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Getting around to completing my thoughts from the previous post...
The Right Desktop Provisioning Method
Once you know whether a group of users need a common desktop image or their own dedicated virtual desktop, you need to make decisions about how to provision that image at the lowest storage and management costs. XenDesktop includes Provisioning Server technologies that enable thousands of virtual desktops to be delivered from a single master image, streamed on demand, in real time. Only the master image needs to be patched and updated - all users will get the benefit the next time they log on. This "pooling" method provides the lowest management costs, fastest provisioning, and lowest storage requirements - capable of saving up to 90% on storage costs and up to 40% on desktop maintenance costs. This model is usually suitable for the great majority of users, including productivity workers, as well as some knowledge workers.
The knowledge workers that often make customizations that are not supported by pooled desktops require a different provisioning approach, such as "cloning" - replication of a base master image. Users can install applications and customize as needed - with a tradeoff in higher storage costs. In addition, these desktop clones are more costly to manage than pooled desktops, because each desktop has to be managed as unique entities. NetApp's FlexClone, directly integrated with the XenServer console, provides this functionality that helps to simplify the creation of desktops.
The select few power users in an organization can get their blade PC-based virtual desktops via XenDesktop's provisioning capabilities, however, using a "private" image rather than a standard shared image. This maintains the bare metal performance of the blade PC, while offering the flexibility of being able to move desktops across hardware resources to optimize utilization. Like cloned desktops, this requires storing and maintaining a unique image per user and, therefore, comes at a much higher capital and operational cost than pooled desktops.
Extending Cost Savings with Storage Technologies
Once you know what types of desktops to deliver and how to provision them for best cost advantage, you can then factor in how your storage investments can extend savings and performance. The desktop images, user profiles and end user data can create an avalanche of fast-growing storage. Deduplication technologies can dramatically increase effective primary storage utilization and slow growth by removing identical copies of data within a volume. This process is transparent to the user and typically occurs when the desktop is not in use. The result is up to 35% less storage for user profiles and data.
"Thin provisioning" storage features can also maximize storage utilization and eliminate the guesswork of allocating storage by dynamically assigning capacity as users consume disk space. For pooled desktops, thin provisioning can be leveraged for user data and write back cache. For assigned desktops given to knowledge workers, thin provisioning means no longer having to commit large, mostly empty volumes for user data that may never get fully utilized.
Lastly, the cache on storage controllers can enhance the performance of the Provisioning Server features in XenDesktop, which aids in scalability and thus can help reduce some server infrastructure costs.
Citrix and NetApp have worked together on some lab environments and papers that you can find here.
Comments (5)
Jan 14, 2009
Kevin Castleman says:
Calvin, You mentioned being able to "use blade PC-based virtual desktops via Xe...Calvin,
You mentioned being able to "use blade PC-based virtual desktops via XenDesktop's provisioning capabilites" and "while offering the flexibility of being able to move desktops across hardware resources to optimize utilization." This sounds as if you mean a user could get their private image streamed to a blade PC when they launch thier destkop, and when the log off another user could stream thier private image to that (now available) blade PC. If this is indeed what you were talking about could you please exand on that?
Thanks
Jan 16, 2009
Anonymous says:
Hi Kevin, You can assign a (Private or Standard) Image to a Virtual Desktop, an...Hi Kevin,
You can assign a (Private or Standard) Image to a Virtual Desktop, and a Virtual Desktop to a User, and then run that Virtual Desktop on a Pool of Servers. This means that the Image will be streamed to whichever Server in the Pool is hosting the Virtual Desktop.
Hope this helps.
XenPro
Jan 21, 2009
Calvin Hsu says:
XenPro's got a nifty approach outlined above. Today, we don't have "pool managem...XenPro's got a nifty approach outlined above. Today, we don't have "pool management" directly over blade PC's - but that type of hardware management integration is definitely something we've been looking at. This would enable you to stream to the bare metal and start/stop/restart blade PCs just as we do with virtual machines today.
Jan 15, 2009
Anonymous says:
"Citrix and NetApp have worked together on some lab environments and papers..."Citrix and NetApp have worked together on some lab environments and papers that you can findhere"
Can you post the link as it appears to be missing.
Jan 21, 2009
Calvin Hsu says:
Sorry about that - I fixed the link above but just in case: http://media.netapp....Sorry about that - I fixed the link above but just in case: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3711.pdf\\
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