Your VDI footprint just got a lot bigger. Need some help?
(2020/11/04)
- Reference: 1604478613
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/04/vdi_footprint_intel/
- Source link:
Sponsored The pandemic has propelled organisations of all sizes to drastically adapt the way they deliver IT services to their workforce. This has turned the spotlight on virtual desktop technology, which separates the end users from where their applications are actually running and enables them to be accessed remotely.
With virtual desktops, there are two routes that organisations can take to provide the service: build and host your own virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in your data centre, or go down the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) route and have a cloud service provider host the desktops for you.
For many years, VDI was the only option for companies wanting to operate virtual desktops, which was pitched as a way of saving money on the long-term costs of operating a fleet of desktops and laptops. However, many adopters found that early VDI deployments did not offer a good user experience, and hence it was often limited to serving task-based worker roles.
DaaS is a more modern version, and has the advantages of other public cloud services in that it is essentially an online service that requires no additional infrastructure at the customer’s premises. No hefty up-front expenditure is required; organisations can typically procure through subscription-based licensing or via a consumption contract that charges extra only for the resources over and above a minimum commitment.
But perhaps the chief advantage of DaaS is the ability to scale relatively quickly and easily, should the need arise, as was the case with the COVID-19 lockdown when organisations had to shutter their offices and scramble to support employees working at home.
That said, some organisations such as financial services have workloads and associated data that are too sensitive to host outside their own data centres. In these cases, the companies may deploy a mix of VDI and DaaS in a hybrid cloud arrangement.
Choose your infrastructure carefully
Evaluating infrastructure options for an on-premises VDI solution can be complex and time consuming. For example, the number of virtual desktops each server node can support will determine the minimum number of nodes required for your VDI server cluster. Also, VDI places heavy demands on storage, because of the potential I/O bottleneck that can arise when many virtual desktops try to access storage simultaneously, and because the peak level of IOPS are often orders of magnitude higher than the average.
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one solution that has developed over the past decade. This takes a building block approach based on servers equipped with internal storage and virtualizes the compute and storage across a cluster to provide a pool of resources. With solid state drives (SSDs), HCI can deliver the compute and storage performance necessary for virtual machines and especially VDI. However, determining the optimum configuration may be complicated.
Fortunately, a shortcut of sorts is provided by Intel in the shape of Intel® Select Solutions, a set of verified configurations for specific workloads that speeds selection and deployment of data centre infrastructure. Organisations can work with system builders or system integrators to adapt the blueprints that best fit their budget and requirements.
The [1]Intel Select Solutions for VMware Horizon VDI on VMware vSAN are effectively templates for hyperconverged infrastructure to operate VMware’s Horizon 7 VDI platform. This runs atop VMWare’s familiar vSphere hypervisor and the vSAN software-defined storage layer.
For the hardware, the solutions specify Second Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, Intel® 3D NAND SSDs using NVMe interfaces, Intel® Optane™ technology, and high-speed Intel® Ethernet adapters. Intel claims the solutions are optimised to meet the performance requirements of both knowledge users and power users today, with additional overhead to support future needs, such as software updates that brings more features but will also require more computational power.
A Base configuration delivers a price performance balance optimised for the mix of applications typically used by knowledge users, while a Plus configuration specifies a higher performance Xeon® Scalable processor and [2]Intel® Optane™Persistent Memory , which has been developed as a cost-effective way of supporting workloads that need a greater memory space. If the organisation runs out of resources or needs to scale relatively quickly, it can expand using DaaS and public cloud resources. This highlights another advantage of choosing Intel® Select Solutions for VMware Horizon VDI on VMware vSAN - the customer has the option to expand to VMware’s cloud-hosted version, VMware Horizon Cloud.
Configuring for user workloads
User experience is a crucial aspect for ensuring employee acceptance of virtual desktops. But guaranteeing a seamless remote experience for the workforce is a major challenge for IT departments. It can have implications for the infrastructure hosting the virtual desktops and also for the client devices the employees use to access their desktop and applications.
Intel, for example, categorises workers into a number of user personas based on their roles and the requirements associated with those roles. So, a data entry user will typically have applications that place a relatively light processing burden and so their desktop might be assigned a single virtual CPU and 4GB of memory.
Other user personas and their workloads call for more resources, so an information worker using Microsoft Office applications and video conferencing should be allocated four virtual CPUs and 8GB to 16GB of memory, according to Intel, and a power user will need even more. The mix of persona types feeds back into the hardware requirements, because the more information workers or power users you have, the more memory and CPU resources your infrastructure will need.
The employee VDI endpoint device also plays a crucial role. In the early days of VDI, thin clients were often used. These are appliance-like devices designed for displaying remote desktops or running applications inside a browser.
Modern workplaces have seen an influx of new mobile device-like tablets, and many of these can serve as the endpoint for a virtual desktop session, with the addition of a software client that links to the back-end VDI or DaaS infrastructure and displays the remote desktop. However, Intel argues organisations are better served by enterprise-grade devices that have the performance, reliability, security and manageability capabilities to ensure that employees get the best user experience and can continue to do their job, even when working remotely using virtual desktop sessions.
This means equipping staff with devices based on the [3]Intel vPro® platform , which features integrated security capabilities, and incorporates Intel® Active Management Technology ( [4]Intel® AMT ). This technology enables IT staff to reach into an endpoint device and ensure it is configured correctly or fix any problems the remote user might be having.
VDI and DaaS may also help IT departments with some challenges that are less obvious at first glance. For example, migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is proving to be a headache for some organisations, and not just because of greater demands on hardware. Windows 10 is provided as a service and is updated with new features twice per year, rather than the previous practice of Windows releases every three to five years.
These updates have the potential to break applications, which therefore have to be validated for each release. However, with VDI and DaaS platforms, applications are typically managed separately from the desktop virtual machines images, and layered onto the desktop using application containers as required when the user logs in. Containerising applications this way insulates them from changes to the operating system to a certain extent and removes much of the need for revalidation.
The Covid-19 lockdown has taught organisations a lesson; that they need to have much better business continuity and resilience measures in place. Ensuring that your employees can continue to work remotely and securely whatever fate may throw at you means that IT is vitally important, and virtual desktops look set to play a bigger part in this. Whether that is delivered on-premises via VDI or from the cloud via DaaS or a combination of the two is up to the organisation.
Whichever route organisations take, Intel technologies play a key role in delivering virtual desktops, from servers with Xeon® Scalable processors and Optane™ Persistent Memory ensuring performance for hosting user sessions, to endpoints based on Intel vPro® technology to deliver a satisfactory end user experience with enterprise-grade security and manageability.
Sponsored by Intel
[1] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_cloud_vmware-horizon-vdi
[2] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_optane_dc-persistent-memory
[3] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_morewithvpro
[4] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_active_management_technology
With virtual desktops, there are two routes that organisations can take to provide the service: build and host your own virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in your data centre, or go down the desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) route and have a cloud service provider host the desktops for you.
For many years, VDI was the only option for companies wanting to operate virtual desktops, which was pitched as a way of saving money on the long-term costs of operating a fleet of desktops and laptops. However, many adopters found that early VDI deployments did not offer a good user experience, and hence it was often limited to serving task-based worker roles.
DaaS is a more modern version, and has the advantages of other public cloud services in that it is essentially an online service that requires no additional infrastructure at the customer’s premises. No hefty up-front expenditure is required; organisations can typically procure through subscription-based licensing or via a consumption contract that charges extra only for the resources over and above a minimum commitment.
But perhaps the chief advantage of DaaS is the ability to scale relatively quickly and easily, should the need arise, as was the case with the COVID-19 lockdown when organisations had to shutter their offices and scramble to support employees working at home.
That said, some organisations such as financial services have workloads and associated data that are too sensitive to host outside their own data centres. In these cases, the companies may deploy a mix of VDI and DaaS in a hybrid cloud arrangement.
Choose your infrastructure carefully
Evaluating infrastructure options for an on-premises VDI solution can be complex and time consuming. For example, the number of virtual desktops each server node can support will determine the minimum number of nodes required for your VDI server cluster. Also, VDI places heavy demands on storage, because of the potential I/O bottleneck that can arise when many virtual desktops try to access storage simultaneously, and because the peak level of IOPS are often orders of magnitude higher than the average.
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one solution that has developed over the past decade. This takes a building block approach based on servers equipped with internal storage and virtualizes the compute and storage across a cluster to provide a pool of resources. With solid state drives (SSDs), HCI can deliver the compute and storage performance necessary for virtual machines and especially VDI. However, determining the optimum configuration may be complicated.
Fortunately, a shortcut of sorts is provided by Intel in the shape of Intel® Select Solutions, a set of verified configurations for specific workloads that speeds selection and deployment of data centre infrastructure. Organisations can work with system builders or system integrators to adapt the blueprints that best fit their budget and requirements.
The [1]Intel Select Solutions for VMware Horizon VDI on VMware vSAN are effectively templates for hyperconverged infrastructure to operate VMware’s Horizon 7 VDI platform. This runs atop VMWare’s familiar vSphere hypervisor and the vSAN software-defined storage layer.
For the hardware, the solutions specify Second Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, Intel® 3D NAND SSDs using NVMe interfaces, Intel® Optane™ technology, and high-speed Intel® Ethernet adapters. Intel claims the solutions are optimised to meet the performance requirements of both knowledge users and power users today, with additional overhead to support future needs, such as software updates that brings more features but will also require more computational power.
A Base configuration delivers a price performance balance optimised for the mix of applications typically used by knowledge users, while a Plus configuration specifies a higher performance Xeon® Scalable processor and [2]Intel® Optane™Persistent Memory , which has been developed as a cost-effective way of supporting workloads that need a greater memory space. If the organisation runs out of resources or needs to scale relatively quickly, it can expand using DaaS and public cloud resources. This highlights another advantage of choosing Intel® Select Solutions for VMware Horizon VDI on VMware vSAN - the customer has the option to expand to VMware’s cloud-hosted version, VMware Horizon Cloud.
Configuring for user workloads
User experience is a crucial aspect for ensuring employee acceptance of virtual desktops. But guaranteeing a seamless remote experience for the workforce is a major challenge for IT departments. It can have implications for the infrastructure hosting the virtual desktops and also for the client devices the employees use to access their desktop and applications.
Intel, for example, categorises workers into a number of user personas based on their roles and the requirements associated with those roles. So, a data entry user will typically have applications that place a relatively light processing burden and so their desktop might be assigned a single virtual CPU and 4GB of memory.
Other user personas and their workloads call for more resources, so an information worker using Microsoft Office applications and video conferencing should be allocated four virtual CPUs and 8GB to 16GB of memory, according to Intel, and a power user will need even more. The mix of persona types feeds back into the hardware requirements, because the more information workers or power users you have, the more memory and CPU resources your infrastructure will need.
The employee VDI endpoint device also plays a crucial role. In the early days of VDI, thin clients were often used. These are appliance-like devices designed for displaying remote desktops or running applications inside a browser.
Modern workplaces have seen an influx of new mobile device-like tablets, and many of these can serve as the endpoint for a virtual desktop session, with the addition of a software client that links to the back-end VDI or DaaS infrastructure and displays the remote desktop. However, Intel argues organisations are better served by enterprise-grade devices that have the performance, reliability, security and manageability capabilities to ensure that employees get the best user experience and can continue to do their job, even when working remotely using virtual desktop sessions.
This means equipping staff with devices based on the [3]Intel vPro® platform , which features integrated security capabilities, and incorporates Intel® Active Management Technology ( [4]Intel® AMT ). This technology enables IT staff to reach into an endpoint device and ensure it is configured correctly or fix any problems the remote user might be having.
VDI and DaaS may also help IT departments with some challenges that are less obvious at first glance. For example, migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is proving to be a headache for some organisations, and not just because of greater demands on hardware. Windows 10 is provided as a service and is updated with new features twice per year, rather than the previous practice of Windows releases every three to five years.
These updates have the potential to break applications, which therefore have to be validated for each release. However, with VDI and DaaS platforms, applications are typically managed separately from the desktop virtual machines images, and layered onto the desktop using application containers as required when the user logs in. Containerising applications this way insulates them from changes to the operating system to a certain extent and removes much of the need for revalidation.
The Covid-19 lockdown has taught organisations a lesson; that they need to have much better business continuity and resilience measures in place. Ensuring that your employees can continue to work remotely and securely whatever fate may throw at you means that IT is vitally important, and virtual desktops look set to play a bigger part in this. Whether that is delivered on-premises via VDI or from the cloud via DaaS or a combination of the two is up to the organisation.
Whichever route organisations take, Intel technologies play a key role in delivering virtual desktops, from servers with Xeon® Scalable processors and Optane™ Persistent Memory ensuring performance for hosting user sessions, to endpoints based on Intel vPro® technology to deliver a satisfactory end user experience with enterprise-grade security and manageability.
Sponsored by Intel
[1] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_cloud_vmware-horizon-vdi
[2] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_optane_dc-persistent-memory
[3] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_morewithvpro
[4] https://go.theregister.com/k/intel_active_management_technology