Jumping VDI

Although we have just released the 3.1, we are very busy these days. We had planned to do some sizing of the virtualization and storage layer, but there is simply not enough time to do it right now.

However, we have done a 'Point and Shot' sizing for the X4170 running VBox 3.0.12 under Sun VDI 3.1. We have taken an X4170 and wanted to understand how many VMs can be executed with a defined workload. The workload has actually been the same as with previous load tests. You find the definition in the VDI 3.1 deployment guide: http://wikis.sun.com/display/VDI3dot1/Deployment+Guide

The exact setup has been:

• 3 VDI core server managing 1 VBox host (X4170) connected to a 7210 Open Storage.
• X4170: 2 CPU (2.5 GHZ), 32GB RAM

We had 2 test runs:

1. Image Win XP SP2, 512 MB, 12 MB Video RAM: Goal: Start as many VMs as possible and continuously execute Office workload
2. Image Win XP SP2, 256 MB, 12 MB Video RAM: see above

Results for test run 1:

• 48 VMs running, executing load, tests showed that VMs are responsive (connecting with the console to selectedVMs)
• Memory consumption: 96% or 31GB
• CPU consumption: 40-50%

Results for test run 2:

• 95 VMs running, executing load, Tests showed that VMs are responsive (connecting with the console to selected VMs)
• Memory consumption: 97% 31,3 GB
• CPU consumption: 50-80%

Observations:

• The Nehalem CPU in combination with VBox 3.0.12 has much better performance. 12 VMs per physical core seems possible for modest Office work still leaving some CPU headroom.
• The memory overhead of VBox is closer to 20%. In previous tests we have calculated 10%. Plus roughly 1 GB for the OS.

Although this was just a 'Point and Shot' sizing it has a clear message:
The economics are way different with the Nehalem CPU. A 10VM per physical core seems to be a good and conservative starting point, when customer workloads are unknown. An X4170 (2 CPU, 64-72 GB RAM) seems to be an ideal platform to host 80+ desktops of 512MB memory. Going over the 72GB memory limit will require to use 8GB DDRs which are way more expensive.

We will continue sizing once we are less busy. Stay tuned,

-Dirk

Hi,

We have released Sun VDI 3.1 yesterday. There are already many posts about it, such as this one from Chris about it. The most confusing about this release is the version number, which suggests that Sun VDI 3.1 is just a minor update. Well, it is not.

It has many new things inside that together offer a number of very compelling and unique solution stacks. I've summarized these solution stacks in a presentation that I gave yesterday:

Hi,

Today I want to have a brief look at Sun VDI with the focus on the education market. And this just because the interest in that segment is quickly raising for VDI solutions. There are some specific requirements for this market:

• Costs are important for everyone, but budgets in the education market are typically the smallest.
• Non Windows desktops have a big footprint driven again through costs and also as students are more open and flexible towards alternative desktops.
• Administration needs to be straightforward. In schools or training setups you typically find the teacher doing the administration and setup.
• Especially the clients need to be zero managed. Or in other words clients need to be installed in a plug and play manner.
• Noise reduction, students and trainees simply need to concentrate on their work.
• All data and configuration should always be on the server. Only interface for the students might be a USB stick to transfer their homework.
• Students should learn how to use certain applications but also to control and administrate their own desktop. This requires a sandbox for the students where they can experiment without impacting the IT environment or other students.

Sun VDI is specifically suitable for the requirements of the education market. The solution is completely server based, meaning all desktops are hosted on servers, while the desktop display and interaction is done on ultra thin clients - called Sun Rays - that do not hold any state. Or in other words you can unplug the device from the network or power without losing your session or any data.

The way how such a deployment is operated is quite simple. After the setup of the system the administrator imports a desktop that he has previously created on his laptop using VirtualBox. This desktop is called a template. Thereafter, the administrator typically just replicates (clones) the template to as many instances as he needs. This replication is completed within minutes. Finally the administrator assigns his users to the new replicated desktops and the setup is done. Now the students can login into a system, select their desktop and are ready to work. How long the desktop belongs to the student depends on the policies that the administrator defines. This can be a one time usage, so desktops are deleted after logout, desktops can stay permanently with the student or something in between. Below I have a couple of examples how Sun VDI can be deployed from small to larger deployments:

Sun VDI for schools

This is an example of an VDI deployment in a school in Italy. The school has just a single server and about 10 Sun Rays deployed into various rooms in the school. The desktops deployed are based on the Edubuntu distribution. The server itself can a be workstation such as the Ultra 27, with 12 GB of RAM and 2 hard disks. The VDI demo guide explains pretty well, how such a setup could be done. For a final rollout just a few adaptations need to happen.

Sun VDI for Training Centers

A second use case is actually a training center, where the students learn about a certain piece of software. Here are aspects such as rolling out fresh training environments (desktops) within a short amount of time important. And it is also important that the setup can be reverted in a short amount of time. This is all covered by Sun VDI in a very flexible manner. An example deployment of a training center for 100 students would require 3 servers, such as the X4170 configured with 2CPU, 48GB RAM, 2 *146 GB disks and 4 Ethernet ports. In addition you would need one storage server, that stores all the desktop images. Here a 7110 could be suitable, but this depends on the type of training that should be executed. It is important to note, that such a setup would allow one of the servers to be down, while the other servers still manage the remaining load to large extend.

Sun VDI for Universities

I don't have specific pictures of large cross campus deployments. But the principal remains the same. This can actually best be documented by one of the Sun VDI deployments that we did at the JavaOne event last June. More than10000 conference participants could use their own personalized desktop for the duration of the event. And a deployment for a university would not look that much different.
I hope this has been some valuable information and actually has not been too techie. If you want to try it out, just have a look at our VDI 3.1 EA and the related documentation.
Cheers,Dirk

Hi,

Sun VDI 3.1 Early Access has been released last Tuesday. This is not just a minor update, but we have added a number of new things that might be of interest for people:

• Microsoft Hyper-V support:
  Sun VDI introduces Hyper-V as a new desktop provider. Virtual desktops are provisioned using ZFS, which allows a fast deployment based on ZFS cloning and copy-on-write semantics. Far more scalable than any other VDI storage solution in the market.
• Microsoft RDS support:
  It is possible to run mixed environments of VDI and Terminal Services. All under the same management infrastructure.
• VirtualBox 3.0.x
  Most prominent feature is the guest multi processor support (guest SMP)
• Template Management module
  Template management has been introduced for better keeping track of template revisions and controlling the staging and rollout of new template revisions.
• Integrated webconsole for VirtualBox
  The webconsole allows to do in-place modifications of templates and desktops with the management UI. It can run in any browser that supports Adobe Flash.
• Host and Storage Maintenance
  There is a new module that takes care of controlled outages of hosts and storages. You schedule outages and suspend running virtual desktops or migrate them to other available hosts.  
• Virtual Networking
  There is now the option of isolating the virtual desktop network traffic per desktop pool. Or you can assign multiple subnets to virtual desktops.
• RDP client configuration per desktop pool
  The access for Sun Ray clients can now be configured on a per pool basis. All RDP configuration settings can be controlled.
• Sun Desktop Access Client
  There is a new client, the software version of the Sun Ray included in the release.
• Flash acceleration for MS Windows XP and 2003 desktops
• USB redirection for MS Windows XP desktops and all hosted VirtualBox guest OSs

These are just the highlights. Many more things went into the EA. Just have a look. The download is here. Documentation can be found on the VDI Wiki. If you have some questions or issues you can contact us on the VDI forum. And of course your feedback is important to us. Please take the EA survey, it takes just 5 minutes. Loads of the features are there because of your feedback.

Cheers,

Dirk

Hi,

As I have started on the storage with the last article I can continue with another interesting topic, which comes up quite often: "I already have an existing NAS/SAN. How can I combine this with Sun VDI 3 connecting to VirtualBox?"

ZFS is the filesystem that is used in combination with VirtualBox, as introduced in various blog entries and in the Sun VDI documentation. ZFS is included in Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris. It is also the foundation of the Sun Unified Storage. ZFS manages the physical storage attached to a server, but it is also capable of managing remote storage, e.g. through the iSCSI protocol. In the following I want to quickly demonstrate how this could be done:

Assuming you have a LUN and want to use it with VDI 3. And you have a spare Solaris 10U7 or OpenSolaris box. This can also be a box that you are using for VDI 3, but keep in mind, that you need RAM for utilizing external storage. Instrumental for linking the LUN into the ZFS filesystem is the iSCSI initiator:

1. First thing is to tell the iSCSI initiator to accept static iSCSI connections:
   iscsiadm modify discovery --static enable
2. Thereafter you can connect the initiator with your LUN. This can be done through providing the IQN of the LUN and the IP of the external storage host:
   iscsiadm add static-config IQN,IP
3. Next step is to list the new iSCSI target linked into the system
   iscsiadm list target -S
   The output list a number of things among the last line is most important:
   OS Device Name: /dev/rdsk/c1t600144F04A94DD370000144FEE09D000d0s2
4. Finally you create a new ZFS pool:
   zpool create VDI-Extern c1t600144F04A94DD370000144FEE09D000d0
   Note: Take the bold part without the trailing s2! as your parameter to identify the disk

That's all. Now you can use the external LUN in the same way as an internal one. Performance characteristics will be different with this storage proxy. The more RAM and CPU you have, the better.

-Dirk

Hi,

VDI 3 with VirtualBox is a self-contained system. However there are situations where you have the need to extract a certain image/virtual disk from VDI 3. As there is no in-built functionality yet, here is a procedure how to do it:

1. First thing is to tell the iSCSI initiator to accept static iSCSI connections:
   iscsiadm modify discovery --static enable
2. Find out the IQN of the iSCSI target. The easiest way is to look at the VM as it is registered on the VirtualBox hosts. Here you can use the command:
   VBoxManage list vms
   It will show also the IQN and the host of the connected LUN
3. Mount the LUN into your Solaris VBox host:
   iscsiadm add static-config IQN,IP - Note, take the IP not the host name
4. List the new target
   iscsiadm list target -S
   The last line contains the important output: OS Device Name: /dev/rdsk/c1t600144F04A97EBB50000144FEDF91800d0s2
5. Make a row copy of the content:
   dd if=/dev/rdsk/c1t600144F04A97EBB50000144FEDF91800d0p0 of=/var/tmp/test.out
   Note replace the s2 at the end of the raw disk with p0. Don't ask me why ;-)
6. Convert the raw file into a VDI file:
   convertdd /var/tmp/test.out /var/tmp/Ubuntu-test.vdi

That's it. Very simple and intuitive ;-). We will work on getting this a bit smoother, promised.

-Dirk

Hi,

Long time, no post. This doesn't mean that we are not around anymore;-) It's basically vacation period. However, during the last 2 months parts of my team have been working on a project that is called Sun VDI 3 - Patch 2. It sounds small, but it turned out to be a bigger chunk of work. It includes a number of enhancements:

• Performance improvements for desktop provisioning and user desktop access
  That is a big step forward, as we have removed quite some slack in the code.
• Recycling of Unix desktops
  This has been a missing feature for desktop life-cycle. Now all types of desktops can be controlled by recycling policies.
• Support for SuSE 11 desktops with the VirtualBox hypervisor.
• All-in-one configuration
  Similar to the evaluation setup. We've added a configuration option that allows to configure everything on one host using a remote DB. This is a supported configuration for production use.
• Customization of the login screen.

The x86 version of the patch is: 141482-02

And the related Sparc version is 141481-02

You find also a new VirtualBox 2.0.10 installation set on the Sun VDI 3 download page. An update is generally recommended. You must update, if you want to benefit from the SuSE 11 support or the expanded recycling capabilities.

- Dirk

Hi,

Yesterday evening I came back from a crazy 48 hours trip Hamburg-San Francisco-Hamburg. I had to cover a left over from my last trip. Anyway, arriving at home I've looked at something yellow, a ball, I guess, but too tired to pay more attention:

But something stuck in my head. So in the morning I've had a closer look:

  

So I thought this is a prototype of a new Sun Ray device? Well, I've tried to find a smart card slot to get my desktop session and to see what will will happen. But there is no slot as such ;-)

It is more a Sun Ray for kids, as my son explained later to me when we played a bit football.

-Dirk

PS. And of course the name is 'Sun Ray' and not 'SUNRAY'

I've decided to change the title of this blog, because it seems obvious that some people find it offensive. For those who don't know, I have a strong affinity to basketball. Played it for a long time.

And there was this movie, "White men can't jump" , which I've seen and relates quite good to my affinity. So still liking basketball, but can not jump that high any more. People who know me, know about my knee stories ...

However VDI will jump, for sure ...

Stay tuned,

Dirk

Hi,

We now have a demo guide that runs you through the setup of a single box VDI demo based on VirtualBox.

Feedback is welcome,

Dirk

VDI 3 just released its first patch a week ago. So far, so good. But there came up a number of questions about how the whole patch strategy for the product including the various technologies. This works in the following way:

• Patches for VDI core will be released as patches for the VDI 3 product, in the way we just did it for the first patch.
• Patches for included Sun Ray technology will be released as the part of the Sun Ray product. In general it is recommended to run on the latest patch level, even though it might not be important to VDI 3. The most recent patch as been announced here.
• Changes to VirtualBox will NOT be delivered as patches. If bug fixes are required, we will release a new minor version of VirtualBox qualified for VDI 3. In consequence requires a new version a re-install of VirtualBox on the virtualization host.
• Changes to the storage platform. These are not driven or controlled by the VDI team. Therefore the VDI team needs to qualify a new firmware for the Unified Storage systems as well as updates to OpenSolaris. The VDI team will announce which future versions are supported or by when. So, be a bit careful in this area.

Cheers,

Dirk

Here is a short summary of our VDI implementation for the JavaOne conference. How we did it, has been described on our wiki. During the show we've been gathering data, here are some highlights:

• Setting up the VDI environment took about 2 days. This is the software install on all tiers, the network setup, storage setup and the cloning of roughly 10000 desktop images. Additional images would have been created on demand. The work has been done by 2 engineers of the VDI team.
• Roughly 6000 desktops have actually been used by the participants during the whole week.
• The majority of the users sticked to just one desktop.
• Half of the users went for Windows 7, the other half for the Unixes OpenSolaris and Ubuntu.
  
• The whole storage consumption for 6000 desktops in use was 2 TB. Remember each single desktop image had a size of 10 GB. (Windows 7 even more). Without the merits of ZFS this would have been 60TB.

FatBloke took some nice pictures showing people using VDI 3.

And by the way, it is a very new experience seeing people working on the same thin device all using different desktop OSs.

And this is the user experience that has been offered to the users:

1. Choose your desktop
   
2. Connecting to the desktop
   
3. Working with your personal Windows 7 desktop
   

That's it around the show. Interesting experience for the VDI team and very good proof of our solution.

-Dirk

Today I'm at the Community/JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Moscone Center.  A couple of thousand participants will be at the show. And as usual they get terminals to access their session schedule or browse the internet. The cool thing from a VDI perspective is, that this is all powered by Sun VDI.

There is an article on how we set it up: http://wikis.sun.com/display/DesktopVirtualization/Sun+VDI+for+JavaOne. I think this is very impressive, running about 20000 virtual desktops with such a small equipment.

Special thanks to the tradeshow team, Vernon and Kevin, and to Thomas and Chris, to get this setup going in such a short time.

- Dirk

Hi,

I'm sure this will be of interest for various people. We have just released a first patch for VDI 3. It includes a number of important enhancements, such as:

• S10 U7 support
  This is quite significant as it allows you to build a demo/POC on a single box including VirtualBox and Storage. Some postings on how this can be done will follow.
• VMware vSphere 4 support:
  VDI 3 runs against vCenter 4
• Support of the latest Unified Storage firmware
• Performance improvements in the UI
• And many other things targeted for scalability and robustness

The x86 version is 141482-01.

The Sparc version is 141481-01.

Just one note: The documentation will reflect the changes sometime next week. So stay tuned for the update.

- Dirk

Sun has just announced a new storage system, the 7310. The big thing about it is: It provides basically the same functionality as the 7410 including High Availability through clustering, but at a lower entry price. This system is ideal to start small and grow later for dedicated VDI deployments.

It starts with 6 TB and can grow to 96TB in up to four storage extensions. It is perfectly made for hosting VM images through NFS or iSCSI with a big read/write caches in the middle. But of course it can also be used as a file server in a Windows environment. As said, ideal for VDI.

-Dirk