Reference Architecture - VMware Horizon 7 On Nutanix AHV

VMware Horizon 7
Nutanix Reference Architecture
Version 1.2 • July 2017 • RA-2058

VMware Horizon 7
Copyright
Copyright 2017 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
VMware Horizon 7
Contents
1. Executive Summary................................................................................ 5
2. Introduction..............................................................................................6
2.1. Audience........................................................................................................................ 6
2.2. Purpose..........................................................................................................................6
3. Solution Overview................................................................................... 8
3.1. Enterprise Cloud Platform for Just-in-Time Desktops................................................... 8
3.2. Distributed Storage Fabric.............................................................................................9
3.3. App Mobility Fabric........................................................................................................9
3.4. AHV..............................................................................................................................10
3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors............................................................................................... 10
3.6. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture.................................................................................... 10
3.7. VMware Horizon 7.0.................................................................................................... 13
4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon..................................16

4.1. VMware App Volumes 2.11.........................................................................................17
5. Solution Design..................................................................................... 18
5.1. Desktop Sizing.............................................................................................................23
5.2. Desktop Optimizations................................................................................................. 25
5.3. Horizon View Composer..............................................................................................25
5.4. View Composer with Shadow Clones and VCAI.........................................................26
5.5. Nutanix Web-Scale Converged Infrastructure............................................................. 28
5.6. Network........................................................................................................................ 29
5.7. Logical Network Design...............................................................................................30
6. Validation and Benchmarking..............................................................32

6.1. Nutanix Configuration.................................................................................................. 32
6.2. Login VSI Benchmark..................................................................................................34
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7. Validation Results................................................................................. 37
7.1. View Composer with VCAI for a Four-Node NX-3060-G5 (NX-3460-G5)....................37
7.2. Running with App Volumes......................................................................................... 41
7.3. AppStacks with and without Shadow Clones.............................................................. 43
7.4. Boot Storm...................................................................................................................45
7.5. Replication of AppStacks.............................................................................................45
8. Solution Application..............................................................................48
8.1. Scenario: 12 Nodes.....................................................................................................48
8.2. Scenario: 24 Nodes.....................................................................................................50
9. Conclusion............................................................................................. 53
Appendix......................................................................................................................... 54
Configuration....................................................................................................................... 54
About the Authors............................................................................................................... 54
About Nutanix......................................................................................................................55
List of Figures................................................................................................................56
List of Tables................................................................................................................. 58
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VMware Horizon 7
1. Executive Summary
This validated reference architecture highlights the advantages of using the Nutanix Enterprise
Cloud Platform to seamlessly scale and deliver consistent robust performance for VMware
Horizon 7. Nutanix eliminates bottlenecks and provides business continuity in a variety of
deployment options for App Volumes and user profiles, while providing robust disaster recovery
options for business requirements of any size.
Highlights of the test results include:
• The system saw linear scaling with over 160 knowledge worker (2 vCPU) desktops per node
—Nutanix supports 656 users in 2RU with replication, including compute and storage.
• The platform supports integrated disaster recovery for linked-clone desktops and AppStacks
with little additional overhead.
• The Shadow Clones feature reduces CPU usage and network bandwidth to provide consistent
desktop performance.
• It takes only 4.5 minutes to boot over 659 desktops.
• View Composer Array Integration (VCAI) allows for fast cloning, causing less impact to the
environment than traditional cloning methods.
• App Volumes-enabled desktop logon times depend on the number of AppStacks and on what
applications are being layered.
1. Executive Summary | 5
VMware Horizon 7
2. Introduction
2.1. Audience
This reference architecture document 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. Consumers of this document should already be familiar
with vSphere, Horizon, and Nutanix.
2.2. Purpose
This document covers the following subject areas:
• Overview of the Nutanix platform.
• Overview of VMware Horizon and its use cases.
• The benefits of VMware Horizon on Nutanix.
• Architecting a complete VMware Horizon solution on the Nutanix platform.
• Sizing guidance for scaling VMware Horizon deployments on Nutanix.
• Design and configuration considerations when architecting a VMware Horizon solution on
Nutanix.
• Benchmarking VMware Horizon performance on Nutanix using Windows 10 with View
Composer and App Volumes.
Figure 1: Nutanix Web-Scale Infrastructure
2. Introduction | 6
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Table 1: Document Version History
Version
Published Notes
Number
1.0 October 2016 Original publication.
1.1 December 2016 Updated Login VSI information.
Updated platform overview and Logical Network Design
1.2 July 2017
section.
2. Introduction | 7
VMware Horizon 7
3. Solution Overview
3.1. Enterprise Cloud Platform for Just-in-Time Desktops

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 Enterprise
Cloud Platform is a turnkey solution that comes ready to run VMware Horizon. The Nutanix
platform’s unique architecture allows enterprises to scale from 50 to tens of thousands of
desktops in a linear fashion, providing customers with a simple path to enterprise deployment
and the agility of public cloud providers.
The Nutanix platform supports every type of VDI user, from task and knowledge workers to
power users and data scientists. Whether you have persistent desktops that are customized for
knowledge workers, shared hosted virtual desktops (HVDs) for a general workforce, or the most
3D graphics-intensive users, Nutanix provides the right resources in a single-box solution.
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.
• Simplified one-click upgrade.
• Native file services for hosting user profiles.
• Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.
Nutanix Acropolis provides data services and can be broken down into three foundational
components: the Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), the App Mobility Fabric (AMF), and AHV.
Prism furnishes one-click infrastructure management for virtual environments running on
Acropolis. Acropolis is hypervisor agnostic, supporting three third-party hypervisors—ESXi,
Hyper-V, and XenServer—in addition to the native Nutanix hypervisor, AHV.
3. Solution Overview | 8
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Figure 2: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform
3.2. 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,
or SMB3 protocols, depending on the hypervisor in use.
3.3. App Mobility Fabric

The Acropolis App Mobility Fabric (AMF) collects powerful technologies that give IT professionals
the freedom to choose the best environment for their enterprise applications. The AMF
encompasses a broad range of capabilities for allowing applications and data to move freely
between runtime environments, including between Nutanix systems supporting different
hypervisors, and from Nutanix to public clouds. When VMs can migrate between hypervisors (for
example, between VMware ESXi and AHV), administrators can host production and development
or 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.
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3.4. AHV
Nutanix ships with AHV, a built-in enterprise-ready hypervisor based on a hardened version of
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.
3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors

In addition to AHV, Nutanix Acropolis fully supports Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and
VMware vSphere. These options give administrators the flexibility to choose a hypervisor that
aligns with the existing skillset and hypervisor-specific toolset within their organization. Unlike
AHV, however, these hypervisors may require additional licensing and, by extension, incur
additional costs.
3.6. 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 composed of either all-flash
or a combination of 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 optimal performance. Organizations can also choose flash-
only storage for the fastest possible storage performance. The following figure illustrates the data
I/O path for a write in a hybrid model (mix of SSD and HDD disks).
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Figure 3: Information Life Cycle Management
The figure below shows an overview of the Nutanix architecture, including the hypervisor of
your choice (AHV, ESXi, Hyper-V, or XenServer), 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. Moreover, having a local storage controller on each
node ensures that storage performance as well as storage capacity increase linearly with node
addition. 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 creates two identical data copies in the cluster, and replication factor 3 creates three identical
data copies.
Figure 4: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture
VMware Horizon 7
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 than traditional architectures
with standalone, shared, and dual-controller storage arrays.
When VMs move from one hypervisor to another, such as during live migration or a high
availability (HA) event, the now local CVM serves a newly migrated VM’s data. While all write I/
O occurs locally, when the local CVM reads old data stored on the now remote CVM, the local
CVM forwards the I/O request to the remote CVM. The DSF detects that I/O is occurring from a
different node and migrates the data to the local node in the background, ensuring that all read I/
O is served locally as well.
The next figure shows how data follows the VM as it moves between hypervisor nodes.
Figure 5: Data Locality and Live Migration
Nutanix Shadow Clones provide distributed, localized virtual disk caching to deliver fast storage
I/O performance in multireader scenarios, such as desktop virtualization using VMware Horizon
7 with linked clones. With Shadow Clones, the CVM actively monitors virtual disk access trends.
If requests originate from more than two remote CVMs, as well as from the local CVM, and all
of the requests are read I/O, then the virtual disk is marked as immutable. When the disk is
immutable, each CVM then caches it locally, so local storage can now satisfy read operations.
Shadow Clones also help to reduce latency when using App Volumes, as you can cache the
applications to local memory.
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Figure 6: Shadow Clone Functionality
3.7. VMware Horizon 7.0

Horizon allows organizations to deliver virtualized or remote desktops and applications through a
single platform and support end users with access to all of their desktops and applications in one
place.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 7: Horizon: Platform for End-User Computing
Desktop virtualization with Horizon enables organizations to do more with less and adopt a
user-centric, flexible approach to computing. By decoupling applications, data, and operating
systems from the endpoint—and by moving these components into the datacenter, where they
VMware Horizon 7
can be centrally managed in your cloud—desktop and application virtualization offers IT a more
streamlined, secure way to manage users and provide agile, on-demand desktop services.
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4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon

Benefits of the combined VMware Horizon and Nutanix solution include:
• Simple, out-of-the-box deployment.
Get 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 keeps
cached data close to the workload and reduces network congestion. A control plane that
spans all of the nodes ensures that resources like flash are never stranded or managed
ineffectively.
• Better-than-PC performance.
AOS features like inline deduplication eliminate IOPS, resulting in fast application response
and boot or logon experience. By fingerprinting base images, you can experience the benefits
of inline deduplication with no overhead. The Nutanix platform provides up to 210,000 random
read IOPS and over 140,000 random write IOPS in a compact 2RU four-node cluster.
• High security.
Nutanix provides a platform that exceeds PCI-compliant and Department of Defense security
requirements from day one. Combined with Horizon’s Federal Information Processing
Standard (FIPS) compliance, the complete solution provides a very strong security baseline
for desktops.
• Eliminate project risk.
Start small and expand as warranted, always utilizing the latest advances in CPU, memory,
and flash.
• Business continuity.
Built-in native replication and disaster recovery (DR) features allow you to deploy highly
available desktops in mission-critical environments. Block awareness permits larger clusters
to lose up to four nodes without using any additional capacity. Nutanix is the only vendor to
support replication of linked clones.
• 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,
4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon | 16

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storage, and alert notifications, while providing a mechanism that automatically detects
degraded nodes, preventing downtime before it happens. Prism lets you spend more time
enhancing your environment, not maintaining it.
Prism Central gives you consolidated control over multiple clusters, enabling true multitenancy
and desktop-as-a-service. With Prism Central, administrators can manage the VMware
Horizon Cloud Pod Architecture with ease and achieve both physical separation and unified
control over clusters in local or remote datacenters.
• VMware integration.
Nutanix supports View Composer Array Integration (VCAI) and vStorage APIs for Array
Integration (VAAI). Because Nutanix Shadow Clones can cache to local RAM, we can provide
great performance at scale for App Volumes and other layering technologies.
• Graphics acceleration.
Platforms can be powered with M60 cards from NVIDIA GRID.
4.1. VMware App Volumes 2.11

App Volumes take desktop and application environments to the next level by providing
dramatically faster application delivery and unified application and user management, while
reducing demands on IT management.
With App Volumes, IT can instantly deliver or upgrade applications to virtual desktop and
published application environments in seconds and at scale. Read-only virtual disks called
AppStacks store applications, and administrators can instantly attach to individual or groups of
virtual desktops, published application servers, or users, with the click of a button. To the end
user, applications perform as if they were natively installed. App Volumes also support user
profiles by attaching Writable Volumes at logon.
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5. Solution Design
With the Horizon 7 on Nutanix solution, you have the flexibility to start small with a single block
and scale up incrementally a node, a block, or multiple blocks at a time. This architecture
provides the best of both worlds: the ability to start small and grow to massive scale without any
impact on performance.
The following section covers the design decisions and rationale for the Horizon deployments
implemented on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform. We used View Composer linked clones
to get a baseline, then enabled App Volumes to provide information on the impact on logon times
and user density.
Table 2: Platform Design Decisions
Item Detail Rationale

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

capacity demands
Scale in node increments
Blocks consisting of 2,000 users
Scale Unit Node(s), block(s), or pod(s)
Pods consisting of up to 10,000
users
Cloud Pods consisting of up to
50,000 users
5. Solution Design | 18
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Small deployments: Shared

cluster
Infrastructure Dedicated infrastructure cluster for
Services Large deployments: Dedicated larger deployments (best practice)
cluster (Node A from 3 blocks or a
1350)
vSphere
Up to 12–32 vSphere hosts Isolated fault domains

Cluster Size
(Minimum of 4 hosts) VMware best practice
Clusters per vCenter Up to 2x 24 or 4x 12 host clusters Task parallelization
3x Nutanix datastores per pod

Datastores for:
Desktops
App Stacks Nutanix handles I/O distribution and
Datastore(s) Writeable Volumes localization
(Max 2,048 machines per n-Controller model
container)
(Max 400 users per Writable
Volume container when using
replication)
Nutanix
Cluster Size Up to 24–64 nodes Isolated fault domains
Standard practice
Storage Pool(s) 1x storage pool per cluster
ILM handles tiering
1x container for VMs

Standard practice
Container(s) (Max 2,048 machines per
High availability limit
container)
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Increase CVM Memory to 24–32

Features / GB+
Best practice
Enhancements (CVM was set to 24 GB for the
RA)
Table 3: VMware Design Decisions

Horizon Infrastructure
Connection Min: 2 (n+1)

HA for connection brokers
Brokers(s) Scale: 1 per additional pod
Users per Broker Up to 2,000 users Horizon best practice
Ensures controller availability

Load Balancing F5 or load balancer
Balances load between brokers
Connection Brokers
vCPUs: 4
Virtual Hardware
Memory: 10 GB Standard sizing practice
Specs
Disk: 60 GB vDisk
Connection Broker(s)
Up to 5+2 spare Based on sizing considerations
per Pod
Ensures availability and balances
Load Balancing F5 or other load balancer
load between controllers
vCenter
vCenter Appliance 1 appliance per 2,000 VMs

Task parallelization
6.0.0 3634794 Installed separately from vCenter
Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 8

Resources for fast provisioning
Specs RAM: 20 GB
VMware Horizon 7

View Composer Services
1 per vCenter
View Composer Best practice
Installed separately from vCenter

Best practice
Specs RAM: 4 GB
View Security Servers

View Security
Min: 2 (n+1) HA for security servers
Servers(s)

Specs RAM: 10 GB
Ensures availability of storefront

servers
Load Balancing F5 or load balancer
Balances load between storefront
servers and pods
App Volumes Manager

App Volumes
Min: 2 (n+1) HA for security servers
Manager(s)

Specs RAM: 4 GB
Table 4: Infrastructure Design Decisions

Active Directory
Global Catalog / DNS HA for GC / DNS

Min: 2 (n+1) per site
Server(s) Microsoft best practice
DHCP
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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
Ensures availability of DFS

Load Balancing Lowest cost
Balances load between DFS servers
SQL Server
Min: 2 (n+1) per site

SQL Server(s) HA for SQL Servers
Scale: 2 per additional pod
SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability

Data Protection Ensures availability of SQL Servers
Group
Table 5: Network Design Decisions

Virtual Switches
Use: vSphere to CVM local

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

vSwitch0 / vDS communication Nutanix default
Uplink(s): vmnic2,vmnic3
NIC Teaming
VMware Horizon 7
NIC(s): 2x 10 Gb
Teaming mode:
Utilize both 10 Gb adapters active/
NetAdapterTeam Standard vSwitch: Port ID active
Distrusted vSwitch: Load-based
teaming
VLANs
ID: Varies
Mask: /24
Components:
vSphere hosts
Dedicated infrastructure VLAN
Management VLAN Nutanix CVMs
Best practice
vCenter
SQL Servers
AD / DHCP / DFS servers
View Connection Servers
ID: Varies
Mask: /24
vMotion VLAN vSphere best practice
Components:
vSphere Hosts
ID: DMZ (for external)

Mask: Varies Network segmentation for front-
Front-End VLAN(s)
Components: end or external services
Desktops
5.1. Desktop Sizing

Nutanix can host both virtual desktops and remote application services. Densities can vary based
on specific images and workload. For testing, we used Login VSI (www.loginvsi.com), which is
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the industry-standard load testing solution for centralized virtualized desktop environments. We
based the virtual desktops on knowledge worker workload densities.
The following are examples of some typical scenarios for desktop deployment and utilization.
Table 6: 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 the
Task Workers applications knowledge workers use. 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.
Power users include application developers and people who use
Power Users
graphics-intensive applications.
The following table contains initial recommendations for sizing a Windows 10 desktop. Assuming
one vCPU is unrealistic for most workloads involving Windows 10; only assume one vCPU per
desktop for desktops delivering a single application.
Note: These are general recommendations for sizing and should be modified after a
current state analysis.
Table 7: Desktop Scenario Sizing
Scenario vCPUs Memory Disks

Task Workers 1–2 2 GB 40 GB (OS)
Knowledge Workers 2 2–4 GB 80 GB (OS)
Power Users 2–4 4+ GB 100 GB+ (OS)
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5.2. Desktop Optimizations

Some high-level desktop optimizations we followed for this design include:
• Size desktops appropriately for each particular use case.
• Use a mix of application virtualization and applications installed via gold images, depending on
the scenario.
• Disable unnecessary OS services and applications.
• Redirect home directories or use a profile management tool for user profiles and documents.
Table 8: Virtual Desktop Node Sizing Estimates
Node Type Workload / User Density

Task Knowledge Power
Virtual Desktop 170 150 90
5.3. Horizon View Composer

Horizon View Composer utilizes a standardized model for hosted virtual desktop creation.
Starting from a base VM or “golden image,” View Composer creates a replica that is a locked
version of the golden image, so you can make updates to the golden image and not affect
production VMs. From there, View Composer clones VMs that consist of a delta disk and an
identity disk, both linking back to the base VM’s disks.
The following figure shows the main architectural components of a Horizon View deployment on
Nutanix and the communication path between services.
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Figure 8: Connectivity Composer
5.4. View Composer with Shadow Clones and VCAI

The next figure describes the high-level I/O path for a View Composer-based desktop on
Nutanix. As shown, the DSF handles all I/O operations, which occur on the local node to provide
the highest possible I/O performance. Read requests occur locally for desktops hosted on the
same vSphere node that contains the replica VM and over 10 GbE network connections for
desktops hosted on other nodes. It is possible for the replica VM to become a bottleneck for
performance.
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Figure 9: View Composer I/O Overview
Shadow Clones
The following figure describes the detailed I/O path for a Horizon-based desktop on Nutanix.
All write I/O occurs on the local node’s SSD tier to provide the highest possible performance.
When you enable the Shadow Clones feature, the replica VM and AppStack disks can be cached
locally, so read requests for the replica VM and AppStacks occur locally for all desktops. Either
the high-performance read cache (if cached) or the SSD tier can serve these reads. Nutanix ILM
constantly monitors data and I/O patterns to choose the optimal tier placement. This arrangement
helps to eliminate any performance bottlenecks.
Figure 10: Shadow Clones I/O Detail
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Nutanix Support for View Composer API for Array Integration

When View Composer calls the NFS VAAI (vSphere API for Array Integration), it takes a copy
of the golden image, known as the replica VM, and creates full clones from it. Full clones have
their own metadata for full read and write operations. VMs created with View Composer Array
Integration (VCAI) can use the local storage controller and thus eliminate any bottlenecks that
might result from relying on the replica for reads. The rest of the I/O path is the same as before:
either the high-performance read cache (if cached) or the SSD tier can serve these reads.
Each node also keeps frequently accessed data in the read cache for any local files (delta
disks or personal vDisks). Nutanix ILM constantly monitors data and I/O patterns to choose the
appropriate tier placement. This arrangement helps to eliminate any performance bottlenecks.
Figure 11: View Composer with VCAI I/O Detail
5.5. Nutanix Web-Scale Converged Infrastructure

The Nutanix web-scale converged infrastructure provides an ideal combination of high-
performance compute and localized storage to meet any demand. True to this capability, this
reference architecture contains zero reconfiguration of or customization to the Nutanix product to
optimize for this use case.
The next figure shows a high-level representation of the relationship between a Nutanix block,
node, storage pool, and container.
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Figure 12: Nutanix Component Architecture
The following table shows the Nutanix storage pool and container configuration.
Table 9: Nutanix Storage Configuration
Name Role Details

SP01 Main storage pool for all data All disks
VMs Container for all desktops vSphere datastore
AppStacks Container for all AppStacks vSphere datastore
Writable Volumes Container for all writable volumes vSphere datastore
5.6. 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 because there is a static maximum of three hops between any nodes in the network.
The following figure shows a scale-out leaf-spine network architecture design that provides 20
Gb active throughput from each node to its leaf and scalable 80 Gb active throughput from each
leaf to its spine switch, providing scale from one Nutanix block to thousands without any impact
to available bandwidth.
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Figure 13: Leaf-Spine Network Architecture
5.7. Logical Network Design

Each vSphere host has two default switches for internal and external communication. The
standard vSwitch or vDS switch, used for external node communication and VM traffic, has 10
GbE uplinks in a team. We use the vSwitch Nutanix for NFS I/O between the vSphere host and
the Nutanix CVM.
The following figure shows a logical network representation of the network segments used in the
solution with corresponding components attached.
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Figure 14: Logical Network Connectivity
VMware Horizon 7
6. Validation and Benchmarking

We completed the solution design and testing described in this document with VMware Horizon 7
deployed on vSphere 6 U2 on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.
We used the Login VSI 4.1 knowledge worker workload to detail the desktop performance for
linked clone and instant clone desktops.
6.1. Nutanix Configuration

We used a Nutanix NX-3460-G5 to host all infrastructure and Horizon services, as well as
the Login VSI test harness. Active Directory services, DHCP, and SQL Server ran inside the
infrastructure cluster.
Two Nutanix NX-3460-G5 units formed the target environment and provided all desktop and RDS
hosting. We ran tests with:
• Four nodes without App Volumes.
• Four nodes with App Volumes.
• Four nodes with replication running at the start of the test.
Testing showed that Nutanix can handle tier-1 workloads and scale in a linear fashion.
Test Environment Configuration

Assumptions:
• Knowledge worker workload for virtual desktops.
• VDI using View Composer with VCAI enabled.
• Only one container for AppStacks.
Hardware:
• Storage and compute: One Nutanix NX-3460-G5, AOS 4.7.0.1
• Network: Arista 7050Q (L3 spine) / 7050S (L2 leaf) series switches
Login VSI:
• Login VSI 4.1.0.757 Professional
Horizon configuration:
6. Validation and Benchmarking | 32

VMware Horizon 7
Table 10: Horizon Configuration
VM Quantity vCPUs Memory Disks

Connection Brokers 2 4 10 GB 1x 60 GB (OS)
View Composer 1 2 4 GB 1x 60 GB (OS)
3x 60 GB (OS, DATA,
SQL 1 4 8 GB
Logs)
vCenter Appliance 1 8 20 GB 1x 80 GB, 1x 100 GB
Table 11: Horizon Test Image Configuration
VDI: Windows 10 64-Bit Attribute

11 Hardware
2 vCPUs CPU
2 GB Memory
2 GB Memory reserved
128 MB Video RAM
Off 3D Graphics
1 NICs
VMXNet3 Adapter Virtual network adapter
Paravirtual Virtual SCSI controller 0
80 GB Virtual disk VMDK1
Removed Virtual floppy drive
Removed Virtual CD/DVD drive 1

VMware Horizon 7
VDI: Windows 10 64-Bit Attribute
Adobe Acrobat 11
Adobe Flash Player 11
Doro PDF 1.82
Applications
FreeMind
Internet Explorer 11
MS Office 2010
10.0.6.3560309 VMware Tools

7.0.1 VMware View Agent
6.2. Login VSI Benchmark

Login VSI provides performance insights for virtualized desktop and server environments.
Enterprise IT departments use Login VSI products in all phases of VDI operations management
—from planning to deployment to change management—for more predictable performance,
higher availability, and a more consistent user experience.
The world's leading virtualization vendors use the flagship product, Login VSI, to benchmark
performance. With minimal configuration, Login VSI products work with VMware Horizon, Citrix
XenDesktop and XenApp, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services), and any
other Windows-based virtual desktop solution.
For more information about Login VSI, visit http://www.loginvsi.com.
For more information about Login VSI test workflows, visit https://www.loginvsi.com/blog/login-
vsi/665-simulating-vdi-users-introduction-to-login-vsi-workloads.
Interpreting Login VSI Results

Login VSI simulates real-world user workload on a desktop. These values represent the full time
it takes for an application or task to complete (for example, launching Microsoft Word) and are
not in addition to traditional desktop response times. These do not refer to the round-trip time
(RTT) for network I/O, but rather the total time to perform an action on the desktop.
During the test, we powered on all VMs. The workload used a launch window of 2,886 seconds
for all tests.
Evaluation was quantified using the following metrics:
• Minimum Response: The minimum response time for all the measurements taken when the
number of sessions indicated on the x-axis were active.

VMware Horizon 7
• Average Response: The average response time for all the measurements taken when the
• Maximum Response: The maximum response time for all the measurements taken when the
• VSImax v4 Detailed: A graph aggregating the individual measurements taken during a test.
This graph shows the minimum, average, and maximum response times for each individual
measurement. A “total” metric combines all of the other metrics into a single number. The
detailed graph shows the minimum, average, and maximum for this combined value as well.
• VSI Index Average: The average value as calculated by VSI. The VSI index average differs
from the average response: whereas the average response is the pure average, the VSI index
average applies certain statistical rules to the average to moderate the impact of spikes.
• VSImax v4: Shows the number of sessions that can be active on a system before the system
is saturated. The blue X shows the point where the system reached VSImax. This number
provides an indication of the environment’s scalability (higher is better).
• VSIbase (Baseline): Shows the VSI index average for the environment when there is little to
no load on the environment. This number is used as an indication of the environment’s base
performance (lower is better). Together, VSImax and VSIbase can tell you:
⁃ How well an environment performs (VSIbase).
⁃ How long the environment can maintain that performance and how scalable the VSIbase
performance is (VSImax).
• Logon Timer: An indication of the time it takes for a session to log on, specified in seconds.
The graph shows the trend of logon times during the test. VSI measures the time between
when the logon script starts running—shortly after processing the group policy but before
loading the shell (Windows Explorer)—and when the Windows shell has loaded.
Based on user experience and industry standards, Nutanix recommends keeping the values
below the following (Login VSI 4.x):
Table 12: Login VSI Metric Values
Metric Value (ms) Rationale

Minimum Response <1,000 Acceptable ideal response time
Average Response <4,000 Acceptable average response time
Maximum Response <8,000 Acceptable peak response time
VSI Baseline <5,000 Acceptable ideal response time

VMware Horizon 7
Metric Value (ms) Rationale

VSI Index Average <4,000 Acceptable average response time
Login VSI Graphs

Login VSI graphs show the values obtained when launching each desktop session. The following
figure shows an example graph capturing the 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

VMware Horizon 7
7. Validation Results
We ran all tests with a 3460-G5 hybrid configuration using E5-2680 CPUs and 512 GB of
RAM. We designed tests to show a variety of configurations with Horizon, App Volumes, and
replication and the effect each configuration has on user densities. All tests used Login VSI
with a knowledge worker workload, except for the Shadow Clones testing, which used a custom
workload.
Figure 16: CPU on One of the 3060-G5 Used for Testing
7.1. View Composer with VCAI for a Four-Node NX-3060-G5 (NX-3460-G5)

Below are the test results for a four-node NX-3460-G5 with VCAI enabled, using a Login VSI
knowledge worker user profile supported by Window 10.
Login VSI Knowledge Worker Results

During testing, this configuration did not reach VSImax, with a baseline of 682 and average
VSImax of 1,570 ms. The VSImax threshold was 1,682. 659 sessions ran successfully. As the
test had over 95 percent average CPU core utilization, 659 is likely to be the maximum number of
desktops for this configuration.
7. Validation Results | 37
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 17: VSImax for 659 Horizon Users on Four Nodes
Nutanix Storage Metrics

The four-node tests showed I/O footprints on the Nutanix platform with a peak of 6,467 aggregate
IOPS during the test runs. Reads were 4,599 IOPS, and writes were 1,868 IOPS. I/O latencies
averaged 1.3 ms and peaked at 4.5 ms during the test.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 18: Four-Node Total Cluster IOPS Including Reads and Writes during Testing
Figure 19: Four-Node Total Cluster IOPS Including Reads and Writes during Testing: Graph Legend
Figure 20: Four-Node I/O Latency during Testing with a Peak of 4.5 ms
Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption

The overall CPU reached 100 percent during the peak of the run. Overall memory was
approximately 63 percent utilized across the four nodes.
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Figure 21: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes
Figure 22: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes: Graph Legend
Logon Metrics
Logon times were between 5 s and 16 s, with an average 7.3 s. In general, a logon time is the
time between entering Windows account credentials and the Windows desktop, shell, or startup
programs being fully loaded and operational. User experience is generally faster than the times
listed here.
Figure 23: Logon Times for 559 Users
VMware Horizon 7
7.2. Running with App Volumes

We ran the following tests to show the impact of running App Volumes on performance and
density. We kept Microsoft Office in the base image and used three applications, each in its
own AppStack, for testing. The tests did not launch or use the attached applications. The impact
measured in these tests comes from using CPU to attach the AppStack to the desktop and
loading the application into the Windows image.
We tested with the following applications:
• Gimp version 2: Photo editing software.
• iTunes version 11: Media player, media library, online radio broadcaster, and mobile device
management.
• VLC Media Player version 2: Media player.
Our tests used the following configurations:
• Test 1: One AppStack with Gimp.
• Test 2: Two AppStacks with Gimp and iTunes.
• Test 3: Two AppStacks with Gimp and VLC.
• Test 4: Three AppStacks with Gimp, iTunes, and VLC.
Login VSI Knowledge Worker Results
Figure 24: VSImax Using App Volumes
VMware Horizon 7
Table 13: VSImax with Different AppStacks
Average Logon
Test Login VSImax Baseline
Timer per 100 Users
Base: No AppStacks 659 682 5.86 s
One AppStack: Gimp 598 830 6.2 s
Two AppStacks: Gimp
562 840 6.96 s
and iTunes
Two AppStacks: Gimp
580 836 6.29 s
and VLC
Three AppStacks: Gimp,
555 854 7.11 s
iTunes, and VLC
The results show that both the number of AppStacks and the specific application attached impact
host CPU. Test 2 and test 3 each had two AppStacks, but the second AppStack for test 2 used
iTunes, whereas test 3 used VLC. iTunes is heavier to load into the Windows registry; thus,
we see a different VSImax number and logon times. These results are also supported by lower
baselines for tests with a greater number of users, as you can see in the table above.
CVM CPU Metrics and Storage IOPS: Three AppStacks

At the peak of testing, CVM CPU utilization for the vSphere hosts averaged 43 percent, slightly
higher than the baseline test with no AppStacks. Storage IOPS was 1,200 IOPS more than
baseline, with 7,721 IOPS.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 25: CVM CPU Utilization and IOPS Using Three AppStacks
Figure 26: CVM CPU Utilization and IOPS Using Three AppStacks: Graph Legend
7.3. AppStacks with and without Shadow Clones

Because AppStacks support Shadow Clones, we ran tests with and without that feature. The
tests ran for 1,880 minutes, shortened from a standard Login VSI, which runs for 2,880 minutes,
because the load was at the beginning of the test, to simulate high load on the container
supporting the AppStacks. We launched 500 user sessions with a custom workload that opened
Microsoft Word and launched Gimp and iTunes.
Cluster CPU Metrics

At the peak of testing, cluster CPU utilization for the workload running without Shadow Clones
was 65 percent, and the workload running with Shadow Clones was 57 percent.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 27: CPU Savings While Running Shadow Clones
Network Metrics
Analyzing one of the nodes, we can see that there is less network traffic when Shadow Clones
are running. At the peak, we can see over 25 percent difference in network traffic. Shadow
Clones affect the read path for both the golden image and the AppStacks being used.
Figure 28: Metrics with and without Shadow Clones
VMware Horizon 7
7.4. Boot Storm

You can plan for and work hard to avoid boot storms, but power outages and maintenance
windows still happen. If you’re in an industry like healthcare, dealing with events like shift change,
you need to be able to boot your desktops quickly. For this test, the clock started at 1:59:04
in vCenter, and the watch stopped when all the agents reported back in the Horizon View
Connection Broker at 2:03:36. The system required 4:32 minutes to boot 659 desktops running
on four Nutanix NX-3460-G5 nodes.
Figure 29: 47,000 IOPS to Boot Desktops Are Mostly Delivered from Local Cache
7.5. Replication of AppStacks

One of the benefits of Nutanix integrated replication is that you can replicate with minimal impact.
Nutanix is currently the only vendor that supports replicating linked clones, but the most common
use case is to have nonpersistent desktops and only protect user data and applications on the
remote side.
VMware Horizon 7
Because AppStacks are not VMs, you need to replicate them at the container level. The test
results below come from a first-time replication of three AppStacks from Durham, North Carolina,
to Santa Clara, California, in the U.S. We started the replication at the beginning of the test, and
over-the-wire compression was turned on.
Figure 30: AppStacks Replicated to Santa Clara, CA, from Durham, NC, over 4,440 KM
While replicating AppStacks, we reached VSImax at 656 users—only three fewer users than the
baseline—with no extra features turned on. VSIbase was 691. We saw this low impact because
CPU consumption stayed below the reservation for the CVM (10,000 GHz, which is about 4 CPU
cores) while servicing I/O and replicating data.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 31: Impact Using Nutanix Integrated Replication, 656 Users
Figure 32: Replication Took about 20 Minutes with Standard Knowledge Worker Workload
VMware Horizon 7
8. Solution Application
This section applies the pod-based reference architecture we’ve been describing so far to real-
world scenarios and outlines the sizing metrics and components. The applications below assume
a standard medium user workload; however, assumptions can vary based on utilization and
workload when sizing with replication for AppStacks and Writable Volumes.
Note: Detailed hardware configuration and product models can be found in the
appendix. Any starting size of three or more nodes can form the base of a Nutanix
cluster.
8.1. Scenario: 12 Nodes
Table 14: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes
Item Value Item Value

Components Infrastructure
# of Nutanix nodes 12 # of vCenter Servers 1
# of Nutanix blocks 3 # of vSphere Hosts 12
# of RU (Nutanix) 6 # of vSphere Clusters 2
# of 10 GbE Ports 24 # of Datastore(s) 3
# of 100/1000 Ports (IPMI) 12 # of Virtual Desktops 1,500
# of L2 Leaf Switches 2
# of L3 Spine Switches 1
8. Solution Application | 48
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 33: Rack Layout with 12 Nodes
12-Node Availability Domain

An availability domain is a key construct for determining component and data placement in
distributed systems. When you have three or more uniform blocks, each with a minimum of two
nodes, you can lose a block and the cluster keeps running. You don’t need additional capacity to
achieve this redundancy, just intelligent data placement.
In the following configuration, a whole block can be down and the Nutanix cluster still runs. This
design allows you to bring more than one node down for maintenance at a time, which leads to
better OPEX during maintenance windows and overall higher availability.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 34: 12-Node Availability Domain with Two vSphere Clusters on One Nutanix Cluster
8.2. Scenario: 24 Nodes

This configuration includes 24 NX-3060 nodes for VDI and eight NX-3060 nodes for RDS.
Table 15: Detailed Component Breakdown: 24 Nodes
Item Value Item Value

Components Infrastructure
# of Nutanix blocks 6 # of vCenter Servers 2
# of Nutanix nodes 24 # of vSphere Hosts 24
# of RU (Nutanix) 12 # of vSphere Clusters 1-2
# of 10GbE Ports 48 # of Datastore(s) 3
# of 100/1000 Ports (IPMI) 24 # of VDI 3,300
# of L2 Leaf Switches 2
# of L3 Spine Switches 1
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 35: Rack Layout with 24 Nodes
24-Node Availability Domain

In the following configuration, a whole block can be down and the Nutanix cluster still runs. This
design allows you to bring more than one node down for maintenance at a time, which leads to
better OPEX during maintenance windows and overall higher availability.
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 36: 24-Node Availability Domain with VDI
VMware Horizon 7
9. Conclusion
The VMware Horizon and Nutanix solution provides a single high-density platform for desktop
delivery. This modular, linearly scaling approach lets you grow Horizon deployments easily.
VAAI, integrated disaster recovery options, and localized and distributed caching using Shadow
Clones all allow for quick deployment and simplified day-to-day operations. Robust self-healing
and multistorage controllers deliver high availability in the face of failure or rolling upgrades.
On Nutanix, available host CPU resources drive Horizon user density, rather than any I/O or
resource bottlenecks for virtual desktops. Login VSI test results showed densities of over 160
users per Nutanix node for VDI and minimal overhead for using replication. Nutanix offers a
pay-as-you-grow model, like public cloud providers, but in the comfort and security of your own
premises.
Nutanix clusters with Horizon and App Volumes give you greater resiliency and allow you to
achieve higher constant performance with support for both VM-level (desktop) and file-level
(AppStacks) replication. Using Shadow Clones to cache AppStacks and boot partitions reduces
CPU and network traffic to provide the best possible user experience.
When deploying Horizon and App Volumes on Nutanix, you can provide your users with a
dynamic, elastic, and high-performing environment, so you can focus on your business instead of
managing technology.
9. Conclusion | 53
VMware Horizon 7
Appendix
Configuration
Hardware
Storage and Compute
• Nutanix NX-3460-G5
• Per node specs (four nodes per 2RU block):
⁃ CPU: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680
⁃ Memory: 512 GB Memory
Network
• Arista 7050Q: L3 spine
• Arista 7050S: L2 leaf
Software
Nutanix
• AOS 4.7.0.1
• CVM: 12 vCPUs, 24 GB of RAM
Horizon
• 7.0.1
Virtual Desktop
• Windows 10
Infrastructure
• vSphere 6.0 U2 Build 3620759
About the Authors

Dwayne Lessner is a technical marketing engineer on the product marketing team at Nutanix,
Inc. 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
Appendix | 54
VMware Horizon 7
to work with many different applications frameworks and architecture. Dwayne has been a
speaker at BriForum and various VMUG events and conferences.
Steven Poitras is a solution architect on the technical marketing team at Nutanix, Inc. In this role,
Steven helps design architectures combining applications with the Nutanix platform, creating
solutions to help solve critical business needs and requirements and disrupting the infrastructure
space. Prior to joining Nutanix, he was one of the key solution architects at the Accenture
Technology Labs, where he was focused on the Next Generation Infrastructure (NGI) and Next
Generation Datacenter (NGDC) domains. In these spaces, he has developed methodologies,
reference architectures, and frameworks focusing on the design and transformation to agile,
scalable, and cost-effective infrastructures that can be consumed in a service-oriented or cloud-
like manner.
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 | 55
VMware Horizon 7
List of Figures
Figure 1: Nutanix Web-Scale Infrastructure...................................................................... 6
Figure 2: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform.....................................................................9
Figure 3: Information Life Cycle Management................................................................ 11
Figure 4: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture...............................................................11
Figure 5: Data Locality and Live Migration......................................................................12
Figure 6: Shadow Clone Functionality.............................................................................13
Figure 7: Horizon: Platform for End-User Computing......................................................14
Figure 8: Connectivity Composer.................................................................................... 26
Figure 9: View Composer I/O Overview..........................................................................27
Figure 10: Shadow Clones I/O Detail..............................................................................27
Figure 11: View Composer with VCAI I/O Detail.............................................................28
Figure 12: Nutanix Component Architecture................................................................... 29
Figure 13: Leaf-Spine Network Architecture................................................................... 30
Figure 14: Logical Network Connectivity......................................................................... 31
Figure 15: Sample Login VSI Graph............................................................................... 36
Figure 16: CPU on One of the 3060-G5 Used for Testing..............................................37
Figure 17: VSImax for 659 Horizon Users on Four Nodes............................................. 38
Figure 18: Four-Node Total Cluster IOPS Including Reads and Writes during Testing... 39
Figure 19: Four-Node Total Cluster IOPS Including Reads and Writes during Testing:
Graph Legend.............................................................................................................. 39
Figure 20: Four-Node I/O Latency during Testing with a Peak of 4.5 ms........................39
56
VMware Horizon 7
Figure 21: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes................... 40
Figure 22: Overall Cluster CPU and Memory Consumption for Four Nodes: Graph
Legend......................................................................................................................... 40
Figure 23: Logon Times for 559 Users........................................................................... 40
Figure 24: VSImax Using App Volumes..........................................................................41
Figure 25: CVM CPU Utilization and IOPS Using Three AppStacks...............................43
Figure 26: CVM CPU Utilization and IOPS Using Three AppStacks: Graph Legend.......43
Figure 27: CPU Savings While Running Shadow Clones............................................... 44
Figure 28: Metrics with and without Shadow Clones...................................................... 44
Figure 29: 47,000 IOPS to Boot Desktops Are Mostly Delivered from Local Cache........45
Figure 30: AppStacks Replicated to Santa Clara, CA, from Durham, NC, over 4,440 KM. 46
Figure 31: Impact Using Nutanix Integrated Replication, 656 Users...............................47
Figure 32: Replication Took about 20 Minutes with Standard Knowledge Worker
Workload...................................................................................................................... 47
Figure 33: Rack Layout with 12 Nodes...........................................................................49
Figure 34: 12-Node Availability Domain with Two vSphere Clusters on One Nutanix
Cluster.......................................................................................................................... 50
Figure 35: Rack Layout with 24 Nodes...........................................................................51
Figure 36: 24-Node Availability Domain with VDI........................................................... 52
57
VMware Horizon 7
List of Tables
Table 1: Document Version History.................................................................................. 7
Table 2: Platform Design Decisions................................................................................ 18
Table 3: VMware Design Decisions................................................................................ 20
Table 4: Infrastructure Design Decisions........................................................................ 21
Table 5: Network Design Decisions................................................................................ 22
Table 6: Desktop Scenario Definition.............................................................................. 24
Table 7: Desktop Scenario Sizing................................................................................... 24
Table 8: Virtual Desktop Node Sizing Estimates.............................................................25
Table 9: Nutanix Storage Configuration.......................................................................... 29
Table 10: Horizon Configuration......................................................................................33
Table 11: Horizon Test Image Configuration.................................................................. 33
Table 12: Login VSI Metric Values..................................................................................35
Table 13: VSImax with Different AppStacks................................................................... 42
Table 14: Detailed Component Breakdown: 12 Nodes................................................... 48
Table 15: Detailed Component Breakdown: 24 Nodes................................................... 50
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VMware Horizon 7

Nutanix Reference Architecture

Version 1.2 • July 2017 • RA-2058

4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon..................................16

6. Validation and Benchmarking..............................................................32

Figure 1: Nutanix Web-Scale Infrastructure

Table 1: Document Version History

3.1. Enterprise Cloud Platform for Just-in-Time Desktops

Figure 2: Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform

3.2. Distributed Storage Fabric

3.3. App Mobility Fabric

3.5. Third-Party Hypervisors

3.6. Nutanix Acropolis Architecture

Figure 3: Information Life Cycle Management

Figure 4: Overview of the Nutanix Architecture

Figure 5: Data Locality and Live Migration

Figure 6: Shadow Clone Functionality

3.7. VMware Horizon 7.0

Figure 7: Horizon: Platform for End-User Computing

4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon

4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon | 16

4.1. VMware App Volumes 2.11

4. Better Together: Nutanix and VMware Horizon | 17

Table 2: Platform Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Granularly scale to precisely meet

Item Detail Rationale

Small deployments: Shared

Up to 12–32 vSphere hosts Isolated fault domains

Clusters per vCenter Up to 2x 24 or 4x 12 host clusters Task parallelization

3x Nutanix datastores per pod

1x container for VMs

Item Detail Rationale

Increase CVM Memory to 24–32

Table 3: VMware Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Connection Min: 2 (n+1)

Users per Broker Up to 2,000 users Horizon best practice

Ensures controller availability

vCenter Appliance 1 appliance per 2,000 VMs

Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 8

Item Detail Rationale

Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 2

View Security Servers

Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 4

Ensures availability of storefront

App Volumes Manager

Virtual Hardware vCPUs: 4

Table 4: Infrastructure Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Global Catalog / DNS HA for GC / DNS

Item Detail Rationale

Ensures availability of DHCP servers

Ensures availability of DFS

Min: 2 (n+1) per site

SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability

Table 5: Network Design Decisions

Item Detail Rationale

Use: vSphere to CVM local

Use: All external VM

Item Detail Rationale

ID: DMZ (for external)

5.1. Desktop Sizing