7.8 Horizon and End User Computing
A vSAN infrastructure is particularly useful for virtual desktops by providing a scale-out model, using predictive repeatable infrastructure blocks. This lowers costs and simplifies operations for the organization. Typically, in a traditional virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment, the storage costs are high. By implementing vSAN for VDI solutions, dramatic cost reductions can be found.
When implementing a vSAN design for VDI, there are specific design considerations which need to be taken into account to be successful:
• Normally VDI workloads are a performance-based workload type, where the recommended designs are built to have as high performance as possible for a large number of VMs. Availability and capacity is not as pertinent to the end configuration, because these are in many cases disposable, and destroyed after use. In addition, they have a predictable footprint and can be tuned to provide more efficient performance.
• When designing for floating linked clones’ workloads, it is important to consider application placement/availability. Floating linked clones, created by VMware View® Composer™, are frequently refreshed resulting in the loss of any user-specific data and applications on the desktop. A network-based profile management system is required to maintain user settings. Applications must be either installed in the parent image or streamed over the network from a file share.
• Dedicated linked clone workloads have similar considerations to that of floating linked clones. Desktops must be refreshed/recomposed regularly to prevent linked clone growth. Profile management and application delivery mechanisms are required to maintain user-specific settings.
• Existing desktop management and patching practices can be used for maintaining full clone desktops. However, full clone desktops require a large disk footprint.