Nutanix Reference Architecture VMWare Horizon DaaS 6.1

VMware Horizon
DaaS 6.1
Nutanix Reference Architecture
Version 1.1 • August 2016 • RA-2016

VMware Horizon DaaS 6.1
Copyright
Copyright 2016 Nutanix, Inc.
Nutanix, Inc.
1740 Technology Drive, Suite 150
San Jose, CA 95110
All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual
property laws.
Nutanix is a trademark of Nutanix, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other
marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Copyright | 2
Contents
1. Executive Summary................................................................................ 5
2. Audience and Purpose........................................................................... 6
3. Solution Overview................................................................................... 8
3.1. Web-Scale Architecture Powering Desktops for Service Providers...............................8
3.2. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview................................................................ 9
3.3. Prism Central Offers Greater Flexibility and Security..................................................13
3.4. Nutanix and VMware................................................................................................... 14
3.5. VMware Horizon DaaS 6.1..........................................................................................16
4. Solution Design..................................................................................... 18
4.1. Solution Design Considerations.................................................................................. 23
4.2. Management Cluster and Horizon DaaS Service Provider Sizing...............................23
4.3. Desktop Sizing.............................................................................................................26
4.4. Desktop Optimizations................................................................................................. 27
4.5. Desktop Sizing Formula.............................................................................................. 27
4.6. Shadow Clones............................................................................................................29
4.7. Network........................................................................................................................ 30
4.8. Logical Network Design...............................................................................................31
5. Validation and Benchmarking..............................................................33

5.1. Nutanix Configuration.................................................................................................. 33
5.2. Login VSI Benchmark..................................................................................................35
6. Validation Results................................................................................. 38
6.1. Full-Clone Desktops with MapReduce Dedupe on an NX-3460..................................38
6.2. Noisy Neighbor Problem..............................................................................................40
6.3. Boot Storms................................................................................................................. 42
6.4. Storage Efficiency with Full Clones.............................................................................43
6.5. Inline Deduplication Savings....................................................................................... 44
6.6. App Volumes with Inline Compression........................................................................45
3
7. Solution Application..............................................................................48
7.1. Scenario: Shared Cluster for Small Tenants...............................................................48
7.2. Availability Domains.....................................................................................................51
7.3. Scenario: Private Clusters for Tenants....................................................................... 52
8. Conclusion............................................................................................. 55
Appendix......................................................................................................................... 56
Configuration....................................................................................................................... 56
About the Author.................................................................................................................56
About Nutanix......................................................................................................................57
List of Figures................................................................................................................58
List of Tables................................................................................................................. 60
4
1. Executive Summary
This reference architecture highlights the use of the Nutanix enterprise cloud platform to
seamlessly scale and deliver consistent robust performance for VMware Horizon DaaS (Desktop
as a Service) 6.1. As the acronym suggests, DaaS is the delivery of virtual desktops on a
subscription basis, where the service provider is responsible for managing the infrastructure.
DaaS can be deployed in single or, more commonly, multitenant environments, depending on the
user needs and the number of desktops.
The Nutanix platform eliminates performance bottlenecks while enabling multitenant
management and protection from noisy tenant neighbors. In this document, we demonstrate
the storage efficiency of Nutanix while provisioning full-clone desktops with vStorage APIs for
Array Integration (VAAI). The Nutanix platform delivers tremendous value for end-users, service
providers, and IT management by providing a great user experience with predictable costs. The
highlights of our testing results include:
• Linear scaling with over 100 Login VSI 4.1 knowledge worker desktops (two vCPUs) per node
—supporting 400 users in 2RU, including compute and storage.
• Room to grow—VSImax was not reached at 400 users (running four Nutanix nodes with data
reduction turned on). Only 3 percent reduction in user density was seen in steady state when
combined with App Volumes.
• Measured truly linear user scaling without any bottlenecks for storage performance or Horizon
DaaS.
• Under four minutes to boot over 400 desktops.
• Protection against noisy-neighbor tenant desktops.
• Nutanix data reduction features improve capacity utilization by 59 times.
1. Executive Summary | 5
2. Audience and Purpose

This reference architecture is part of the Nutanix Solutions Library. It is intended for architects
and systems engineers responsible for designing, managing, and supporting Nutanix
infrastructures running VMware Horizon DaaS. Readers should already be familiar with vSphere,
Horizon DaaS, and Nutanix.
This document covers the following subject areas:
• Overview of the Nutanix solution for delivering multitenancy.
• Overview of VMware Horizon DaaS and its use cases.
• The benefits of VMware Horizon DaaS on Nutanix.
• Architecting a complete VMware Horizon DaaS on the Nutanix platform.
• Sizing guidance for scaling VMware Horizon DaaS deployments on Nutanix.
• Design and configuration considerations when architecting a VMware Horizon DaaS on
Nutanix.
• Benchmarking VMware Horizon DaaS performance on Nutanix using Windows 7 with Elastic
Deduplication Engine and inline compression turned on.
Figure 1: The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform: Hyperconvergence and Linear Scale
2. Audience and Purpose | 6

Table 1: Document Version History
Version Number Published Notes

1.0 April 2015 Original publication.
1.1 August 2016 Updated platform overview.
2. Audience and Purpose | 7

3. Solution Overview
3.1. Web-Scale Architecture Powering Desktops for Service Providers

Nutanix delivers an out-of-the-box infrastructure solution for virtual desktops that eliminates
the high cost, variable performance, and extensive risk of conventional solutions. The Nutanix
enterprise cloud platform is a turnkey solution that comes ready to run VMware Horizon DaaS.
The Nutanix platform’s unique architecture allows enterprises to scale their virtual desktops
from tens to tens of thousands of desktops linearly, providing customers with a simple path to
enterprise deployment with the agility of public cloud providers.
Figure 2: Nutanix Web-Scale Properties
The Nutanix platform supports every type of VDI user, from task and knowledge workers to
power and data scientists. Whether you have persistent desktops that are customized for
knowledge workers, remote or shared virtual desktops for a general workforce, or the most 3D
graphics-intensive users, Nutanix provides the right resources in a single-box solution.
3. Solution Overview | 8
3.2. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview

Nutanix Acropolis Overview
Nutanix delivers a hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for virtualization and
cloud environments. This solution brings the performance and economic benefits of web-scale
architecture to the enterprise through the Nutanix enterprise cloud platform, which is composed
of two product families—Nutanix Acropolis and Nutanix Prism.
Attributes of this solution include:
• Storage and compute resources hyperconverged on x86 servers.
• System intelligence located in software.
• Data, metadata, and operations fully distributed across entire cluster of x86 servers.
• Self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.
• API-based automation and rich analytics.
Nutanix Acropolis can be broken down into three foundational components: the Distributed
Storage Fabric (DSF), the App Mobility Fabric (AMF), and AHV. Prism provides one-click
infrastructure management for virtual environments running on Acropolis. Acropolis is hypervisor
agnostic, supporting two third-party hypervisors—ESXi and Hyper-V—in addition to the native
Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.
Figure 3: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform
Distributed Storage Fabric

The Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) delivers enterprise data storage as an on-demand
service by employing a highly distributed software architecture. Nutanix eliminates the need for
traditional SAN and NAS solutions while delivering a rich set of VM-centric software-defined
services. Specifically, the DSF handles the data path of such features as snapshots, clones, high
availability, disaster recovery, deduplication, compression, and erasure coding.
The DSF operates via an interconnected network of Controller VMs (CVMs) that form a Nutanix
cluster, and every node in the cluster has access to data from shared SSD, HDD, and cloud
resources. The hypervisors and the DSF communicate using the industry-standard NFS, iSCSI,
and SMB3 protocols.
App Mobility Fabric

The App Mobility Fabric (AMF) is the Nutanix virtualization solution that allows apps to move
across hypervisors. When virtual machines can move between hypervisors (for example,
between VMware ESXi and AHV), administrators can host production and dev/test environments
concurrently on different hypervisors and shift workloads between them as needed. AMF is
implemented via a distributed, scale-out service that runs inside the CVM on every node within a
Nutanix cluster.
AHV
Nutanix ships with a hardened, enterprise-ready hypervisor based on proven open source
technology. AHV is managed with the Prism interface, a robust REST API, and an interactive
command-line interface called aCLI (Acropolis CLI). These tools combine to eliminate the
management complexity typically associated with open source environments and allow out-of-
the-box virtualization on Nutanix—all without the licensing fees associated with other hypervisors.
Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Acropolis does not rely on traditional SAN or NAS storage or expensive storage network
interconnects. It combines highly dense storage and server compute (CPU and RAM) into a
single platform building block. Each building block is based on industry-standard Intel processor
technology and delivers a unified, scale-out, shared-nothing architecture with no single points of
failure.
The Nutanix solution has no LUNs to manage, no RAID groups to configure, and no complicated
storage multipathing to set up. All storage management is VM-centric, and the DSF optimizes
I/O at the VM virtual disk level. There is one shared pool of storage that includes flash-based
SSDs for high performance and HDDs for affordable capacity. The file system automatically tiers
data across different types of storage devices using intelligent data placement algorithms. These
algorithms make sure that the most frequently used data is available in memory or in flash for the
fastest possible performance.
Figure 4: Information Life Cycle Management
With the DSF, a CVM writes data to local flash memory for fast acknowledgment; the CVM also
handles read operations locally for reduced latency and fast data delivery.
The figure below shows an overview of the Nutanix architecture, including the hypervisor of your
choice (AHV, ESXi, or Hyper-V), user VMs, the Nutanix storage CVM, and its local disk devices.
Each CVM connects directly to the local storage controller and its associated disks. Using local
storage controllers on each host localizes access to data through the DSF, thereby reducing
storage I/O latency. The DSF replicates writes synchronously to at least one other Nutanix node
in the system, distributing data throughout the cluster for resiliency and availability. Replication
factor 2 (RF2) creates two identical data copies in the cluster, and replication factor 3 (RF3)
creates three identical data copies. Having a local storage controller on each node ensures that
storage performance as well as storage capacity increase linearly with node addition.
Figure 5: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture
Local storage for each Nutanix node in the architecture appears to the hypervisor as one large
pool of shared storage. This allows the DSF to support all key virtualization features. Data
localization maintains performance and quality of service (QoS) on each host, minimizing the
effect noisy VMs have on their neighbors’ performance. This functionality allows for large,
mixed-workload clusters that are more efficient and more resilient to failure when compared to
traditional architectures with standalone, shared, and dual-controller storage arrays.
When VMs move from one hypervisor to another, such as during live migration and high
availability, the now local CVM serves a newly migrated VM’s data. When reading old data
(stored on the now remote CVM) the local CVM forwards the I/O request to the remote CVM. All
write I/O occurs locally. The DSF detects that I/O is occurring from a different node and migrates
the data to the local node in the background, allowing for all read I/O to now be served locally.
The next figure shows how data follows the VM as it moves between hypervisor nodes.
Figure 6: Data Locality and Live Migration
3.3. Prism Central Offers Greater Flexibility and Security

Prism Central is a powerful management tool that allows administrators to centrally manage
and control up to 100 or more Nutanix clusters around the world from a single pane of glass. It
removes the operational complexity from managing multiple clusters, either in a single location or
when geographically distributed across different datacenters.
The HTML5-based interface provides a bird’s-eye view of IT resources across multiple clusters,
enabling administrators to select and manage individual clusters as required. Single sign-
on streamlines large-scale management by eliminating the need to log on to each cluster
individually. Prism Central also provides an aggregate view of all environment resources, which
allows administrators to quickly and efficiently monitor all VMs and storage resources and to
identify potential issues in individual clusters. Prism Central is hypervisor-agnostic and can be
used to manage multiple clusters running different hypervisors. It can be deployed in any one of
the Nutanix clusters in the global environment.
With this feature, service providers can offer physically isolated environments for all of their
tenants without increased management costs. Giving tenants read-only access to their clusters
helps avoid additional time-managing reservations, as the failure domain is isolated to the tenant.
Tenants can move quickly to new releases without impacting the rest of the environment.
Figure 7: Prism Central Provides Physical Isolation
This is the only hyperconverged platform that allows this type of management without imposing
restrictions on the vSphere cluster design.
3.4. Nutanix and VMware

Benefits of the combined VMware Horizon DaaS and Nutanix solution include:
• Simple, out-of-the-box deployment: Ready to deploy virtual desktops in under 60 minutes,
managed from the virtualization console.
• Linear scale out: Scale users seamlessly and modularly with no performance degradation.
Data locality allows local data caching to remain close to the workload and reduces network
congestion. An elastic control plane spanning all of the nodes ensures that all resources are
managed effectively.
• Better than PC performance: AOS features, including inline deduplication, eliminate IOPS,
resulting in fast application response and boot and login experiences. Base images can be
fingerprinted, enabling the benefits of inline deduplication with no overhead. The Nutanix
platform provides over 130,000 random read IOPS and over 78,000 random write IOPS in a
compact 2RU four-node cluster.
• Lower costs: Service providers can offer the lowest starting point in terms of user numbers
for hosted environments. You can share an individual cluster with separate volumes and data
locality or use separate clusters managed with Prism Central.
• Eliminate project risk: Start small and expand as warranted, always utilizing the latest
advances in CPU, memory, and flash. As customers grow and evolve, Nutanix nodes can be
added to or removed from existing clusters in minutes with no downtime.
• Business continuity: Block awareness allows larger clusters to lose up to four nodes without
using any additional capacity. Built-in native replication and disaster recovery (DR) features
enable highly available desktops to be deployed in mission-critical environments.
• Enterprise-grade management: Nutanix Prism delivers a simplified and intuitive consumer-
grade approach to managing large clusters, including a converged management tool that
serves as a single pane for servers and storage, providing alert notifications and the IPv6
bonjour mechanism to automatically detect new nodes in the cluster. Prism allows you to
spend more time enhancing your environment and less time maintaining it.
• True multitenancy and desktop-as-a-service. Prism Central allows businesses to decide on a
deployment plan that works best for them and their users.
• VMware integration: Support for vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which has low
impact on cluster disk resources and allows for space-efficient clones for full-clone desktops.
• Application delivery: Nutanix shadow clones offer local data caching, which directly helps
when combined with app volumes. Nutanix also provides per-VM monitoring with cluster
health to prevent problems and ease troubleshooting.
• Graphics acceleration: Platforms powered with K1 and K2 cards from NVIDIA GRID and
Teradici APEX run tough, graphics-intensive desktops.
The benefits of the Nutanix platform are now exposed to scale-out vSphere deployments, as
shown in the figure below.
Figure 8: Add Infrastructure on Demand
3.5. VMware Horizon DaaS 6.1

VMware Horizon DaaS simplifies Windows desktop delivery. IT saves time and money, without
sacrificing enterprise requirements for security and control. End users are more productive, with
a complete workspace they can access from any device, anywhere.
Figure 9: Horizon DaaS, Platform for End-User Computing
Customers gain peace of mind with integrated security, control, and support backed by VMware
and Nutanix. The distributed storage controllers provide performance isolation, as well as the
option to provide local or remote active directory authentication. Customers enjoy all of the
feature sets of a large storage system, but with the ability to start small.
4. Solution Design
With the VMware Horizon DaaS solution, you have the flexibility to start small with a single block
and then scale up incrementally, either one node or block or multiple blocks at a time. This
provides the best of both worlds—the ability to start small and grow to massive scale without
affecting performance.
The following section covers our design decisions and rationale for Horizon DaaS deployments
on the Nutanix web-scale infrastructure.
We recommend providing small customers with fewer than 100 desktops their own dedicated
nodes within the cluster and their own volumes attached to those nodes. For customers with over
100 desktops, create separate Nutanix clusters and manage them with Prism Central.
Table 2: Platform Design Decisions
Item Detail Rationale

General
3 Nutanix nodes (3 vSphere
Minimum Size Minimum size requirement
hosts)
Allow for growth from evaluation
Scale Approach Incremental modular scale (hundreds of desktops) to massive
scale (thousands of desktops)
Granularly scale to precisely meet

capacity demands
Node(s), block(s), datacenters
Scale Unit Scale in node increments
(DCs)
DC: unit that the Infrastructure
Management Cluster will manage
Small deployments: shared

Infrastructure cluster
Dedicated infrastructure cluster for
Management Large deployments: dedicated larger deployments (best practice)
Services cluster (Node A from 3 blocks or
dedicated block)
vSphere
4. Solution Design | 18
Isolated fault domains. Plan for 24-

host maximum in case you need to
add for future growth. Try to keep the
Up to 12–24 vSphere hosts
Cluster Size cluster size under 2,000 desktops
(minimum of 3 hosts)
VMware best practice
Compute cluster per tenant
Task parallelization
Clusters per vCenter Up to 2x 24 or 4x 12 host clusters Up to 2,000 desktops per vSphere
appliance
1 Nutanix datastore per tenant for

VMs Nutanix handles I/O distribution and
Datastore(s) localization in scale-out model and
(max 2,058 machines per logical separation from other tenants
container)
Treat vCenter like an appliance

Leverage Nutanix VM-centric
vCenter vSphere appliance snapshot and remote replication of
infrastructure VMs to protect and
replicate for DR
Nutanix
Isolated fault domains

Recommended
Up to 24–48 nodes Larger clusters (> 24 nodes) should
Cluster Size
use replication factor of 3
Standard practice
Storage Pool(s) 1 storage pool per cluster
Nutanix CVM handles tiering
1 container for tenant VMs

Standard practice
(max 2,058 machines per
Container(s) container) High availability limit
1 container for tenant app Easy disaster recovery
volumes

Features / Increase CVM memory to 32 GB; Post-process dedupe needs 32 GB
Enhancements turn on post-process dedupe. of RAM to be enabled.
Table 3: VMware Design Decisions

Horizon DaaS
Template (memory / disk space) Sizing
Infrastructure
Service Provider
Standard (3 GB / 20 GB) 1 DaaS / datacenter
Appliance
Resource Manager 1 DaaS / datacenter (max 20,000
Standard (3 GB / 20 GB)
Appliance VMs)
1 DaaS / datacenter / tenant (max

Tenant Appliance Standard (3 GB / 20 GB) 5,000 users)
vSphere
dtRAM Appliance FreeBSD (512 MB / 8 GB) 1 DaaS / datacenter / tenant

vCenter
vCenter Appliance
1 appliance per 2,500 VMs
5.5.0.20200 Build Task parallelization
installed separately from vCenter
2183109—Update 2b
Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 2

Resources for fast provisioning
Specs RAM: 8 GB
Table 4: Management Infrastructure Design Decisions

Active Directory
Global Catalog / DNS HA for GC / DNS

Min: 2 (n+1) per site
Server(s) Microsoft best practice
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

DHCP Server(s) Min: 2 (n+1) per site HA for DHCP Servers
Ensures availability of DHCP servers

Load Balancing DHCP server failover relationship Balances load between DHCP
servers in operation
File Services
DFS Server(s) Min: 2 (n+1) per site HA for DFS Servers
Table 5: Tenant Design Decisions

Active Directory
Global Catalog / DNS Optional for tenants hosts or via HA for GC / DNS
Server(s) VPN Microsoft best practice
File Services
DFS Server(s) Min: 2 (n+1) per site HA for DFS Servers [optional]
Application Services
App Volumes
4 vCPUs (4 GB RAM/30 GB) Application delivery [optional]
Manager
Table 6: Network Design Decisions

Virtual Switches
Use: vSphere to CVM local

vSwitch Nutanix communication Nutanix default
Uplink(s): N/A
Use: All external VM

vSwitchO / vDS communication Nutanix default
Uplink(s): vmnic2, vmnic3
NIC Teaming
NIC(s): 2x 10 Gb
Teaming mode:
Utilize both 10 Gb adapters
NetAdapterTeam standard vSwitch: Port ID active-active
Distrusted vSwitch: load-based
teaming
VLANs
ID: Varies
Mask: /24
Components:
Dedicated infrastructure VLAN
Management VLAN vSphere Hosts
best practice
Nutanix CVMs
vCenter
AD / DHCP / DFS Servers
ID: Varies
(169.254.0.0)
Mask: /16
Private network between Horizon
Backbone VLAN Components:
DaaS appliances
Service Provider Appliance
Resource Manager Appliances
Tenant Appliances
ID: Varies
Mask: /24
vMotion VLAN vSphere best practice
Components:
vSphere Hosts
ID:
Tenants
DMZ
Mask: Varies Network segmentation for front-
Front-end VLAN(s)
Components: end or external services
Tenant Appliances
App Volume Manager
dtRAM appliances
4.1. Solution Design Considerations

Active Directory: Tenant Active Directory usually comes across through an MPLS/VPN. In cases
where a tenant does not have Active Directory, AD can be provided on the tenant nodes. When
setting up Active Directory, you can set a reservation for CPU and memory to ensure resources.
Networking: When working with multiple vCenters, ensure that the port group names are identical
across each vCenter. Tenant networks have access only to tenant appliances and their desktops.
All service provider appliances and tenant appliances have access through the backbone
network. Make sure the private backbone network is set up before installing.
Tenant appliances: Tenant appliances are installed on the service provider and management
cluster to ensure that they are not affected negatively by the tenant desktops.
4.2. Management Cluster and Horizon DaaS Service Provider Sizing

A Nutanix three-node cluster can host a large number of tenants due to Nutanix platform support
of VAAI and low CPU requirements for the tenant infrastructure. There are a range of different
Nutanix models available to suit additional workload requirements.
CPU
Use the formula in the table below to identify the number of available cores in your particular
Nutanix model. For example, an individual NX-3060-G5 (configured with dual Intel Broadwell
E5-2620v4) has 16 cores.
Table 7: Available Infrastructure Cores Formula
Available cores = ([Total physical cores per node] - [CVM reservation]) * [# of nodes – 1]
Available cores = ((16 – 4) * 2)
Available cores = 24
Servers with 4:1 Core Ratio

(2 * vCenter appliances) + (2 * Active Directory server) + (2 * DHCP servers) + (Prism
Central) + (2 * Service provider appliances) + (2 * Resource manager appliances)
(2 * 4 vCPU) + (2 * 1 vCPU) + (2 * 1 vCPU) + (4 vCPU) + (2 * 1 vCPU) + (2 * 1 vCPU)
= 20 vCPU * .25 (4:1 core ratio)
= 5 Physical CPU cores
= Available cores – 5 Physical CPU cores
Available cores = 11 cores for tenant appliances
VMware recommends 10 tenants per physical core. This covers both the tenant appliances and
dtRAM appliances.
Table 8: Available Infrastructure RAM Formula
Available RAM = ([Total physical RAM per node] - [CVM RAM]) * [# of nodes – 1]
Available RAM = ((128 – 16) * 2)
Available RAM = 224 GB
RAM
RAM for Service Provider Infrastructure

= 16 GB + 8 GB+ 4 GB + 8 GB + 6 GB + 6 GB
= 48 GB
Available RAM for tenants = available RAM – 48 GB
Available RAM for tenants = 176 GB
Each tenant requires 7 GB, which includes both tenant appliances and the dtRAM appliance.
With an NX-1350, for example, you can accommodate 25 tenants before adding another
NX-1050 node.
Storage
Table 9: Available Useable Storage Sizing Formula
Available total storage = ([Total useable GB per node with RF2] * [# of nodes – 1])
Available storage = 1925 GB * 2
Available storage = 3850 GB
Each tenant requires 56 GB of storage—28 GB allocated to each Horizon DaaS management

host (20 GB for each of the tenant appliances and 8 GB for each of the dtRAM appliances).
Since the tenants are deployed using VAAI, administrators can estimate actual storage to be 28
GB, half of the total amount required.
Tenant Storage Required

28 GB per tenant * 25 tenants = 700 GB
Nontenant Server Storage Resources

(2 * 180 GB) + (2 * 60 GB) + (2 * 50 GB) + (240 GB) + (2 * 20 GB) + (2 * 20 GB)
Non-tenant server storage needed = 900 GB
Total storage needed = 1600 GB
Remaining storage = Available total storage - Total storage needed
Remaining storage = 3850 GB - 1600 GB
Remaining storage = 2250 GB
If you are running the 256 GB RAM NX-1050, the remaining space could be used either for
more tenants, or for snapshots and providing backup for the gold patterns and your tenants’
AppStacks.
4.3. Desktop Sizing

Nutanix can host both virtual desktops and remote application services. Densities vary based on
specific images and workload. For testing, we used Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI)
version 4.1.2 (www.loginvsi.com), an established load testing solution for centralized virtualized
desktop environments. For virtual desktops, we used a knowledge worker profile with inline
deduplication turned on (serving the Nutanix performance tier).
Following are examples of some typical scenarios for desktop deployment and utilization. For
guidance on virtual desktop sizing or custom desktop sizing, visit the Nutanix Sizing Tool.
Table 10: Desktop Scenario Definition
Scenario Definition
Task workers and administrative workers perform repetitive tasks
within a small set of applications, usually at a stationary computer.
The applications are usually not as CPU- and memory-intensive as
Task Workers the applications used by knowledge workers. Task workers who work
specific shifts might all log on to their virtual desktops at the same
time. Task workers include call center analysts, retail employees, and
warehouse workers.
Knowledge workers’ daily tasks include accessing the Internet,
using email, and creating complex documents, presentations, and
Knowledge Workers
spreadsheets. Knowledge workers include accountants, sales
managers, and marketing research analysts.
Scenario Definition
Power users include application developers and people who use
Power Users
graphics-intensive applications.
The following table contains initial recommendations for Windows 7 desktop sizing. Keep in mind
that these recommendations should be modified in accordance with the findings of a current state
analysis.
Table 11: Desktop Scenario Sizing
Scenario vCPU Memory Disks VMs per Core

Task Workers 1 1 GB 30 GB (OS) 8
Knowledge Workers 1–2 2 GB 30 GB (OS) 7
Power Users 2 4 GB 30 GB+ (OS) 5
4.4. Desktop Optimizations

We used the following high-level desktop optimization guidelines for this design:
• Size desktops appropriately for each particular use case.
• Use a mix of applications installed in golden images and application virtualization, depending
on the scenario.
• Disable unnecessary OS services and applications.
• Redirect home directories or use a profile management tool for user profiles and documents.
• Set a page file size.
4.5. Desktop Sizing Formula

Compute
To get a user number per Nutanix node estimate, use the following formula.
Table 12: CPU Sizing Formula
[Number of VMs] =
([Number of physical cores] – [CVM CPU reservation]) * [VM/core ratio] * X

X = 1 if fingerprinting is off
X= 0.9 if fingerprinting is on or line compression is turned on.
This formula could help you determine, for example, how many desktops a single NX-3060 can
host (the NX-3060 has two 10-core 2.8 GHz CPUs).
An NX-3060 running knowledge workers with MapReduce turned on could use the following
formula:
[Number of VMs] = ([20] – [4]) x [7] * 0.9[Number of VMs] = 100 VMs
Memory
Once you have determined how many VMs can fit on a node, you can identify the optimal RAM
allocation for your scenario. With similar operating systems, you can use an overcommit ratio
of 30 percent. To find out the exact amount of necessary hypervisor memory overhead, see
vCenter 5.5 Resource Management. By default we are using 100 MB for two vCPU machines.
Table 13: Default CVM RAM Settings
CVM Default RAM Allocation

Default 16 GB
Inline dedupe 24 GB
Post-process dedupe 32 GB
Table 14: Memory Sizing Formula
[# of VMs] x ([Virtual memory per VM] + [Hypervisor memory overhead] + [Video memory
overhead]) <= ([Physical memory] – [CVM memory]) x [Memory overcommit ratio]
Here is an example using 100 knowledge workers on an NX-3060 with 256 GB per host for
desktops, with 2 GB of RAM per desktop.
(# of VMs) X 2 GB + 100 MB + 60 MB <= (256 – 32) * 1.3
2208 <= 230272 * 1.3
# of VMs = 135
Using numbers from both CPU and memory, we take the lower number to get the density number
per node.
4.6. Shadow Clones

The following figure describes the detailed I/O path for Horizon DaaS desktops on Nutanix using
App Volumes. All write I/O occurs locally on the local node’s SSD tier to provide the highest
possible performance. Read requests for the App Volume occur locally for all desktops when
the DSF Shadow Clone feature is enabled (default setting). Shadow Clones enable distributed
caching of the App Volumes, also known as the AppStack. An AppStack is a grouping of
applications into one App Volume. The platform serves these reads from the high-performance
read cache (if cached) or the SSD tier. Each node also caches frequently accessed data in the
read cache for any local data, including delta disks or write App Volume (if used). The Nutanix
CVM continues to monitor data and the I/O patterns for appropriate tier placement, which helps
to eliminate any performance bottlenecks.
Figure 10: Nutanix Shadow Clones—I/O Detail
The Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure provides an ideal combination of both high-

performance compute with localized storage to meet any demand. True to this capability, this
reference architecture includes no reconfiguration or customization of the Nutanix enterprise
cloud platform to optimize for this use case.
The next figure shows a high-level example of the relationship between a Nutanix block, node,
storage pool, and container.
Figure 11: Nutanix Component Architecture
The following table shows the Nutanix storage pool and container configuration.
Table 15: Nutanix Storage Configuration
Name Role Details Feature

SP01 Main storage pool for all data All disks
Container for all desktops for
Tenant A-VMs Datastore Post-process dedupe
Tenant A
Container for all App
Tenant A-Apps Datastore Inline dedupe
Volumes for Tenant A
Container for all desktops for
Tenant B-VMs Datastore Inline compression
Tenant B
Container for all App
Tenant B-Apps Datastore Inline dedupe
Volumes for Tenant B
4.7. Network
Designed for true linear scaling, Nutanix leverages a leaf-spine network architecture. A leaf-
spine architecture consists of two network tiers: an L2 leaf and an L3 spine based on 40 GbE and
nonblocking switches. This architecture maintains consistent performance without any throughput
reduction, due to a static maximum of three hops from any node in the network.
The following figure presents a scale-out leaf-spine network architecture design that provides
up to 40 Gb active throughput from each node to its leaf, and scalable 80 Gb active throughput
from each leaf-to-spine switch, providing scale from one Nutanix block to thousands without any
impact to available bandwidth.
Figure 12: Leaf-Spine Network Architecture
4.8. Logical Network Design

Each vSphere host has two default switches for internal and external communication. The
standard vSphere distributed switch (VDS) is utilized for external node communication and VM
traffic over a 10 GbE team. The second required switch is the Nutanix vSwitch, which is utilized
for NFS I/O between the vSphere host and the Nutanix CVM.
The following figure is a logical network representation of the network segments used in the
solution and the corresponding attached components.
Figure 13: Logical Network Connectivity
5. Validation and Benchmarking

For this reference architecture, we tested VMware DaaS 6.1 with vSphere 5.5 U2 on the Nutanix
enterprise cloud platform. We also leveraged the Login VSI 4.1 knowledge worker workload to
detail the desktop performance.
5.1. Nutanix Configuration

A Nutanix NX-3450 hosted all infrastructure and Horizon services, as well as the Login VSI test
harness. Active Directory services, DHCP, and Prism Central all ran inside the infrastructure
cluster. We used a Nutanix NX-3460 as the target environment for the tenant desktops. Both
Nutanix blocks were connected to a top-of-rack switch via dual 10 GbE.
Figure 14: Test Environment Overview
Test Environment Configuration

Assumptions:
• Knowledge worker workload for virtual desktops.
• Full-clone desktops created using VAAI.
5. Validation and Benchmarking | 33

Hardware:
• Storage and compute: 1 Nutanix NX-3460, AOS 4.1.1.4.
• Network: Arista 7050Q (L3 spine) and 7050S (L2 leaf) Series switches.
Login VSI:
• Login VS 4.1.2.1205 Professional.
Table 16: Horizon DaaS Configuration
VM Quantity vCPU Memory Disks

Service provider appliances 2 1 3 GB 1x 20 GB
Resource manager appliances 2 1 3 GB 1x 20 GB
Tenant appliances 2 1 3 GB 1x 20 GB
vCenter appliances 2 2 8 GB 1x 25 GB, 1x 100 GB
Prism Central 1 4 8 GB 1x 10 MB, 1x 260 GB
Table 17: Horizon View Test Image Configuration
Attribute VD: Window 7 SP1 64 Bit

Hardware 10
CPU 2 vCPUs
Memory 1,748 MB
Video RAM 8 MB
3D graphics Off
NICs 1
Virtual network adapter VMXNet3 Adapter
Virtual SCSI controller 0 Paravirtual
Virtual disk VMDK1 50 GB
Virtual floppy drive Removed
Virtual CD/DVD drive 1 Removed

Attribute VD: Window 7 SP1 64 Bit
Adobe Acrobat 11
Adobe Flash Player 11
Doro PDF 1.82
Applications
FreeMind
Internet Explorer 10
MS Office 2010
VMware tools 9.4.5.173405

VMware Horizon View agent 6.0.2
VMware Horizon DaaS agent 6.1.1
5.2. Login VSI Benchmark

Login VSI is the industry-standard benchmarking tool for testing the performance and scalability
of centralized Windows desktop environments, including server-based computing (SBC) and
virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI). Login VSI is entirely vendor independent and works with
standardized user workloads. Consequently, findings based on Login VSI test data are objective,
verifiable, and replicable.
For more information about Login VSI, visit http://www.loginvsi.com/.
For more information about Login VSI test workflows, visit http://www.loginvsi.com/pdf/
documentation/Login-VSI-40-Workloads.pdf.
Interpreting the Login VSI Results

Login VSI simulates real-world user workload on a desktop. It generates values that indicate the
full time it takes for an application or task to complete (for example, launching Microsoft Word);
these values are not in addition to traditional desktop response times. The values do not refer to
the round trip time (RTT) for network I/O; rather, they indicate the total time to perform an action
on the desktop.
During the test, all VMs were powered on and the workload used a launch window of 2,880
seconds for all tests.
We quantified our evaluation using the following metrics:
• Minimum response: Indicates the minimum response time for all the measurements taken
when the indicated number of sessions on the x-axis were active.

• Average response: Indicates the average response time for all the measurements taken when
the indicated number of sessions on the x-axis were active.
• Maximum response: Indicates the maximum response time for all the measurements taken
when the indicated number of sessions on the x-axis were active.
• VSImax v4 detailed: The individual measurements taken during a test in a combined graph.
This graph shows the minimum, average, and maximum response times for each individual
measurement. There is also a total metric that combines all of the metrics into a single
number. The minimum, average, and maximum for this combined value is shown as well.
• VSImax v4: Shows the amount of sessions that can be active on a system before the system
is saturated. The blue X shows the point where VSImax was reached. This number indicates
the environment’s scalability (higher is better).
• VSImax baseline: The baseline is identified through the following steps:
⁃ Sort the VSI Index Calculation values, lowest to highest.
⁃ Take the VSI Index Calculation’s lowest 15 samples.
⁃ From those 15 samples, remove the lowest 2 values.
⁃ Average the 13 values and the result is the baseline.
• Logon timer: Indicates the time it takes for a session to logon (specified in seconds). The
graph shows logon time trends during the test. VSI measures the time from when the logon
scripts begin running—shortly after group policy has been processed—until the Windows shell
has loaded.
Login VSI Graphs

The Login VSI graphs show the values obtained from launching each desktop session. The
following figure is a sample graph representing test data. The y-axis is the response time in
milliseconds and the x-axis is the number of active sessions.

Figure 15: Sample Login VSI Graph

6. Validation Results
6.1. Full-Clone Desktops with MapReduce Dedupe on an NX-3460

Following are the test results for an NX-3460 using full-clone Windows 7 SP1 desktops, running
a Login VSI knowledge worker user profile. Fingerprint on write (inline dedupe) and post-process
dedupe were turned on during the test. We installed all applications into the base image.
Login VSI Knowledge Worker Results

VSImax was not reached during testing, with a 666 baseline and a 1,076 ms average VSImax.
The VSImax threshold was 166. 400 sessions ran successfully.
Figure 16: VSImax for 441 Horizon DaaS Users on Four Nodes
Nutanix Storage Metrics

The four-node tests showed I/O footprints on the Nutanix platform with a peak of 3,417 aggregate
IOPS. The split between reads and writes was 1,694 IOPS for reads and 1,723 IOPS for writes. I/
O latencies averaged less than 2.4 ms and peaked at 3.1 ms.
6. Validation Results | 38
Figure 17: Four-Node Total Cluster Read and Write IOPS during Testing
Figure 18: Four-Node Total Cluster Read and Write IOPS Graph Key
Figure 19: Four-Node I/O Latency during Testing with a Peak of 5.35 ms
Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption

The overall CPU reached 97.23 percent at the run’s peak; overall memory was approximately 77
percent utilized across the four nodes.
Figure 20: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes
Figure 21: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes Graph Key
6.2. Noisy Neighbor Problem

Using the same setup as the previous test, we measured a noisy neighbor’s impact on a single
node’s performance. We ran 300 desktops on three out of four nodes that were running Login
VSI 4.1; the desktops ran on a datastore called “Tenant A.” On the noisy-neighbor node, we
ran four I/O analyzer VMs, two “Max IOPS” workloads, and two “Max Write” IOPS to simulate
a noisy-neighbor scenario. The test generated over 18,000 IOPS on the fourth node. Both
workloads were running on the same Nutanix cluster.
Noisy Neighbor: Login VSI Medium Results

VSImax was not reached. The baseline was 661, the average VSImax was 1,104 ms, and the
VSImax threshold was 1,662. 300 sessions ran successfully.
Figure 22: VSImax for a 300-User Noisy Neighbor Test
Noisy Neighbor: Nutanix Storage Metrics

The four-node tests showed I/O footprints on the Nutanix platform that peaked at over 20,000
aggregate IOPS. 2,416 IOPS came from the 300 desktops running on container “Tenant A,” and
over 18,000 IOPS were generated on the fourth node, with I/O analyzer running on container
“Tenant B.” I/O latencies averaged less than 1.7 ms and peaked at 2.21 ms.
Figure 23: Tenant A: 2,416 IOPS
Figure 24: Tenant B: Over 18,000 IOPS
Figure 25: Noisy Neighbor: Latency Max 2.5 ms
6.3. Boot Storms

Boot storms can usually be avoided or planned for. However, it is necessary at times to boot your
desktops quickly, such as during unexpected problems, maintenance windows, or a shift change
when running on different time zones. It took 3:18 minutes to boot 400 desktops running on four
Nutanix nodes.
Figure 26: Minimal Latency When Booting All of the Desktops
Figure 27: Over 20,000 IOPS to Boot the Desktops
Figure 28: Cache Hits: Local Cache Delivering Most of the Boot Storm I/O
6.4. Storage Efficiency with Full Clones

Nutanix provides many data reduction techniques. While testing, we saved space by taking
advantage of VAAI clones through the following:
• Inline deduplication for performance.
• Post-process deduplication for additional capacity.
• Inline compression for both performance and capacity.
VAAI Savings
We deployed a 60 GB Windows 7 golden pattern (Horizon DaaS’ term for a golden image)
and allotted 25.14 GB to the Windows OS and applications; the remaining space was thin
provisioned. After multiple test runs, the 400 desktops (plus the base image) consumed only
408.14 GB of space. Without VAAI, the desktops would have consumed over 10 TB of space—
reducing utilization by a factor of 25.
Post-Process Deduplication Savings

Nutanix post-process deduplication further trimmed the 408.14 GB to 221.1 GB (1.8 times
reduction). VAAI and deduplication savings combined reduced capacity utilization by 45 times.
Inline Compression Savings

We tested with VAAI and inline compression turned on, using the same image from the dedupe
testing, though run on a different container. After multiple test runs, the 400 desktops plus the
base image consumed only 474.08 GB of space. Once again, without VAAI, the desktops would
have consumed over 10 TB of space. The Nutanix implementation of VAAI in this test was able
to reduce data by 21 times.
Nutanix inline compression further reduced the 499.08 GB to only 174 GB, increasing data
reduction another 2.81 times. The combination of VAAI and inline compression helped Nutanix
reduce capacity utilization by 59 times.
The compression savings in the figure below are derived from gold patterns and from snapshots
to back up those patterns.
Figure 29: Inline Compression Reduced Utilization 2.81x on Top of VAAI Savings
6.5. Inline Deduplication Savings

Nutanix utilizes RAM and SSD for the performance tier and intelligent dedupes at 4 KB
granularity. The following figure shows our results after multiple testing runs.
Figure 30: Performance Tier Capacity Savings by a Factor of 40
Inline deduplication produced savings that directly affect boot storms and applications served
from RAM and SSD, which not only reduces stress on the network and storage, but also helps
achieve predictable performance.
6.6. App Volumes with Inline Compression

App Volumes is a great way to deliver and maintain applications in a full-clone environment.
Extra CPU is needed at logon time to attach the application-hosting vmdks to the desktop.
Grouping applications into a vmdk is known as an AppStack. For testing, we attached one
AppStack that had the Microsoft Office Suite and Adobe Reader installed.
Login VSI Knowledge Worker Results

We ran 360 sessions successfully and never reached VSImax. The VSIbase was 828, the
VSImax average was 1,208 ms, and the VSImax threshold was 1,828. Overall cluster CPU was
close to 100 percent due to a fresh logon every seven seconds and attaching the AppStack.
Figure 31: Login VSI Results for Attaching One AppStack
App Volumes at Steady State

Increasing the logon rate to 14 seconds for every desktop would generate less than 3 percent
density delta compared to natively installed applications. With a 14 second logon rate, you can
safely maintain 390 users on an NX-3460.
Figure 32: App Volumes at Steady State
App Volumes Logon Times

On average, App Volumes logon times are less than two seconds slower than applications
natively installed on the base image.
Figure 33: Logon Times with App Volumes
Figure 34: Logon Time with Applications Natively Installed
7. Solution Application
In this section, we consider real-world scenarios and outline sizing metrics and components. The
applications below assume a knowledge user workload. Keep in mind that results vary based
upon utilization and workload.
Please see the appendix for detailed hardware configuration and product models. A minimum of
three nodes can form the base of a Nutanix cluster.
7.1. Scenario: Shared Cluster for Small Tenants

Allocating 12 Nodes for VDI Hosts and a Separate Three-Node Management Cluster
Table 18: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes
Item Value Item Value

Components Infrastructure
# of Nutanix nodes 12 # of vCenter servers 2
# of Nutanix blocks 4 # of vSphere hosts 15
# of RU (Nutanix) 6 # of vSphere clusters 5
# of 10 GbE Ports 24 # of datastore(s) 24
# of 100/1000 Ports (IPMI) 12 # of virtual desktops 840
# of L2 leaf switches 2 # of tenants 4
# of L3 spine switches 1 # of tenant appliances 8
The datacenter layout for this scenario follows.
7. Solution Application | 48
Figure 35: Service Provider and Shared Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Table 19: Container and Recommended Number of Users for Tenants
Advertised
Capacity from # of Nodes
Container # of Users Feature(s)
the Storage Attached
Pool (GiB)
Shared Tenant Cluster
Advertised
Pool (GiB)
Tenant A 7,500 300 4 Post-process dedupe
Tenant B 6,900 240 4 N/A
Tenant B: App 600 N/A Inline dedupe
Tenant C 3,500 100 2 Post-process dedupe
Tenant D 3,500 200 (1) 2 Post-process dedupe
Self-Healing Reserve (2) 2,066 N/A N/A
Infrastructure Cluster
Horizon DaaS server 1,850 300 3 Post-process dedupe
Onsite backup (3) N/A N/A N/A
Self-healing reserve (2) 1,850 N/A 4
Notes
(1) No HA
(2) Reserve space for N+1 healing
(3) Greater capacity nodes can be used to build the cluster
Advertised Capacity from the Storage Pool

This sets an "advertised" capacity given to the hypervisor, which is the maximum storage size
that the container can use. Set the amount of useable storage per node that the tenants should
use, minus space for the self-healing reserve to allow for N+1 (see the figure below).
With 12 nodes, we have approximately 24 TB of useable storage. We removed 2,066 GiB from
the total storage (to account for N+1) to arrive at an average of 1,894 GiB per node. You can
assign different amounts of storage to your tenants, but in this example we are weighting it
evenly, based on total capacity.
The hypervisor ensures that the container storage does not go beyond the advertised capacity.
This space also includes any overheads associated with the container, such as space consumed
by snapshots.
Figure 36: Advertised Capacity
7.2. Availability Domains

Availability domains are crucial for operationalizing Horizon DaaS support. They ensure that a
cluster remains up even if an entire block goes down—as long as the cluster includes three or
more equal capacity Nutanix blocks. As a result, you can perform tenant maintenance without
affecting the other tenants in the cluster.
Figure 37: Block Layout for Availability Domains
7.3. Scenario: Private Clusters for Tenants

Allocating Separate Private Clusters for Tenant Management with Prism Central
Table 20: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes
Item Value Item Value

Components Infrastructure
# of Nutanix nodes 31 # of vCenter servers 3
# of Nutanix blocks 8 # of vSphere hosts 31
# of RU (Nutanix) 16 # of vSphere clusters 8
2 with App
# of 10 GbE ports 62 # of datastores per cluster
Volumes
# of 100/1000 ports (IPMI) 31 # of virtual desktops 2,390
# of L2 leaf switches 2 # of tenants 4
# of L3 spine switches 1 # of tenant appliances 8
Following is the datacenter layout for the private tenant clusters.
Figure 38: Service Provider and Private Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Table 21: Container and Recommended Number of Users for Tenants
Advertised
Pool (GiB)
Tenant Clusters / Containers
Post-process
Tenant A N/A 1,100 12
dedupe
Tenant B N/A 280 4 N/A
Tenant B: App N/A N/A 4 Inline dedupe
Post-process
Tenant C N/A 300 2
dedupe
Post-process
Tenant D 700 8
dedupe
Self-healing reserve
container (1) (2) (all 2,066 N/A NA
clusters)
Infrastructure cluster
Post-process
Horizon DaaS server 1,850 N/A 3
dedupe
Onsite backup (3) N/A N/A N/A
Self-healing reserve (2) 1,850 N/A 4
Notes
(1) Self-healing reserve is the only reservation needed when each tenant has its own cluster.
(2) Reserve space for N+1 healing.
(3) Greater capacity nodes can be used to build the cluster.
8. Conclusion
The VMware Horizon DaaS and Nutanix enterprise cloud solution provides a high-density
and high-performance platform for desktop delivery. This modular, linearly scaling approach
enables simple deployment, growth, and maintenance. Localized and distributed cache and VAAI
support allow you to quickly deploy full-clone desktops without wasting high-performance flash or
powering extra HDD to provide capacity.
With Nutanix, available host CPU resources drive Horizon DaaS user density, rather than
concerns about I/O or resource bottlenecks. Our Login VSI test results showed densities of 100
knowledge users per Nutanix node, when Nutanix data reduction was turned on. Our testing also
showed that data reduction techniques improved capacity utilization by over 59 times.
You can lose up to four nodes without downtime or sacrificing storage capacity due to Nutanix
availability domains, which require no additional setup and allow for smaller maintenance
windows. Availability domains also enable smaller tenants to reap the benefits of this solution.
While VMware App Volumes takes a little more CPU on logon, steady state revealed only a
three percent difference compared with natively installed applications. This additional overhead
is insignificant compared to the advantage of being able to automatically update applications
without taxing both the desktops and shared storage, which preserves a consistent user
experience.
Nutanix and VMware Horizon DaaS provide a robust and easy way to grow on-premise desktops
for small and large customers without sacrificing performance or resiliency. Nutanix gives both
service providers and customers the highest return on their investment, with superior storage
optimization, consistent performance, and great user experience.
8. Conclusion | 55
Appendix
Configuration
Hardware
Storage / Compute
• 1 * Nutanix NX-3460
• Per node specs (4 nodes per 2RU block):
⁃ CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680v2
⁃ Memory: 256 GB memory
Network
• Arista 7050Q: L3 spine
• Arista 7050S: L2 leaf
Software
Nutanix
• AOS 4.1.4
• CVM: 8 vCPUs, 32 GB of RAM
Horizon DaaS 6.1
• 6.0
Virtual Desktop
• Windows 7 SP1
Infrastructure
• vSphere 5.5 U1 Build 1881737
About the Author

Dwayne Lessner is a technical marketing engineer on the product marketing team at Nutanix. In
this role, Dwayne helps design, test, and build solutions on top of the Nutanix enterprise cloud
platform. Dwayne has worked in healthcare and oil and gas for over ten years in various roles.
A strong background in server and desktop virtualization has given Dwayne the opportunity to
Appendix | 56
work with many different application frameworks and architecture. Dwayne has been a speaker
at BriForum, Nutanix, VMware, and various industry events and conferences.
About Nutanix
Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that
power their business. The Nutanix enterprise cloud platform leverages web-scale engineering
and consumer-grade design to natively converge compute, virtualization, and storage into
a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. The result is predictable
performance, cloud-like infrastructure consumption, robust security, and seamless application
mobility for a broad range of enterprise applications. Learn more at www.nutanix.com or follow up
on Twitter @nutanix.
Appendix | 57
List of Figures
Figure 1: The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform: Hyperconvergence and Linear Scale...6
Figure 2: Nutanix Web-Scale Properties........................................................................... 8
Figure 3: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.....................................................................9
Figure 4: Information Life Cycle Management................................................................ 11
Figure 5: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture...............................................................12
Figure 6: Data Locality and Live Migration......................................................................13
Figure 7: Prism Central Provides Physical Isolation....................................................... 14
Figure 8: Add Infrastructure on Demand.........................................................................16
Figure 9: Horizon DaaS, Platform for End-User Computing............................................17
Figure 10: Nutanix Shadow Clones—I/O Detail.............................................................. 29
Figure 11: Nutanix Component Architecture................................................................... 30
Figure 12: Leaf-Spine Network Architecture................................................................... 31
Figure 13: Logical Network Connectivity......................................................................... 32
Figure 14: Test Environment Overview........................................................................... 33
Figure 15: Sample Login VSI Graph............................................................................... 37
Figure 16: VSImax for 441 Horizon DaaS Users on Four Nodes....................................38
Figure 17: Four-Node Total Cluster Read and Write IOPS during Testing......................39
Figure 18: Four-Node Total Cluster Read and Write IOPS Graph Key........................... 39
Figure 19: Four-Node I/O Latency during Testing with a Peak of 5.35 ms......................39
Figure 20: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes................... 40
Figure 21: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes Graph Key.. 40
58
Figure 22: VSImax for a 300-User Noisy Neighbor Test.................................................41
Figure 23: Tenant A: 2,416 IOPS....................................................................................41
Figure 24: Tenant B: Over 18,000 IOPS.........................................................................42
Figure 25: Noisy Neighbor: Latency Max 2.5 ms............................................................ 42
Figure 26: Minimal Latency When Booting All of the Desktops...................................... 42
Figure 27: Over 20,000 IOPS to Boot the Desktops....................................................... 43
Figure 28: Cache Hits: Local Cache Delivering Most of the Boot Storm I/O................... 43
Figure 29: Inline Compression Reduced Utilization 2.81x on Top of VAAI Savings........ 44
Figure 30: Performance Tier Capacity Savings by a Factor of 40.................................. 44
Figure 31: Login VSI Results for Attaching One AppStack............................................. 45
Figure 32: App Volumes at Steady State........................................................................46
Figure 33: Logon Times with App Volumes.................................................................... 46
Figure 34: Logon Time with Applications Natively Installed............................................ 47
Figure 35: Service Provider and Shared Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.......................... 49
Figure 36: Advertised Capacity....................................................................................... 51
Figure 37: Block Layout for Availability Domains............................................................ 51
Figure 38: Service Provider and Private Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.......................... 53
59
List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History.................................................................................. 7
Table 2: Platform Design Decisions................................................................................ 18
Table 3: VMware Design Decisions................................................................................ 20
Table 4: Management Infrastructure Design Decisions...................................................20
Table 5: Tenant Design Decisions.................................................................................. 21
Table 6: Network Design Decisions................................................................................ 21
Table 7: Available Infrastructure Cores Formula.............................................................24
Table 8: Available Infrastructure RAM Formula.............................................................. 24
Table 9: Available Useable Storage Sizing Formula....................................................... 25
Table 10: Desktop Scenario Definition............................................................................ 26
Table 11: Desktop Scenario Sizing................................................................................. 27
Table 12: CPU Sizing Formula........................................................................................27
Table 13: Default CVM RAM Settings.............................................................................28
Table 14: Memory Sizing Formula.................................................................................. 28
Table 15: Nutanix Storage Configuration........................................................................ 30
Table 16: Horizon DaaS Configuration............................................................................34
Table 17: Horizon View Test Image Configuration..........................................................34
Table 18: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes................................................... 48
Table 19: Container and Recommended Number of Users for Tenants......................... 49
Table 20: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes................................................... 52
Table 21: Container and Recommended Number of Users for Tenants......................... 54
60

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VMware Horizon

Version 1.1 • August 2016 • RA-2016

2. Audience and Purpose........................................................................... 6

5. Validation and Benchmarking..............................................................33

2. Audience and Purpose

2. Audience and Purpose | 6

Table 1: Document Version History

Version Number Published Notes

2. Audience and Purpose | 7

3.1. Web-Scale Architecture Powering Desktops for Service Providers

Figure 2: Nutanix Web-Scale Properties

3.2. Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform Overview

Figure 3: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform

Distributed Storage Fabric

App Mobility Fabric

Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Figure 4: Information Life Cycle Management

Figure 5: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture

Figure 6: Data Locality and Live Migration

3.3. Prism Central Offers Greater Flexibility and Security

Figure 7: Prism Central Provides Physical Isolation

3.4. Nutanix and VMware

Figure 8: Add Infrastructure on Demand

3.5. VMware Horizon DaaS 6.1

Figure 9: Horizon DaaS, Platform for End-User Computing

Table 2: Platform Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Granularly scale to precisely meet

Small deployments: shared

Item Detail Rationale

Isolated fault domains. Plan for 24-

1 Nutanix datastore per tenant for

Treat vCenter like an appliance

Isolated fault domains

1 container for tenant VMs

Item Detail Rationale

Table 3: VMware Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

1 DaaS / datacenter / tenant (max

dtRAM Appliance FreeBSD (512 MB / 8 GB) 1 DaaS / datacenter / tenant

Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 2

Table 4: Management Infrastructure Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Item Detail Rationale

Global Catalog / DNS HA for GC / DNS

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

Ensures availability of DHCP servers

Table 5: Tenant Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Table 6: Network Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Item Detail Rationale

Use: vSphere to CVM local

Use: All external VM

Item Detail Rationale

4.1. Solution Design Considerations

4.2. Management Cluster and Horizon DaaS Service Provider Sizing

Table 7: Available Infrastructure Cores Formula

Servers with 4:1 Core Ratio

Table 8: Available Infrastructure RAM Formula

RAM for Service Provider Infrastructure

Table 9: Available Useable Storage Sizing Formula

Each tenant requires 56 GB of storage—28 GB allocated to each Horizon DaaS management

Tenant Storage Required