The fluff-free SCCM course that shows you how to install and administrate SCCM within your network, screen-by-screen. Zeroconf networking is an emerging field of work from the Internet Engineering Task. Force, providing IP level networking without needing a network administrator. It provides methods to assign an IP address to a host, discover network services by name or characteristics and to translate between names and.
Contents Executive Summary................. 3 Cisco UCS Mini: Edge-Scale Solution............. 4 Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server............. 5 Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect............. 6 Cisco UCS Manager................
7 Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Platform............ 7 Nimble Storage CS300 Array.............. 8 VMware vSphere 5.5................
12 VMware ESXi 5.5 Hypervisor.............. 12 VMware Horizon 6 with View.............. 13 Test Configuration.................
15 Hardware Components............... 16 Software Components............... 16 Cisco UCS Mini Service Profile Configuration........... 16 VMware Horizon RDS Host Server Virtual Machine Configuration...... 25 Microsoft RDS Server Configuration on VMware Horizon View Administrator Console. 28 Microsoft Windows 7 Golden Image Creation........... 31 Create Base Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Virtual Machine........
31 Optimize the Base Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 Virtual Machine....... 32 Install VMware Horizon View 6.0. Virtual Desktop Agent Software...... 32 Install Any Additional Software.............. 33 Perform Additional VMware Horizon View 6.0 Configuration....... 33 Create a Snapshot for the Virtual Machine.......... 33 Create Customization Specifications for the Virtual Desktop......
34 VMware Horizon View Administrator Pool Creation......... 37 User Workload Simulation: Login VSI............. 39 Testing Procedure................ 40 Solution Validation................. 40 Multiple-Server Scalability and Testing............ 40 Single-Server RDS Host Scalability and Testing..........
51 Conclusion................... 54 For More Information................ 54 About the Author................. 55 Acknowledgements.................
55 Enterprises are seeking to balance the need for large, centralized data centers and the need for excellent user experiences in remote and branch offices with larger user communities. Small and medium-sized businesses are seeking ways to run a compact, self-contained computing infrastructure that is economical and efficient and that offers the potential for growth. Desktop virtualization can help meet these challenges. However, for midsize customers, one of the main barriers to entry is the capital expense required to deploy proof-of-concept (PoC,) pilot, and development environments. For smaller customers, deployment of a desktop virtualization system for fewer than 300 users is cost prohibitive.
To overcome these entry-point barriers, Cisco has developed a self-contained desktop virtualization solution that can host 350 VMware Horizon 6 with View virtual desktops. This document showcases non-persistent linked clone-based virtual desktops and newly supported VMware Horizon Remote Desktop Services Host (RDSH) – based server desktops on a four-blade Cisco UCS ® Mini using Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers with a Nimble Storage system. Note: The results of the testing reported in this document show that the four-blade Cisco UCS Mini with Nimble Storage CS300 easily supported 350 desktop users in a mixed virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and RDSH configuration. On the basis of these and other observations and the per-blade testing performed, four more blades could be added, and this solution could support another 400 (VDI) to 550 (RDS) user desktops for a total single Cisco UCS chassis configuration of 750 to 900 user desktops. The Nimble Storage CS300 can easily support this workload in both capacity and performance.
Cisco UCS Mini Components Delivering performance, versatility, and density without compromise, the Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server (Figure 2) addresses a broad set of workloads, from IT and web infrastructure to distributed databases. View the below link to see how to boost density and performance without compromise using Cisco's new blade server. The enterprise-class Cisco UCS B200 M3 further extends the capabilities of the Cisco UCS portfolio in a half-blade form factor. The Cisco UCS B200 M3 server harnesses the power of the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 and E5-2600 v2 product families and offers up to 768 GB of RAM, two hard drives, and up to eight 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports to deliver exceptional levels of performance, memory expandability, and I/O throughput for nearly all applications. In addition, Cisco UCS has the architectural advantage of not having to power and cool switches in each blade chassis. Having a larger power budget available for blades enables Cisco to design uncompromised expandability and capabilities in its blade servers, as evidenced with the new Cisco UCS B200 M3 and its leading memory and drive capacity, resulting in.
A can house up to eight Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers or a combination of Cisco UCS B200 M3 and other Cisco UCS blade servers. The Cisco UCS B200 M3 offers these features and capabilities: ● Suitable for a wide range of applications and workload requirements ● Exceptional building block for the ● Half-width form factor offering industry-leading benefits and features without compromise ● Cisco UCS VIC 1240 designed for the M3 generation of Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers. Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect (Figure 3) provides the management, LAN, and storage connectivity for the Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis and direct-connect rack-mount servers. It provides the same full-featured Cisco UCS management capabilities and XML API as the full-scale Cisco UCS solution in addition to integrating with Cisco UCS Central Software and Cisco UCS Director.
From a networking perspective, the Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect uses a cut-through architecture, supporting deterministic, low-latency, line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet on all ports, switching capacity of up to 500 Gbps, and 80-Gbps uplink bandwidth for each chassis, independent of packet size and enabled services. Sixteen 10-Gbps links connect to the servers, providing a 20-Gbps link from each to each server. The product family supports Cisco ® low-latency lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric capabilities, increasing the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of Ethernet networks.
The fabric interconnect supports multiple traffic classes over a lossless Ethernet fabric, from the blade through the fabric interconnect. Significant savings in total cost of ownership (TCO) come from a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)–optimized server design in which network interface cards (NICs), host bus adapters (HBAs), cables, and switches can be consolidated. The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect is built to consolidate LAN and storage traffic onto a single unified fabric, eliminating the capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx) associated with multiple parallel networks, different types of adapter cards, switching infrastructure, and cabling within racks.
The unified ports allow the fabric interconnect to support direct connections from Cisco UCS to Fibre Channel, FCoE, and Small Computer System Interface over IP (iSCSI) storage devices. For virtualized environments, the Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect supports Cisco virtualization-aware networking and Cisco Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) architecture.
Cisco Data Center VM-FEX allows the interconnects to provide policy-based virtual machine connectivity, with network properties moving with the virtual machine and a consistent operational model for both physical and virtual environments. The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect is a 10 Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE, and Fibre Channel switch offering up to 500-Gbps throughput and up to four unified ports and one scalability port. Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect hosts and runs Cisco UCS Manager in a highly available configuration, enabling the fabric interconnects to fully manage all Cisco UCS elements.
The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnects support out-of-band management through a dedicated 10/100/1000-Mbps Ethernet management port. Cisco UCS Manager typically is deployed in a clustered active-passive configuration on two Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnects connected through the cluster interconnect built into the chassis. Adaptive Flash combines Nimble Storage Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL) architecture and Nimble Storage InfoSight, the company's innovative data sciences–based approach to the storage lifecycle. Nimble Storage CASL scales performance and capacity transparently and independently. Nimble Storage InfoSight uses the power of deep data analytics to provide customers with precise guidance on the optimal approach to scaling flash memory, CPU, and capacity to meet changing application needs, while helping ensure peak storage health. Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash offers these main benefits: ● Scale storage performance and capacity independently and nondisruptively. ● Achieve enterprise-class flash storage performance and capacity in a small footprint.
● Protect your IT investment by eliminating the need for major system upgrades. ● Sustain peak health for your storage infrastructure with integrated protection, deep-data analytics, and efficient resiliency. As part of the Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash platform, the Nimble Storage CS300 (Figure 4) is well suited for distributed sites of larger organizations or midsize IT departments. It offers exceptional performance and capacity per dollar for workloads such as VDI, Microsoft applications, and virtual server consolidation. The Nimble Storage CS300 array is an excellent platform for VDI and offers the following benefits: ● Adaptive performance: Performance adapts to boot storms and I/O spikes because the flash cache is populated dynamically.
● Cost-effective capacity: Inline compression, high-capacity disk, and zero-copy cloning all deliver capacity reductions of up to 75 percent. ● Business continuity: High availability and integrated data protection reduces downtime for local failures and larger site wise disasters. ● Transparent scaling: Easily scale performance and capacity independently and without downtime. Nimble Storage Volume Management Each volume was thin-provisioned and attached from the Nimble Storage iSCSI SAN to a VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) data store.
With Nimble Storage, you can set a performance policy during or after the creation of a volume. You can choose from a variety of prebuilt policies, or you can create a custom policy. Performance policies specify the configuration of the storage block size, compression, and caching. In Figure 7, the default performance policy has been set to Infra. Nimble Storage Volume Management Backup and recovery are integral pieces of any production environment. Nimble Storage protects data by supporting instant snapshots for easy backup and restoration, along with efficient replication for disaster recovery.
Volumes can be placed on a protection schedule during their creation or at any time afterward. Volume collections offer an efficient way to group volume backups, allowing multiple volumes to have similar snapshot schedules. A volume collection can consist of one or many volumes. In Figure 8, the volume Infra, which houses the VDI infrastructure, is part of a volume collection called Infra-1, which contains multiple hourly snapshots. Only the delta of the original snapshot is written to disk after the data has been compressed, further reducing the space required to house the snapshots.
Nimble Storage Snapshots Nimble Storage CS300 Volume Monitoring The capability to easily view volume activity is crucial to monitoring current storage use, compression rates, connectivity, and performance. Nimble Storage allows the administrator many ways to view, modify, and monitor volume performance and use. The Nimble Storage GUI and command-line interface (CLI) provide administrators the tools and views they need to quickly and accurately perform volume tasks. Volume sizing, maintenance, snapshots, compression, and connectivity can all be viewed and controlled by both the GUI and CLI as can be seen in Figures 9 and 10. Nimble Storage CLI List of Volumes Nimble Storage InfoSight takes a new approach to the storage lifecycle, using the power of deep-data analytics and cloud-based management to deliver true operational efficiency across all storage activities. InfoSight, an integral part of the Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash platform, helps ensure peak health of the storage infrastructure by identifying problems and offering solutions in real time. InfoSight provides expert guidance to help you deploy the right balance of storage resources—dynamically and intelligently—to meet the changing demands of business-critical applications.
Figure 11 shows a volume view of the Nimble Storage CS300 using InfoSight. Nimble Storage InfoSight List of Volumes Nimble Storage CS300, Cisco UCS, and Host Connectivity The iSCSI initiators of the four Cisco UCS blades were divided into four initiator groups with both A-path and B-path iSCSI qualified names (IQNs). Nimble Storage allows a variety of initiator group formats, allowing you to choose the format that best meets the needs of your company’s environment and requirements. Figure 12 shows the initiator groups for all VMware ESXi hosts in the VDI environment. The initiator group is constructed by adding the IQN information for each blade for both the A and B paths. Nimble Storage InfoSight List of Initiator Groups VMware provides virtualization software. VMware’s enterprise software hypervisors for servers—VMware ESX, ESXi, and vSphere—are bare-metal hypervisors that run directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.
VMware vCenter Server for vSphere provides central management, with complete control and visibility into clusters, hosts, virtual machines, storage, networking, and other critical elements of your virtual infrastructure. VMware vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization platform for building private cloud infrastructure. It enables IT to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for the most demanding business-critical applications with lower TCO.
VMware vSphere accelerates the shift to cloud computing for existing data centers and also supports compatible public cloud offerings, forming the foundation for the industry’s only hybrid cloud model, making VMware vSphere a trusted platform for any application. VMware ESXi 5.5 is a bare-metal hypervisor, so it installs directly on top of the physical server and partitions it into multiple virtual machines that can run simultaneously, sharing the physical resources of the underlying server. VMware ESXi, introduced in 2007, delivers industry-leading performance and scalability while setting a new standard for reliability, security, and hypervisor management efficiency.
Nimble Storage SmartStack Physical Reference Architecture (Connectivity View) The objective of the test was to demonstrate how the Cisco UCS Mini Smart Play performance bundle, using a Nimble Storage CS300 array running VMware Horizon 6 with View, supports the required infrastructure for a remote or branch office, the required VMware View control virtual machines, and up to 350 mixed-use-case virtual desktop users at a highly competitive price. Both VMware View floating-assignment linked-clone Microsoft Windows 7 desktops (200 desktops) and VMware Horizon desktops hosted by the Microsoft RDS server (150 desktops) were deployed, demonstrating the flexibility of the solution. Installing RDS Server Remote Desktop Services Note: For RDS server desktop services here, Remote Desktop Session Host is installed. Depending on your requirements, you can install additional services.
Complete the installation of roles and features and reboot the RDS host. The RDS server host is ready for installation of Microsoft Office 2010, VMware Horizon Agent, and other required software. This section presents the steps for configuring the Microsoft RDS server on the VMware Horizon View administrator console.
From the console, create a server farm by choosing Inventory >Resources >Farms and adding the desired farm name: for example, RDS-SERVER as shown here (Figure 41). RDS Desktop Pool Is Created This section presents the steps for creating the Microsoft Windows 7 golden image. Select the VMware ESXi host in the infrastructure cluster and create a virtual machine to use as the golden image for the Microsoft Windows 7 OS.
For this test, the Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit OS was installed. For the virtual machine, the following parameters were used: Memory: 1536 MB Processor: 1 vCPU Hard disk: 18 GB Network adapter: 1 VMXNET3-type adapter attached to a standard switch 2. Right-click Win-7-Golden-Image-VDI–Virtual Machine Properties and select the Hardware tab to attach the Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 ISO (Figure 50). Attach Microsoft Windows 7 (32- or 64-Bit) ISO Image to Create Microsoft Windows 7 Golden Image 3.
Right-click Win-7-Golden-Image-VDI–Virtual Machine Properties and choose Edit Settings. Go to the Options tab.
For Boot Options, select Force BIOS Setup. Click OK and complete the installation. After the installation is complete, log in to the Microsoft Windows 7 golden image virtual machine you created and configure the IP address, join the domain, and restart the virtual machine. Shut down the Microsoft Windows 7 golden image virtual machine. This completes the process of creating the golden image virtual machine Follow this link to optimize the Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 32-bit virtual machine: 1. Download the VMware Horizon View 6.0. Virtual Desktop Agent software from this link:.
Open the installer VMware-viewagent-6.0.0-1884746.exe for the 32-bit OS or VMware-viewagent-x86_64-6.0.0-1884746.exe for the 64-bit OS to install the agent (Figure 51). Install the Agent and Complete the Installation 1. Install any additional software required in your base Microsoft Windows image.
For this test, Microsoft Office 2010 was installed. In addition, the Login VSI Target software package was installed to facilitate workload testing. Reboot the virtual machine. Install any service packs and hot fixes required for the software components that you added. Shut down the virtual machine. A snapshot is required for virtual desktop deployment.
To take a snapshot, shut down the Microsoft Windows 7 golden image virtual machine. Right-click Win-7-Golden-Image-VDI–Virtual Machine Properties and choose Take Virtual Machine Snapshot. Provide a name and description for the snapshot (Figure 54). The Virtual Machine Pool Is Complete A critical factor in validating a desktop virtualization deployment is identifying a real-world user workload that is easy for customers to replicate and standardized across platforms so that customers can realistically test the impact of a variety of worker tasks. To accurately represent a real-world user workload, a tool is needed to measure in-session response time and provide an objective way to measure the expected user experience for individual desktops throughout large-scale test workloads, including login storms. The Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) 3.7 methodology, designed for benchmarking server-based computing (SBC) and VDI environments is completely platform and protocol independent and hence allows customers to easily replicate the testing results in their own environments.
Login VSI calculates an index based on the number of simultaneous sessions that can be run on a single machine. Login VSI simulates a medium-sized-workload user (also known as a knowledge worker) running applications such as Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010, Internet Explorer 8 including an Adobe Flash video applet, and Adobe Acrobat Reader Note: For the purposes of this test, applications were installed locally, not streamed through VMware ThinApp. As in real user sessions, the scripted Login VSI session leaves multiple applications open at the same time.
The medium-sized workload is the default workload in Login VSI and was used for this testing. This workload emulated a medium-level knowledge working using Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer, printing, and viewing PDFs. ● After a session is started, the medium workload repeats every 12 minutes. ● During each loop, the response time is measured every 2 minutes. The Oregon Trail Hd Apk Download more. ● The medium workload opens up to five applications simultaneously.
● The typing rate is 160 milliseconds (ms) for each character. ● Approximately 2 minutes of idle time is included to simulate real-world users. ● Each loop opens and uses: ◦ Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010: 10 messages are browsed. ◦ Microsoft Internet Explorer: One instance is left open (BBC.co.uk); one instance is browsed to Wired.com, Lonely planet.com, and a processor-intensive 480p Adobe Flash application (gettheglass.com).
◦ Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010: One instance is used to measure response time, and one instance is used to review and edit a document. ◦ Bullzip PDF printer and Acrobat Reader: The Microsoft Word document is printed and reviewed as a PDF.
◦ Microsoft Excel 2007 or 2010: A very large randomized spreadsheet is opened. ◦ Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or 2010: A presentation is reviewed and edited. ◦ 7-zip: Using the command-line version, the output of the session is zipped. You can obtain additional information about on Login VSI. The test procedure described here was used for each test cycle in this study to help ensure consistent results.
The Cisco Test Protocol for Virtual Desktops was employed to help ensure that the solution delivers an outstanding end-user experience. Figures 68 through 92 show the test results. Nimble Storage CS300 Array Write Latency for 350 Users and a Mixed Workload (Microseconds) The scalability of single-server RDS Host sessions on a single Cisco UCS B200 M3 server was tested. This testing determined that 140 RDS Host sessions can be scaled on a single server using seven RDS host server virtual machines.
If more sessions or users are required, use the scalability value for the single Cisco UCS B200 M3 server and add one or more Cisco UCS B200 M3 blade servers to provide the needed capacity. Figures 93 through 97 show the results of this testing. ESXTOP Nonkernel Megabytes Chart for 140 Users: Test Phase Cisco UCS Mini and Nimble Storage together are an excellent solution for remote and branch offices hosting VMware Horizon–based virtual desktops.
The Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers add the flexibility needed to run both infrastructure services and Horizoon View Supported RDS Host server virtual machine workloads on the same blade. Customers have the freedom to mix and match the types of virtual desktop sessions that best fit their organizations. The Nimble Storage CS300 array provides an agile storage platform that meets the requirements of both Microsoft RDS server–based sessions and traditional VMware Horizon linked clones in addition to all the persistent user data. When you use Cisco UCS Mini with onboard Cisco UCS Manager software in combination with Cisco UCS Central Software, you can manage the remote or branch office as if it were part of the corporate data center.
● Cisco UCS B-Series Servers ◦ ● Cisco UCS Manager configuration ◦ ● Cisco UCS Mini ◦ ● Nimble Storage CS Series ◦ ● VMware Horizon 6 reference documents ◦ ◦ ◦ ● VMware View 5 with PCoIP network optimization guide ◦ ● Microsoft Windows 7 optimization guide for virtual desktops: ◦ ● VMware vSphere ESXi and vCenter Server 5.5 documentation: ◦ Ramesh Guduru, Engineer/Developer, Cisco Systems Inc. Ramesh Guduru, Virtualization System Engineer in CSPG, UCS Product Management and DC Solutions Engineering, Cisco Systems Inc. Ramesh has around 10 years of experience in VMware View thin client administration, configuration and optimization of virtual desktop environment, Cisco Unified Computing System and Storage.
Ramesh’s skill set include core VMware applications in the virtual environment focusing in system design and implementation of virtualization components. Neil Glick, Nimble Storage, Inc. Bhumik Patel, VMware, Inc. Mike Brennan, Cisco Systems, Inc.