Like most of the VMware .1 releases, it’s chalk full of sorts of goodies. Below are new tidbits that make up View 5.1. The pictures below are from the beta but for the most part everything should still apply.
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May
02
View 5.1 – Goodies and Gottcha’s
Apr
29
Using Pure Flash or Cache for VDI
Over the last couple of days of Storage Field Day the conversation of Flash vs Cache has been discussed multiple times. Flash vs Cache is an interesting topic for VDI. Do you want to put your whole work load into Flash or use Flash as a Cache and balance the workload with traditional hard drives?
For the purpose of this article I am only listing the vendors that were at Storage Field Day.
Below is list of vendors that are using Pure Flash for their Storage Arrays:
Pure Storage
Nimbus Data
Violin Memory
Kaminario
Below is a list of vendors that are using Flash as a Cache
The vendors that are offering a end to end solution with Flash are trying to bring down the cost of Flash by using techniques like duplication, commodity hardware, build your own drives and will talk about power savings. The Flash as Cache camp talk overall cheaper cost per GB, need for cheap disk and that sequential IO are still better on spinning disk.
If you’re after an clear winner for Flash vs Cache it’s just not the simple. The feature sets between all the different vendors vary quit a lot and have different value propositions. I think it’s important to break down what you need for a VDI solution and make your decision based on that.
Replication – You need the ability get user data and golden desktop images offsite and protected. This doesn’t have to fast disk all.
Need for Speed – Your replica’s and linked clones need to be fast. Today’s end users are getting SSD in their laptops. Comparing people’s 5 year old computers to VDI are coming to a close. Your virtual desktop needs to deliver the best performance, consistently.
User Data – profile data, user documents, shortcuts and other users errata. Doesn’t need to be on fast disk unless your making use of redirection. If you’re copying data onto the desktop from a repository you don’t want this to be the bottle neck.
The Trash – Page files, swap files and temp files. They take up lots of space so either you need lots of disk or way to dedupe the data.
Applications – An array providing SMB\CIFS share can go along way for distributing your applications to the desktops. This data\IO will land on the linked clones for the most part but an active non-persistent environment can cause a heavy load on your distribution method of choice.
Over the three days at Storage Field Day I cam really close at changing my stance on which makes the best option. Both Pure Storage and Nimbus have some good products but I still think you need disk. If you where only going to go with one array vendor for VDI I would have to go with Flash as a Cache option. To have only one array vendor in your overall solution can go along way with troubleshooting and managing your environment.
User data is going to continue to grow and I believe more of unstructured, hard to dedupe data will be apart of that make up. Also lots of data will be at rest and never be touched after it’s created, I believe this lends well to a flash as cache scenario. Having the disk in the system also helps for replication if you want to use the standby array for other uses during the day. The replicated data can sit on the disk while other systems can use the flash.
All of the Full SSD vendors of their own unique value proposition like Nimbus with there ultra low cost drives and full feature set of offerings and Pure with their ultra safe no virtual machine never UN-aligned again and dedupe upfront features but I still think you need the spinning rust.
Apr
26
Installing or Upgrading View Composer – Errors
On April 22, VMware added a Knowledge Base article for an error View Composer
Installing or upgrading View Composer fails with error: The wizard was interrupted before VMware View Composer could be completely installed. This issue occurs if the user account that is used to install View Composer is not the same as the account used to install vCenter Server and the user account does not have sufficient permissions to modify the MachineKeys directory.
I haven’t experinced the error above but I have ran into the following error when upgrading View Composer, Installing VMware View Composer fails with the error: Error: 28014 or 1603. This issue occurs when a unclean uninstallation of the VMware View Composer services, which might have left behind registry entries that bind the certificate to a TCP port and does not allow another certificate to be bound to that port.
Hope you get quick resolution if you run into these issues.
Apr
24
IDV vs VDI: Off The Cuff Thoughts
I was recently asked about my thoughts on Intelligent Desktop Virtualization(IDV) like VMware View Local Mode and products like NxTop by Virtual Computer. The first thought that comes to my head is to avoid it like the plague. Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors have their place with the right use case but I don’t think this is for the majority of people.
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Apr
17
Storage Field Day #1 – Tech Field Day Event – YES & YES
I am lucky to have been invited back to another Tech Field Day Event, Storage Field Day #1. When I was trying to get time off work either by the way of holiday time or getting work to cover the days my boss asked me, what would the company get out of it? It was kind of a deer in the headlights question because of my love of technology. It was like if someone offered you an IPAD3, you response is yes right away. Storage being a very important part of overall IT infrastructure, I knew I wanted to go. Below is my official response.
This three day event will showcase the latest in storage architecture, provide answers for selecting the right storage based on business requirements and will have a chance to pick the brains of the top independent experts. Running storage from companies like EMC and NetApp is great but usually these industry juggernauts are not able adjust to change as quickly as their start-up brothers. Newer companies and start-ups can provide great insight into the future and direction of the storage market.
The Solid State Storage Symposium on the first day of the event will help address questions if we should use Solid-state storage as cache or a high end tier of storage for our current vendor in the data centre. It will also give insight into an emerging field that is littered with new companies all stating they‘re the best thing since sliced bread. Not all things are recreated equal and therefore many advantages and drawbacks need to be considered before implementation.
For myself, Day 2 and Day 3 of the event are seeing what can help me drive virtualization at our company and speed up deployment for our VDI environment. Users want a reliability system, they don’t care what company is running on the backend but they want the same performance day in and day out, if not faster. What techniques can we take away to help our own time to market with a solution or help reduce our risk footprint? I hope to be able to finds to augment our current environment without breaking the bank.
Storage Field day will also provide networking with industry experts/veterans that will give a chance to see what other people are doing in their perspective industries. See what they’re having success with and what to avoid. Whitepapers are great but seldom offer the one point that will make or break a solution.
This will be a great learning event. Check out the live stream at http://techfieldday.com/2012/sfd1/
Other People at the Event you should follow:
Delegate
▪Howard Marks www.deepstorage.net http://twitter.com/DeepStorageNet
▪Fabio Rapposelli http://juku.it/en http://twitter.com/fabiorapposelli
▪Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com http://twitter.com/chrismevans
▪Ray Lucchesi http://www.RayOnStorage.com http://twitter.com/RayLucchesi
▪Scott D. Lowe Techrepublic, virtualizationadmin.com http://twitter.com/Otherscottlowe
▪Hans De Leenheer http://hansdeleenheer.blogspot.com http://twitter.com/HansDeLeenheer
▪Derek Schaulandtechhelp.cybercreations.net http://twitter.com/webjunkie
▪Robin Harris http://storagemojo.com/ http://twitter.com/StorageMojo
▪Nigel Poulton http://infosmackpodcasts.com http://twitter.com/nigelpoulton
▪Robert Novak http://rsts11.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/gallifreyan
▪Matt Vogt http://blog.mattvogt.net http://twitter.com/mattvogt
▪Arjan Timmerman http://www.vdicloud.nl http://twitter.com/Arjantim
