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| pivot3.com June 10, 2015 | 1
Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid: Reference Architecture with
VMware Horizon View Document Version 2.3
June 10, 2015
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Purpose This document is an explanation of Pivot3 reference architecture as it relates to VMware View. At the time
of this document’s publication, the most current version of VMware View was 6.0, which is what was used
in the described test environments.
How to Contact Pivot3 Pivot3, Inc.
816 Congress Avenue, Suite 970
Austin, TX 78701
Tel: +1 512-807-2666
Fax: +1 512-807-2669
General information: info@pivot3.com
Sales: sales@pivot3.com
Tech Support: support@pivot3.com
Website: www.pivot3.com
Online Support: www.pivot3.com/support
EULA & Open Source Notices During the installation of all Pivot3 software components, a copy of the Pivot3 End User License
Agreement will be placed in a subdirectory called “Documentation” located under the primary installation
directory. If applicable, the Pivot3 Open Source Notices document will also be found in the Documentation
subdirectory.
© Copyright 2007-2015 Pivot3, Inc.
All rights reserved. Specifications are subject to change without notice. Pivot3, RAIGE, Pivot3 vSTAC, Pivot3 vSTAC OS, Pivot3 vSTAC HCI,
Pivot3 vSTAC HCI P Cubed, Pivot3 vSTAC R2S, Pivot3 vSTAC Edge, Pivot3 vSTAC Manager, Pivot3 vSTAC Watch, Pivot3 Virtual Security Server
(VSS), Pivot3 Enterprise HCI, vBank, CloudBank, DataBank, and High-Definition Storage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pivot3.
All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Table of Contents
The Pivot3 Advantage ....................................................................... 4
Getting Virtual Desktops Right ....................................................................................................4
Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure .......................................................................................4
Feature List ................................................................................................................................7
vSTAC Protection Groups ............................................................................................................7
Dynamic Scaling .........................................................................................................................8
Highest Storage Efficiency ...........................................................................................................8
Efficiency of Scale .......................................................................................................................9
Customized Configurations .........................................................................................................9
Administrative Precision .............................................................................................................9
Reference Architecture Design ........................................................ 10
Design Overview ...................................................................................................................... 10
The Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid .................................................................................... 10
Storage Configuration ............................................................................................................... 10
Network Configuration ............................................................................................................. 11
Virtual SAN Elements ................................................................................................................ 11
Design Considerations ..................................................................... 12
Data Safety .............................................................................................................................. 13
Hyper-Converged Functionalities .............................................................................................. 13
Use Case Specifics ........................................................................... 14
VMware View Reference Architecture Components .................................................................. 14
Virtual Desktops ....................................................................................................................... 15
Results & Overall Expectations ........................................................ 16
Performance Tests .................................................................................................................... 16
Automatic Self-Healing ............................................................................................................. 19
Benchmark Mode ..................................................................................................................... 19
Conclusion ....................................................................................... 20
First in Hyper-Convergence ....................................................................................................... 20
Pioneering Failover, RAID, & Critical Data Protection ................................................................. 20
Leading-Edge Performance ....................................................................................................... 20
References ...................................................................................... 21
Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed ................................... 22
Infrastructure Services .............................................................................................................. 22
Horizon View Elements ............................................................................................................. 23
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
The Pivot3 Advantage Getting Virtual Desktops Right
Since the introduction of virtual desktop technology (VDI), the attractiveness of hosting infrastructure for
universal remote access and simplified desktop management has been plagued with numerous
implementation challenges. Data centers that have achieved architectural excellence have not been able
to lower the cost of centralizing the management of Windows desktops. Many VDI implementations
deployed the wrong combination of traditional, a-la-carte components, thus resulting in a poor user
experience.
Recreating a virtual Windows user experience that is similar to that offered by a PC represents success for
a VDI implementation. Crafting a solution that scales well while preserving the experience is even more
difficult. One approach is to over-configure the solution to guarantee performance, but that typically
collides with budget restraints. Sizing Server + SAN resources too tightly often results in an architecture
that is easily outgrown, resulting in poor performance.
Pivot3’s hyper-converged solution for VDI inherently bypasses these complexities to provide a fast,
correctly sized, and cost-effective VDI implementation. We combine the traditional solution ingredients in
a hyper-converged architecture that drastically reduces the risk of misconfiguring the infrastructure. Our
solution comes pre-customized and pre-validated for the user experience expected at this level. Pivot3
hyper-converged appliances scale elastically to enable a pay-as-you-grow model. As user counts grow,
simply add homogenous appliances to host the virtual desktops. Through Pivot3’s unique Global Hyper-
Converged Infrastructure, all of the storage, IOPS, and high availability expected of a SAN can expand as
more nodes are added.
Pivot3 developed its hyper-converged platform by
extending its pioneering innovation in Software-Defined
Storage. This first virtual SAN was designed to have all the
qualities of a conventional SAN. The engineering team
focused on performance and efficiency from the start to
create a software platform that abstracts away the
hardware from virtual machines while remaining
extremely respectful of the server and storage resources
that coherently unify all resources as appliances are
added. The Pivot3 hyper-converged solution is unique in
that it allows more of the purchased storage capacity to
keep data and more of the purchased server power to
host workloads.
Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
The Pivot3 Hyper-Converged Enterprise HCI Desktop
solution simplifies virtual desktop deployments by
providing the storage and compute power necessary to
support many desktops with the flexibility to easily scale.
Pivot3’s unique architecture enables a customer to start
with a single appliance and grow the system by adding
appliances for more virtual desktops in a High-Availability
(HA) solution.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Pivot3’s vSTAC OS uses Scalar Erasure Coding technology, which can rebuild a failed drive or appliance
without the expense or effort of separate replication and deduplication applications. This patented
technology also provides:
Up to 92% of total installed capacity effectively available for storage
Pre-validated system configuration
Scalable, market-leading storage efficiency with exceptional fault tolerance
Unified storage and compute in a Pivot3 HCI environment starting with only one box
Extremely low compute overhead to run the vSTAC OS increases the density of virtual machines
What makes Pivot3 different?
Globally Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Traditional storage cannot successfully combine resources from
separate appliances to provide one large volume to virtual machines; in fact, when adding hardware to a
conventional DAS, a percentage of the resources added will not be technically usable due to “hot spots”
and other isolated storage space. Over time, conventional models will separate newly added storage into
“islands” that cannot be pooled for utilization. With Pivot3 vSTAC OS, storage capacity can be combined
across appliances and allocated as needed, inherently increasing the investment value of major resources.
Unparalleled Efficiency: Other vendors, whose hyper-converged solutions are only local in the sense that
they allow VMs to access resources only on the server where they reside, may use comparable hardware
in an attempt to make comparable promises. However, none of them are also able to boast the efficiency
that Pivot3 has built in from the ground up. Legacy and other hyper-converged vendors use replication
and deduplication to provide data integrity and higher effective storage capacity; however, Pivot3 has
architected a solution that protects data and provides maximum usable capacity without requiring the
footprint, expense, or advanced expertise needed to configure replication and deduplication processes.
vSTAC OS can function efficiently using as little as 6% of the local resources, dedicating the rest of the
servers’ resources to storage and compute for workloads chosen by the user. This translates to more
usable compute power to host more virtual desktops.
Exceptional Fault Tolerance: The difference between Erasure Coding fault tolerance and replication fault
tolerance can make or break a data center. Pivot3 appliances utilize patented Scalar Erasure Coding in
combination with network RAID settings (based on configuration) in order to provide the most security for
mission-critical data in the smallest resource footprint available. Drive protection becomes increasingly
critical as the number of drives increase with the server count. In the case of Pivot3 hyper-converged
appliances, the proportion of available storage space grows in direct proportion to the number of
appliances while continuing to maintain a high level of data protection.
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Alternative replication-based options “copy” data over and over. That means over time, the used capacity
accelerates as the overhead for those copies increase – effectively multiplying the data footprint.
Close-to-the-metal Direct Disk Access (DDA™) Methodology: Pivot3 has increased storage access
performance (30%-40%) by going straight to the disk for disk access instead of bottlenecking through the
hypervisor IO path.
NOTE: Pivot3 has certified its Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) VIBs with VMware. See our VMware
System/Server certifications here.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Feature List
Efficient, truly useable storage by utilizing Pivot3’s patented Scalar Erasure Coding instead of deduplication & replication
No single point of failure: High Availability protects up to (5) drive failures or a full appliance and 2 additional drive failure with predictive and virtual sparing
Self-healing architecture
LUN-selectable protection levels
5 simultaneous drive failures or a full appliance failure and 2 drives 3 simultaneous drive failures or a full appliance failure and 1 drive 1 disk failure or a full appliance failure
Virtual distributed drive sparing across appliances for undisrupted performance
Direct Disk Access (DDA™) technology for performance
Dynamic expansion of logical or physical capacity
Scale-out, non-volatile SSD-based write cache aggregated across appliances; performance is automatically load-balanced across all elements
Background media verification for uncompromised data integrity
Lowest virtual CPU consumption & storage overhead available
VMware storage and Pivot3 system certifications
Full-time Active-Active Controllers with linearly additive bandwidth
vSTAC Protection Groups
Each Pivot3 appliance hosts both storage and compute functionalities, and appliances are arranged into
vSTAC Protection Groups where several levels of built-in controls protect critical data. A Pivot3 vSTAC
Domain can consist of multiple Protection Groups, and storage in one Protection Group is accessible to a
VM in another Protection Group.
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NOTE: vSTAC Protection Groups are optimized for 12 HDD nodes or 16 SSD nodes per group. There is no
limit on how many vSTAC Protection Groups can be created and utilized within a customer’s
vSTAC Domain.
Dynamic Scaling
Once new appliances are added to a vSTAC Protection Group with vSTAC Manager, the space becomes
automatically mapped and ready for allocation as shown in Section 3. The new storage capacity may be
added to the existing volume(s) using the Dynamic Capacity Expansion feature in vSTAC Manager or
separated into other volumes, as desired. A Dynamic Capacity Expansion on existing volumes allows newly
added storage space to be included in the relevant volume; vSTAC Manager Suite will take care of the
details behind the scenes, and all the end user has to do is decide how to use the additional space and
instruct vSTAC Manager in a simple wizard UI.
Highest Storage Efficiency
Hyper-Convergence is a relatively new concept to IT, but is not at all a new concept to Pivot3. Since 2007,
we have been combining storage and compute in an easy-to-deploy infrastructure for customers in many
industries all over the world. Scalar Erasure Coding, the patented foundation for Pivot3’s hyper-converged
technology, provides a lower overhead than any other hyper-convergence solution currently on the
market. This means for every TB or PB of Hybrid server bought, up to 92% can be available depending on
configuration, as opposed to the typical 50% considered the norm in a conventional storage environment
with replication-based backup.
Even other hyper-converged solutions on the market have significantly more overhead, providing less
useable space in a consumer environment – even less when considering the “90% best practice” as the
maximum available space. Pivot3 provides a powerful but simple solution to a complex problem.
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Efficiency of Scale
Desktop virtualization can be one of the most demanding storage environments in the industry. High
performance allows a PC-level experience with five-nines reliability for 24/7 mission critical uptime.
Expanding the user count and server/storage combination should be seamless and simple. This is what
Pivot3 created a decade ago to host high-demand storage and compute workloads that today is known as
hyper-convergence. We have architected ways to superimpose best practices with the needs of the most
demanding storage environments for the most efficient data-protected solution on the market. The low
cost of Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Solutions can optimize storage and compute for any business at any size.
Customized Configurations
Pivot3 supports a wide range of configurations that vary by CPU capacity, RAM, storage size, and data
type. vSTAC OS can easily handle the extreme IOPs in a VDI environment, and is also well equipped to
handle continuously high throughputs in data as well, such as surveillance. Many Pivot3 configurations can
be combined to handle differences in workloads that may be heavier in areas of complex deployments.
Administrative Precision
At Pivot3, we strive to reduce the potential for user error, so our management systems are designed to
take the complexity out of administrative tasks. Appliance additions, drive replacements, LUN allocations,
automated data organization and reorganization, and much more are all easily managed through an
intuitive, tool-tip-assisted GUI.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Reference Architecture Design Design Overview
This Reference Architecture goal is to provide a scalable architecture for floating, non-persistent, linked-
clone desktops in a rack-based hardware model. This allows dynamic scaling by simply adding additional
appliances to expand a current Rapid Desktop environment in the Enterprise HCI space, therefore
reducing desktop sizing calculation errors.
The Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid
Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances deliver both server and shared storage requirements for
VMware View customers and eliminate the need for a standalone SAN. vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid
Appliances can be "stacked" together to dynamically scale the number of supported virtual desktops while
offering a familiar server appliance model and self-healing architecture.
Each appliance, called a vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance, is a high-performance server running both
the VMware vSphere Hypervisor and the Pivot3 vSTAC Operating System.
vSTAC Enterprise HCI node appliances are designed to scale up and scale out in vSTAC Protection Groups.
Enterprise HCI Hybrid-based vSTAC Protection Groups are optimized for 12 appliances, and additional
vSTAC Protection Groups enable scaling to meet customer needs that exceed single-group capacity.
NOTE: All vSTAC Protection Groups are managed cohesively through a single vSTAC Manager.
Storage Configuration
Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliances use SATA hard disk drives that contain linked clones, user
data, parent base images, and swap files (.vswp extensions) for each desktop.
User data is separated from the desktop images by redirecting key folders that use roaming profiles.
Folders redirected include:
Application Data
Documents
Media
Desktop
Favorites
NOTE: These folders should be located on shared network storage. Datastores and other VM resources can
also be shared between Protection Groups.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Network Configuration
Multiple networks are used and configured to provide the necessary environment to achieve the Plug-and-Play
Scalable Architecture mentioned earlier. These networks consist of a redundant SAN network for storage, a
redundant or balanced production network for desktop connectivity, and a redundant Management Network
for HA/DRS-enabled vSTAC Protection Groups.
The vSphere virtual network within each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance has:
Two storage networks, each connected to individual 10-Gigabit NICs
Two 1-Gigabit NICs available for Production Networks
Two 1-Gigabit NICs available for Management Network with Redundancy
The 10-Gigabit SAN network consists of two Layer 3 Enterprise Class 10-Gigabit Switches. The pair of 10-Gigabit
switches provides redundant networks for storage, allowing for switch/cable failures and better load balancing
of I/O. Each 10-Gigabit switch provides one SAN port for each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliance.
Redundant 10 GbE SAN Switch Architecture
The 1-Gigabit network consists of several Layer 3 Enterprise Class 1-Gigabit switches. The 48-port switches
provide fan-out to the desktop clients.
Virtual SAN Elements
Pivot3_VM: Pivot3 Storage Virtual Appliance
The Pivot3_ VM contains the vSTAC Operating System (vSTAC OS), providing an intuitive appliance approach as
it manages data distribution across Pivot3 vSTAC Appliances. With this feature, vSTAC OS is able to provide
scalable availability, performance, and capacity. The vSTAC OS runs on each appliance to aggregate the physical
resources of the appliances, automatically balance loads across the appliances and protect against component
failures.
Advanced disk protection from the vSTAC OS includes RAID 1p, RAID 5e, RAID 6e and RAID 6x:
With RAID 5e, one disk failure or one appliance failure will not affect data
With RAID 1p and RAID 6e, up to three simultaneous disk failures will not affect data
RAID 1p and RAID 6e also protects data in the case of an entire appliance failure and up to one drive failure
With RAID 6x, up to five simultaneous disk failures will not affect data
RAID 6x also protects data in the case of an entire appliance failure and up to two drive failures
As with any centralized resource, it is important that the data stored be available and accessible. The Pivot3
storage-centric approach for application environments characterized by high-capacity needs and I/O-intensive
workloads offers higher performance, lower cost and higher availability than traditional alternatives.
NOTE: For new customers without a current infrastructure, Pivot3 also offers the Pivot3 P Cubed starting
point as explained in Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Design Considerations vSTAC Protection Groups set up using vSTAC Manager Suite are able to pool unused resources together and
treat the sum as one resource or more configured resources. The following elements are the foundation for
Pivot3’s design architecture, which was validated using VMware Horizon View 6.0 and VMware ESXi 5.5.
1. Load-Balanced Performance: In a use case scenario of (3) 2U vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances,
concurrent VMware View non-persistent virtual desktops can be serviced with a Pivot3 unified storage and
compute vSTAC® Protection Group. In this situation, each virtual desktop receives IOPS, SATA Tier storage,
RAM and vCPU allocated resources as determined by workload.
2. Automatic Self-healing: An appliance failure will not affect SAN storage, and VMware HA will restart
affected virtual desktops within the vSTAC Protection Group without user intervention.
3. Dynamic Scaling: Virtual desktops can be added dynamically. Adding a vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid
Appliance to a live vSTAC Protection Group will provide compute and storage resources for additional
virtual desktops, which can be easily added without affecting the initial virtual desktops.
4. Data Safety: Pivot3 has diligently tested and re-tested configurations to ensure the #1 priority remains data
retention and protection; each solution offered has been tailored to provide maximum performance with
minimal customer-side administrative or architectural effort.
5. Dynamic Volume Expansion: To help prevent user error during complex administrative tasks (e.g.,
appliance additions, drive replacements, data organization/reorganization, LUN allocations, etc.), the Pivot3
vSTAC Manager Suite automatically incorporates new appliances as they are added and takes care of the
mapping quietly and efficiently, lessening the potential for human error during load balancing.
Rem
Physical View Logical View
Three-Appliance vSTAC Protection Group Summary with Maximum Logical Volume Allocation
Same vSTAC Protection Group Summary + (1) Appliance added in vSTAC Manager
Same vSTAC Protection Group Summary + Two(2) Appliances added in vSTAC Manager
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Data Safety
Our customers depend on five-nines, 24x7 uptime on petabytes of storage in thousands of deployed appliances
worldwide. Because we always look at the total quality of service coming from the storage system, Pivot3
provides the following safety capabilities in our scale-out architecture:
1. Constant Media Scanning – Ongoing surface and performance scanning runs constantly in the background.
2. Drive Sparing – We use patented Virtual Global Sparing that gets provisioned by default for a drive’s worth
of capacity to step in should a drive fault occur, preventing downtime or performance degradation, and
getting the system back to its optimal levels of failure supported.
3. Pre-Emptive Alerts –vSTAC OS can “fail out” drives that aren’t working properly and may be affecting
performance of the overall vSTAC Protection Group. Our Virtual Global Sparing pre-empts data loss by
automatically reallocating data to the spare space, and vSTAC Manager is responsible for alerting local
administrators and Pivot3 for end users who have signed up for the “Phone Home” option.
4. Read Quality Detection – Subtle performance problems that arise from a drive getting “sick” may not yet
trigger a full failure, but we constantly evaluate every drive. Leveraging our Globally Hyper-Converged
Architecture, vSTAC automatically redirects reads to alternative drives to sustain performance and informs
administrators of the drive being in a degraded state. This type of preventive monitoring can help extend
the life of a sick drive by enabling a more graceful service event.
5. Phone Home – Sends support notification alerts to administrators and (optionally) Pivot3 technicians when
a problem needs attention.
6. High Availability Data Protection – All hardware has a shelf life, so we design for failure. Fault tolerance
should not be a tradeoff for performance or safety. The Pivot3 vSTAC platform uniquely supports up to FIVE
simultaneous drive failures or a complete appliance failure plus two additional drives failing.
Hyper-Converged Functionalities
Utilizing high-speed SSD storage for desktop images, linked clones, etc. improves the overall system
performance by allowing higher numbers of desktops per appliance. In some cases, however, storing user data
and profiles can be challenging if the required capacity for that data exceeds what is available from the SSD
storage pool (e.g., for graphics or multi-media files). In these cases, Pivot3 recommends configuring the
Enterprise HCI system with a second Pivot3 Protection Group to meet user-specific needs.
The extra Protection Group help keeps all the storage managed from a single “pane of glass,” and maintains
high levels of availability throughout. For example, a Protection Group of (3) 12TB vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid
appliances would allocate approximately 50GB for each of 450 users on top of existing resources, while
protecting data from drive and appliance failure. Protection Groups can be easily scaled out or expanded as
user and application needs change.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Use Case Specifics VMware View Reference Architecture Components
Pivot3 offers self-healing for both server and storage resources in the case of an appliance failure. From the
storage perspective, a Pivot3 vSTAC Protection Group of N appliances remains fully operational when an
appliance fails, leaving the vSTAC Protection Group at N-1. VMware vSphere applications provide a separate
layer of protection under supported configurations.
For this reference architecture, the desktop count is sized to take into account all real-world possibilities of
hardware failures (power supplies, processors, Memory DIMMs, motherboards, etc.) that may force an entire
vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance failure.
Each vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance provides CPU, memory, and storage resources for a number of
virtual desktops. Therefore, the minimum configuration of three vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid appliances
supports a number of failover-protected virtual desktops depending on expected workload chosen during
configuration.
Additional vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances can be dynamically added to a vSTAC where each additional
appliance provides resources for additional virtual desktops along with the load-balanced shared storage
needed for the new load.
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Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid with VMware View
Component Purpose/Usage
VMware View Desktop Host
(3) Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances
Dual Intel® Xeon ® E5-2640 v3 CPU @ 2.6 GHz
128GB Base + 128GB upgrade = 256GB RAM
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 or higher
Application Configuration VMware View Desktop Client Stores:
ISOs, Software, VM Templates
P Cubed Infrastructure
(1) Pivot3 vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliance(s)
Dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 v3 CPU @2.6 GHz
128GB Base + 128GB upgrade = 256GB RAM
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 or higher
Application Configuration Infrastructure Server (vCenter Server, Domain Controller, Active Directory,
View Connection Manager)
Network Switches (2) SAN Switches DELL PowerConnect 8024: 24-port 10GbE copper port switch
(1) Application Switch Cisco Catalyst 3750G: 48-port 1GbE switch. Add as needed.
Software
VMware View 6.0 VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Application. Premier Edition enables
View Composer, which is required for Linked Clones and Tiered Storage.
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard For vCenter Server, View Connection Manager, View Composer, and Domain
Controller
Management Pivot3 vSTAC Manager 6.6.2 or
higher Physical and logical storage configuration, dynamic expansion, security
access, RAID and tier setting by volume.
SNMP Alerts Set traps for physical state changes within the Pivot3 vSTAC Protection Group
Server Virtualization VMware vCenter Server 5 Standard
Test Component Purpose/Usage
Test Servers
1x LoginVSI Test Server Windows Server 2012 R2 Running:
5 LoginVSI Launchers @25 desktops each
Test Software LoginVSI version 4.2.1.1205 With LoginVSI Picture Viewer and Notepad
Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP 1, 64 bit
View Client OS for characterization testing
P Cubed For MS SQL server, Exchange 2010 and other infrastructure VMs
Applications used to generate user workload Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Microsoft Office 2013
Adobe Acrobat Reader 11 Adobe Flash Player
Java/FreeMind Doro 1.82
Virtual Desktops
Each desktop image is a user instance of Windows 7 and has been optimized following the VMware View
Optimization Guide for Windows 7 (VMware, 2014). The number of desktops allocated per appliance will
depend on the variables chosen during setup configuration as explained in Section 5.
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Results & Overall Expectations Performance Tests
Pivot3 conducted tests on concurrent VMware View non-persistent virtual desktops with three vSTAC
Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances in a Pivot3 unified storage and compute vSTAC Protection Group to validate
workload settings.
Tools such as LoginVSI, the industry standard load testing solution for centralized,
virtualized desktop environments, are critical for simulating “like” production workloads
and are a worthwhile investment as a part of evaluating different solutions.
Login VSI, Inc., delivers industry-standard testing solutions for virtualized desktop and
server environments. The world’s leading virtualization vendors use the flagship product,
Login VSI, to benchmark the performance and scalability of their solutions. Enterprise IT
departments use LoginVSI products in all phases of their virtual desktop deployment – from capacity planning
to load testing to change impact prediction – for more predictable performance, higher availability, and a more
consistent end user experience. With minimal configuration, LoginVSI products work in VMware Horizon View,
Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and any other Windows-based virtual
desktop solution. All Pivot3 tests described here using LoginVSI were run with Benchmark Mode enabled.
For more information, download a trial at www.loginvsi.com.
1. Task Worker Profile For testing and benchmarking purposes at the lightest possible user resource requirement, LoginVSI built the
Task Worker workload profile around multiple common applications such as Outlook, Adobe, and various copy
and zip actions. This profile has changed since it was referred to as LoginVSI’s Light Workload profile to more
closely approximate the reality of the resources required for a user at this level.
2. Office Worker Profile The Office Worker profile is a new addition to the LoginVSI resource testing environment. The Office Worker
environment is based on the Knowledge Worker profile, but decreased to one vCPU per VM for a more
representative resource allocation.
3. Knowledge Worker Profile The Knowledge Worker workload is used as the baseline by which to measure all other workloads. For a more
resource-intensive workload testing environment, LoginVSI defines the Knowledge Worker profile as their new
definition of a “Medium” workload, with the Knowledge Worker profile allotted two vCPUs.
4. Power Worker Profile Pivot3 solutions were tested with the Power Worker profile using LoginVSI v4.1.2.1205. The Power Worker
profile attempts to replicate (and test for) the heaviest resource allocation normally seen in a regular working
environment (LoginVSI, 2015).
LoginVSI Workload Definition Breakdown
Workload Applications CPU Disk Reads Disk Writes IOPS Memory # of vCPU
Task 2-7 70% 79% 77% 7 1 GB 1
Office 5-8 82% 90% 101% 8.1 1.5 GB 1
Knowledge 5-9 100% 100% 100% 8.5 1.5 GB 2
Power 8-12 119% 133% 123% 10.8 2 GB 2
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5. Login Storm LoginVSI’s VSImax test is designed to constantly initiate new sessions. The system initiates with zero sessions
active, and the LoginVSI launchers establish a new session every desired interval period as the test progresses.
(This increment is configurable, but the common default value is 30 seconds.) New sessions are established
every interval (30 seconds in this example) until the maximum number of sessions specified has been reached,
at which point the test ends. Latency data is collected from all sessions that were able to log in during the test.
New sessions are being established throughout the duration of the test, consuming considerable resources by
logging in and/or booting up VMs, depending on how the host VM pool was configured initially. If VMs in this
environment take longer than the launch interval to log in and/or boot up, multiple VMs will be consuming
even more resources. This ensures that the load of the VSImax test comprises workloads running on VMs as
well as VMs booting up and/or logging in. This is the essence of tests referred to as “boot storm” or “login
storm” tests.
VSI Index Average Results
LoginVSI test results show the range of Pivot3 appliances for several variables. Rigorous testing allows Pivot3
developers to understand how the system will react in certain situations and tweak architectural variables for
future performance enhancements.
The chart below details the average VMs supported per appliance for each workload type according to Pivot3’s
LoginVSI testing of each setup. (The Task Worker workload is not included here because the resources allocated
– 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM – are lighter than the workload representative of typical Pivot3 customer base needs.)
Pivot3 Enterprise HCI Hybrid – Typical Expected Workloads LoginVSI Workload VM CPU Allocated VM Memory Allocated Avg. VMs Per Appliance
Power Worker 2 4 GB 85
Knowledge Worker 2 2 GB 119
Office Worker 1 2 GB 132
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To determine the average number of VMs that an appliance can support for each workload type, multiple tests
were run and the results of these tests were compared. Repetition in testing ensures consistent results.
Knowledge Worker Test Comparison Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)
Other graphs generated during these tests will show the CPU and Memory usage for the same configuration. In
the chart below, LoginVSI shows that while the CPU response time starts to spike just before 100 active
sessions, the previous result of 119 desktops as the VSImax limitation is shown as a consistent result in CPU
usage and overall resource allocation. For this particular deployment and configuration, we can be confident
that 119 desktops will function as expected. Further result interpretations give insight into other system
elements, as shown below.
Knowledge Worker CPU Test Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)
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Knowledge Worker RAM Test Results (Benchmark Mode Enabled)
As with CPUs, the LoginVSI test measurement of RAM usage per active session distribution shows resource
usage to be consistent with expected numbers.
Automatic Self-Healing
This functionality test validates that when one of the vSTAC Enterprise HCI Hybrid Appliances is powered off:
The storage is unaffected, and
VMware HA (if applicable) will relocate and restart the affected virtual desktops without user intervention.
Pivot3 performs this critical test to ensure that in a datacenter environment, the unplanned loss of one
appliance will not compromise the entire vSTAC Protection Group or domain. Once the failed appliance is
replaced, vSTAC Manager Suite will restore VM, appliance, and network settings to match those that were in
place before the appliance was removed from the vSTAC Protection Group.
Benchmark Mode
Benchmark mode is a restricted test mode within LoginVSI that is used to create a test environment for easily
comparable industry results (LoginVSI, 2015). This ensures that the settings used for test results are
predictable, attainable elsewhere, and realistically applied for the most industry-accurate test results possible.
More information on Benchmark Mode is available in the LoginVSI documentation library.
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Conclusion First in Hyper-Convergence
Pivot3 is a pioneer in the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure world, delivering the first such product in 2008 to the
physical security market. Our patented Scalar Erasure Coding allows up to 92% of existing resources available,
compared to the 50% actual capacity available in other hyper-converged environments using replication. With
the patented vSTAC architecture, storage capacity is combined across appliances to provide scalability and fault
tolerance. CPUs are also shared among appliances and across Protection Groups, making CPUs yet another
resource easily integrated with additional vSTAC Appliances.
Pioneering Failover, RAID, & Critical Data Protection
We offer custom RAID levels that allow up to 5 disk failures simultaneously, or 2 disks and 1 full appliance
failure. Through dynamic scaling, Pivot3 expands existing Protection Groups automatically, allowing existing
volumes to be expanded or create new volumes with the newly added capacity.
In hyper-converged deployments, we have provided protection for critical data in major industry spaces such as
commercial, retail, corporate, government, gaming, military, and others. Pivot3’s Protection Groups can sustain
failures without losing data or access to data. Protection Groups have the ability to self-heal during and after a
failure to recover to the highest levels of fault protection.
Pro-active, constant monitoring of disk quality and IO throughput ensures system health; the Pivot3 “Phone
Home” option provides a partnership with skilled Pivot3 personnel to help monitor system health before
problems occur.
Leading-Edge Performance
Extensive LoginVSI testing shows Pivot3 system setups to be stable as well as robust. vSTAC Appliances can be
stacked and scaled to provide a superior class of load-balanced storage and compute; the user-centric “Plug-N-
Play” attributes provide our customers with transparency, security, and ease of use. Pivot3 diligently tests and
configures the solutions we offer so that end users may begin working upon installation without months of on-
site trial and error attempts at integration.
Thank you for choosing Pivot3.
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References LoginVSI. (2015, April 13). Changes old and new workloads. Retrieved from LoginVSI Wiki:
http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/Changes_old_and_new_workloads
LoginVSI. (2015, April 20). LoginVSI Management Console. Retrieved from LoginVSI:
http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/Login_VSI_Management_Console
LoginVSI. (2015, February 16). LoginVSI Workload Mashup. Retrieved from LoginVSI:
http://www.loginvsi.com/documentation/index.php?title=Workload_Mashup
VMware. (2010). Workload Considerations for Virtual Desktop Reference Architectures. Retrieved from VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-WP-WorkloadConsiderations-WP-EN.pdf
VMware. (2012, September 14). Technical Papers. Retrieved from VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/view/VMware-stateless-virtual-desktops-ref-arch.pdf
VMware. (2013). The VMware(R) View(TM) 4.5 Floating Reference Architecture. Retrieved from VMware.
VMware. (2014). VMware View Optimization Guide for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Retrieved from VMware:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-View-OptimizationGuideWindows7-EN.pdf
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Appendix A Pivot3’s Comprehensive Solution – P Cubed Pivot3’s P Cubed is preconfigured for storage, and ready to scale out with the addition of vSTAC Enterprise HCI
Hybrid Appliances.
Infrastructure Services
AD01 provides Microsoft Active Directory, DHCP, DNS, and DNS forwarding.
Management Station includes vSTAC Manager, and is a handy VM to manage the infrastructure with Pivot3 and VMware tools. vSTAC Manager is the configuration and management software for Pivot3 STACs. The Management Station provides NAT and SMTP roles for POC deployments.
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Horizon View Elements
vCenter: VMware Virtual Center for Virtual Desktops
The vCenter Server is a server that acts as a central administrator for ESX/ESXi hosts that are connected on
a network. A vCenter Server provides the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtual
machines in the datacenter.
View Composer is installed as a software service on the vCenter to allow VMware View to rapidly deploy
multiple linked-clone desktops from a single centralized base image.
ViewConnection: VMware View Connection Server
The VMware View Connection server is a software service that acts as a broker for client connections by
authenticating and then directing incoming user requests to the appropriate virtual desktop.
Golden_Desktop: Reference desktop for Windows 7
The Virtual Desktop has a View Agent that is a software service that is installed on all guest virtual machines
in order to allow them to be managed by VMware View.
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