefits:

– Simplify end-user profile management by providing organizations with a single and scalable solution that leverages existing infrastructure

– Provide end users with quick access to a Windows workspace and applications, with a personalized and consistent experience across devices and locations

– Real-time Application Delivery and Management allows IT to:

Easily package applications to avoid compatibility issues

Instantly provision applications at scale

Dynamically attach applications to end users, groups, or devices, even when users are logged onto their desktop

Provision, deliver, update, and retire applications in real time

High Availability architecture principles A Horizon 7 Enterprise Edition design uses a number of complementary components to provide a variety of highly available services to address the identified use cases. Before we can assemble and integrate these components to form the desired service, we first need to design and build the infrastructure required. This is based on a Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) which includes a key concept of pods and blocks which gives us a repeatable and scalable approach.

A pod is made up of a group of interconnected View Connection Servers that broker desktops or published apps. A pod can broker up to 10,000 sessions including desktop and RDSH sessions. Multiple pods can be interconnected using Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA) for a maximum of 50,000 sessions. For numbers above that, separate CPAs can be deployed.

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A pod is divided into multiple blocks to provide scalability. Each block typically serves up to 2,000 sessions and is made up of one or more resource vSphere clusters. Each block has its own VMware vCenter Server, a VMware View Composer Server (where linked clones are to be used), and resource vSphere clusters.

To add more capacity, we simply add more resource blocks. We also add an additional View Connection Server for each additional block. Typically, we have a maximum of five resource blocks each of 2,000 connections, and up to seven View Connection Servers (five active, two for redundancy) in a pod, capable of hosting 10,000 sessions. For numbers above that we deploy additional pods.

This architecture is captured in detail within VMware’s AlwaysOn Digital Workspace design guide which can be referenced at vmware.com/my/techpapers/2017/vmware-alwayson-digital-workspace-design-guide.html.

Solution overview While there are many priorities that drive adoption of end-user computing, this solution is focused on delivering a high quality end-user experience while maintaining the highest levels of availability. This section highlights the design and functionality of the solution as it pertains to meeting those priorities.

Prior to describing the configuration in depth it is important to note that this document and the accompanying solution make assumptions about your environment. These assumptions include the following:

• You are already providing highly available Active Directory services across the locations that this configuration will span.

• You have Microsoft SQL Server configured in a highly available fashion, across the locations this configuration will span. For information regarding Microsoft SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster Instances see the documentation landing page at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/failover-clusters/windows/always-on-failover-cluster-instances-sql-server

• Your user data is highly available across instances and can have policies configured and applied using VMware User Environment Manager.

• Load balancing is in place to ensure that users are distributed across instances in an intelligent fashion and that in the event of an instance failure all users are redirected to the surviving instance when they log back on.

• The network spanning locations are required to have latencies of <=2ms in order to replicate data in a synchronous fashion. For the purpose of this document, these network spanning locations are used to replicate App Volumes Writable Volumes across HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SANs. These low latencies also support the performance requirements of the App Volumes Writable Volumes.

• A tertiary system exists that can host an HPE StoreVirtual Failover Manager to ensure a quorum is maintained in the event of an instance failure or in split-brain scenarios.

• Each management block can support multiple Horizon View blocks that deliver the end-user sessions. It is recommended that the management blocks be implemented on separate physical hosts from those used for end-user sessions.

The basis for this design is VMware’s Cloud Pod Architecture (CPA). CPA defines a site as a collection of well-connected pods in the same physical location, frequently in a single data center or server room. Multiple sites can be defined with multiple View Pods hosted across data centers. Through global entitlements, users and groups are entitled to Desktop and RDSH Pools that can be accessed across sites. This implies that even in the event of a site failure, users are still able to log on and access their data and resources providing AlwaysOn capabilities.

One of the basic units within this architecture is the Horizon View block. Figure 2 shows a Horizon View block at a conceptual level.

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Figure 2. Horizon View block

The Horizon View block is composed of a vSphere cluster made up of from 2-16 HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers, each of which hosts an instance of HPE StoreVirtual VSA software defined storage. Storage within each block is deployed and managed by the HPE OneView for VMware vCenter plugin. This plugin simplifies deployment and administration of storage resources, helps with the visualization of the complex relationships that exist within a virtual environment and places hardware events within the context of the VMware vCenter console. This allows VMware administrators to deploy shared storage resources to the cluster so that it can tolerate disk and memory failures and still maintain data integrity while providing end users with an experience.

The core servers and storage then host pooled resources which may be either virtual desktops, hosted desktops or hosted applications. These resources are delivered through the VMware vSphere virtual switch to end users over PCoIP or VMware’s Blast Extreme protocol.

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Figure 3 below highlights the pod which as a resource block is comprised of Horizon View blocks and a management block. The pod itself becomes a unit of availability, as well as one of scalability, with each pod supporting up to a maximum of 10,000 sessions based on VMware’s design using five active Horizon View Connection Servers. By design, VMware supports up to 32 hosts per vCenter cluster within the context of a block in this design. Hewlett Packard Enterprise chose to use HPE StoreVirtual VSA as the shared storage layer for each cluster within the pod. The recommendation from Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to limit cluster size to 16 hosts when HPE StoreVirtual VSA is used which aligns with most customer implementations. Each host runs an individual copy of HPE StoreVirtual VSA which protects data and provides linear scaling across clusters of identical design as expected.

Figure 3. VMware Horizon Cloud Pod instance

The architecture maintains a split design with the management block occupying one set of resources and the Horizon View blocks housed on another. Various pieces within each block are redundant and because they are independent of each other their resilience is similarly independent. As mentioned previously, Hewlett Packard Enterprise chose to host the end-user infrastructure on HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers, each of which hosted an HPE StoreVirtual VSA instance which presents shared storage to the cluster. Details of the configuration are presented in the “Solution components” section in this document. The management blocks, which were not part of the overall validation but rather a core piece of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise test lab infrastructure, were hosted on HPE BladeSystem, HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 servers and HPE 3PAR StoreServ SANs.

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At the core of the management block are the resources that create and deliver the end-user experience as well as those that manage the overall environment. Management resources, such as the VMware View Connection Server which creates and manages the resource pools, are created as virtual machines following VMware’s sizing recommendation of up to 2,000 sessions per connection server. Each management block has at least one VMware App Volumes manager to ensure that access to read only AppStacks is optimized from a performance standpoint. Hosts within each cluster are managed and monitored by HPE OneView 3.0.

In order to create a multi-instance design where resources are available to end users even in the event of an instance failure, each of the blocks outlined above needs to be placed in the context of an overall data center infrastructure that is itself highly available. Figure 4 highlights the resource block and management block within the context of the overall VMware AlwaysOn Digital Workspace solution. Entitlements to resources are identical globally across Horizon instances to ensure users can access their desktop, session or application in the event of the failure of an instance.

Figure 4. VMware Horizon AlwaysOn Digital Workspace solution on HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers and HPE StoreVirtual storage

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Core services available across instances include authentication, including Active Directory and VMware Identity Manager, core data center applications, and Microsoft SQL Server Always On services. In addition to these services, Hewlett Packard Enterprise included a tertiary storage layer that spans both instances. Certain user data, such as Outlook files and end user installed applications, is stored on Writable AppStacks, and is replicated across instances. In the event of an instance failure, the writable volume is available to the end user when they log back into the surviving instance. The VMware App Volumes Writable AppStacks are hosted on HPE StoreVirtual SANs. Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends the HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SAN which features two controllers per SAN and is expandable via additional disk shelves to meet capacity and I/O requirements. For validation purposes the Writable AppStacks were attached to Instant Clones and used to carry the end user’s Outlook OST files as the users alternated between instances. Not all users or all implementations will require Writable AppStacks.

Horizon View block design Each Horizon View block must be made resilient as well as able to host the same users across different physical locations in the event of a failure at the instance level. This section diagrams the design of the Horizon View blocks.

Figure 5 below highlights the network configuration of each server within the Horizon View block. To maintain the goals of users being able to be entitled across instances, networking is configured identically within each Horizon View block and on each server.

Figure 5. Per host networking within the Horizon View block context

A single vSwitch per host utilizes the two onboard 10Gb adapters and passes all traffic away from the host. VM portgroups are defined for management traffic (such as for OneView), iSCSI management for communication to VSA instances and production networks. The management VLAN is set as untagged. All other VLANs are tagged. VMkernel portgroups are created for ESXi management, vMotion and fault tolerance and iSCSI storage communication traffic. There are two iSCSI VMkernel portgroups, each of which is active on one physical adapter and unused on

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the other. This facilitates multipathing of iSCSI traffic within the SAN. Each adapter is connected to a port on a pair of HPE FlexFabric 5900 switches configured with Intelligent Resilient Fabric (IRF).

Figure 6 highlights the storage design of the HPE StoreVirtual VSAs within each Horizon View block.

Figure 6. Per host storage configuration within the Horizon View block context

With this design, each HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server will house eight solid state drives. The disks are carved into three separate logical disks. The smallest logical disk is set at 35GB and houses VMware ESXi. There is a 75GB logical disk created that will be local storage dedicated to housing the HPE StoreVirtual VSA virtual machine. The third logical disk, which is comprised of all remaining space, is passed to the HPE StoreVirtual VSA as a raw device mapping (RDM) and serves as the basis for the shared storage volumes that will house the core end-user virtual machines.

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Because each server is a combination of compute and shared storage it is useful to diagram the volumes that are presented at the Horizon View block level. Table 1 shows the volume name, size and source for potential volumes presented within the Horizon View block. One block may be used for Instant Clones, another for session hosts and another for application hosts. Thus not all volumes would appear in every block.

Table 1. Potential volumes within a Horizon View block

Volume Number of Volumes

Size (TB) Multisite Source

Instant Clone Volume 1 2 N HPE StoreVirtual VSA

RDS Session Host Volumes 2 1 N HPE StoreVirtual VSA

RDS Application Host Volumes 2 1 N HPE StoreVirtual VSA

VMware App Volumes AppStack 2 0.5 N HPE StoreVirtual VSA

VMware App Volumes Writable AppStack 2 1 Y HPE StoreVirtual 3200

It is important to differentiate the volume source, as volumes hosted on the HPE StoreVirtual VSAs within the Horizon View block do not replicate data to other blocks, whereas HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SAN hosted volumes are replicated synchronously across instances. Replicated blocks contain data that is persistent across sessions.

Solution components This section presents the various components that are recommended as part of the solution that are pertinent to the end-user resources. It does not cover core data center infrastructure. Although an older generation of HPE StoreVirtual array was used for the actual testing, Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends the HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SAN for the replicated storage layer. For validation of the architecture, HPE utilized HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 servers. That validation can be found at http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=a00008968enw. The introduction of HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers into the environment does not impact the overall design.

Hardware Server The solution described in this document is built on the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server. The HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server is a high density (2U), two socket server that, due to its flexibility, graphics capabilities, processor selection and large memory capacity, is an ideal client virtualization platform capable of supporting the full breadth of end users within your IT environments. Part of a new family of HPE servers independently validated as “the world’s most secure servers” the HPE DL380 Gen10 has been engineered with built-in prevention, detection, and recovery features which minimizes security risks at the infrastructure level. Additionally, the ability to host a variety of drive configurations including mixes of NVMe, SSD and hard disk makes it similarly well suited to software-defined storage applications such as HPE StoreVirtual VSA. Figure 7 shows the HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server with front bezel.

Figure 7. HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server with front bezel

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Storage The physical storage hardware for the replicated storage layer in this Reference Configuration is shown in Table 2.

Note Not all implementations will utilize VMware App Volumes Writable AppStacks. This storage is for environments that will utilize this feature.

Table 2. Recommended storage for spanning instances

Component Qty Description

HPE StoreVirtual 3200 SAN 2 Storage controller enclosures with 10GbE controller modules

HPE StoreVirtual 3000 drive enclosure Variable Add drive enclosures to suit capacity requirements

HPE Solid State Disk Drives Variable Add drives to suit capacity and I/O requirements

Software The core solution software stack includes a comprehensive suite of products from both VMware and Hewlett Packard Enterprise that make the management of the entire environment straightforward. HPE OneView and HPE OneView for VMware vCenter enable performance management of the servers and storage that host the solution. The VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise suite of products provides stable and secure access and authentication for end users while managing the policies that determine user rights and capabilities. Table 3 below highlights the tested versions of HPE software used to manage VMware Horizon end-user computing infrastructure as well as provide the availability described in this document. For new implementations, it is recommended that the latest supported versions of software are utilized.

Table 3. Solution management software from Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Software Version

HPE OneView 3.0

HPE StoreVirtual VSA and Centralized Management Console 12.6

HPE StoreVirtual Multipathing Module for VMware 12.6

HPE OEM Customized vSphere Distribution 6 6.0U2 October 2016

HPE OneView for VMware vCenter 8.2

Table 4 below shows the solution software stack from VMware that was validated on HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 servers.

Table 4. Solution management software from VMware

Software Version

VMware vCenter Server 6.0U2

VMware App Volume Manager 2.1.1

VMware Identity Manager 2.7.1

VMware View Connection Server 7.0.2

VMware User Environment Manager 9.1.0

VMware View Composer 7.0.2

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Best practices and configuration guidance for the solution General considerations Whether this configuration is implemented across a large geographic entity, in two locations within a city or in different buildings on the same campus there are considerations that should be taken into account that will help increase the likelihood of a successful and performant solution.

• Ensure adequate proximity to core services for each instance. This means that each site should have good networking connectivity to Active Directory, Identity Manager, end-user data and any centralized applications whether hosted in the cloud or at a tertiary site.

• When replicating storage traffic in a synchronous fashion across instances, network latency is a key concern. Network latencies should be less than or equal to 2ms (round trip) between the sites.

• Follow best practices for both VMware’s Cloud Pod Architecture and AlwaysOn Digital Workspace. Links to documents highlighting best practices and design principles are included at the end of this document.

• Follow the best practices that Hewlett Packard Enterprise lays out in this document for storage deployment and design.

Storage guidance This section highlights some key recommendations for the design and deployment of HPE StoreVirtual VSA on HPE ProLiant servers that will be used to host clusters containing Horizon View blocks. The recommended configuration is outlined in the “Solution components” portion of this document, so rather than recall each individual component, overall guidance on configuration will be offered. Documentation for HPE StoreVirtual VSA is referenced at the end of this document and should be read prior to implementing a solution.

• For an all-flash configuration, the HPE StoreVirtual VSAs should be created with 4 vCPUs and 16GB of RAM. The recommended physical disk layout for the tested configuration is shown in Figure 6 of this document.

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends utilizing flash media and in particular Solid State Disks for end-user computing workloads on HPE StoreVirtual VSA. This may be in the form of either an all-flash or tiered SSD-HDD configuration.

• To provide bandwidth for peak I/O events and replication of storage traffic it is suggested that a minimum of a shared 10GbE pair of network cards are utilized. HPE ProLiant Gen10 servers offer a variety of 10Gb and 25Gb network interface cards. For large clusters and for organizations that require segmentation of storage and network traffic, multiple 10Gb NICs may be used with one pair carrying storage traffic and the other carrying management, vMotion and VM traffic.

• To improve overall performance and automatically build I/O paths, install and utilize the HPE StoreVirtual Multipathing Extension Module for VMware vSphere and review the best practices for utilizing the module in the HPE StoreVirtual Storage Multipathing Deployment Guide.

• Create two iSCSI VMkernel port groups and bind each to an active adapter while preventing the use of a secondary adapter.

• When deploying volumes, in order to maximize performance deploy twice as many volumes as the number of VSAs. As an example, if you have an 8 node cluster where each host has a VSA deployed insure you have at least 16 volumes. Divide your storage traffic amongst these volumes.

• Deploy volumes as thin for non-persistent files and create them as their maximum possible extent. As an example, if a volume will house 500 linked clones each of which has a 30GB HDD and 4GB of memory you would size it as (30+4) * 500.

• When overprovisioning, configure SNMP and email alert capabilities to insure notification of capacity thresholds being reached.

• Ensure that iSCSI load balancing is enabled for all initiators in the HPE StoreVirtual Centralized Management Console.

• Use Round Robin path policy for all VSA volumes and set the path policy attribute to iops=1 on each host.

Server design and optimization For end-user computing workloads, the server requirements will vary based on a number of factors including the intended use case, requirements around end-user experience and whether storage will be local to the system as in this configuration.

The HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 server offers a large variety of configuration options that allow it to meet the demands of every end-user computing workload. For a discussion of what options to choose when building a server for these workloads see the Hewlett Packard Enterprise document at: http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=a00018552enw. To insure you are adequately addressing the needs of your end users when you build your environment, Hewlett Packard Enterprise offers HPE Advanced Client Virtualization Services to optimize your current and future client virtualization projects.

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Prior to implementation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise recommends that specific tuning and configuration steps be taken to assist with performance and manageability in end-user computing environments. What follows is a description of recommended tuning and configuration advice.

• Configure software iSCSI adapters on each host within vCenter and ensure that they are set to discover and talk to the HPE StoreVirtual VSA and HPE StoreVirtual SAN storage resources.

• Set the system clock to a known good time source and configure NTP on all hosts within vCenter and within the vCenter appliances themselves.

• Utilize the OS Optimization Tool from VMware Labs when creating master images, https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-os-optimization-tool

Summary This Reference Configuration documents a sample architecture to enable a highly available, active/active end-user computing solution based on HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers, HPE StoreVirtual VSA, VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise Edition, and the VMware Cloud Pod Architecture. Moving to a digital workplace with centralized delivery of applications and data allows for both increased security and a more fault tolerant architecture that ensures the highest levels of access to resources for end users. With a properly deployed multi-site disaster recovery solution, end users will be able to maintain secure and reliable access to virtualized applications and desktops, and IT managers will be able to modernize desktop services with HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 servers and VMware Horizon 7 Enterprise.

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VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Microsoft, Windows and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Citrix is a trademark of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

a00019928enw, July 2017

Resources and additional links HPE Advanced Client Virtualization Services, http://h20195.www2.hpe.com/V2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA5-0120enw

HPE StoreVirtual VSA manuals, http://h20566.www2.hpe.com/portal/site/hpsc/public/psi/home/?sp4ts.oid=5306917#manuals

HPE StoreVirtual Storage Multipathing Deployment Guide, https://h20565.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=3936556&docLocale=en_US&docId=emr_na-c05049830

HPE Storage, hpe.com/storage

HPE Networking, hpe.com/networking

HPE Technology Consulting Services, hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html

VMware AlwaysOn Digital Workspace Design Guide, vmware.com/my/techpapers/2017/vmware-alwayson-digital-workspace-design-guide.html

Administering View Cloud Pod Architecture, https://pubs.vmware.com/horizon-view-60/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.horizon-view.cloudpodarchitecture.doc%2FGUID-07C1B313-5907-4EDB-AB2F-75F7F58BD1AF.html

Microsoft Always On Failover Cluster Instances (SQL Server), https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/failover-clusters/windows/always-on-failover-cluster-instances-sql-server

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