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VMware View Architecture Planning Guide
Figure 4-1. VMware View Building Block
2000 users
shared storage
8 hosts
2 VMware
ESX clusters
VMware
vCenter Server
Shared Storage for View Building Blocks
Storage design considerations are one of the most important elements of a successful View architecture. The
decision that has the greatest architectural impact is whether to use View Composer desktops, which use
linked-clone technology.
The external storage system that VMware vSphere uses can be a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN (storage area
network), or an NFS (Network File System) or CIFS (Common Internet File System) NAS (network-attached
storage). The ESX binaries, virtual machine swap files, and View Composer replicas of parent virtual machines
are stored on this system.
From an architectural perspective, View Composer creates desktop images that share a base image, which can
reduce storage requirements by 50 percent or more. You can further reduce storage requirements by setting a
refresh policy that periodically returns the desktop to its original state and reclaims space that is used to track
changes since the last refresh operation.
You can also reduce operating system disk space by using View Composer persistent disks or a shared file
server as the primary repository for the user profile and user documents. Because View Composer lets you
separate user data from the operating system, you might find that only the persistent disk needs to be backed
up or replicated, which further reduces storage requirements. For more information, see
Requirements with View Composer,"
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Whether to use a separate, dedicated storage component for each building block is a decision you can
OTE
make during a pilot phase. The main consideration is I/Os per second (IOPS). You might experiment with a
tiered-storage strategy across multiple building blocks to maximize performance and cost savings.
For more information, see the best-practices guide called Storage Considerations for VMware View.
Storage Bandwidth Considerations
Although many elements are important to designing a storage system that supports a VMware View
environment, from a server configuration perspective, planning for proper storage bandwidth is essential. You
must also consider the effects of port consolidation hardware.
VMware View environments can occasionally experience I/O storm loads, during which all virtual machines
undertake an activity at the same time. I/O storms can be triggered by guest-based agents such as antivirus
software or software-update agents. I/O storms can also be triggered by human behavior, such as when all
employees log in at nearly the same time in the morning.
44
8 hosts
on page 25.
"Reducing Storage
VMware, Inc.
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