Desktop Virtualization - Windows 7 IOPs and Impacts on VDI Deployments

Overview

I recently came across an excellent resource describing Windows 7 IOPs and performance impacts on Desktop Virtualization environments. There are excellent points made around the importance of preparing the Windows operating systems for VDI, allocating storage capacity based upon upfront analysis, validating your expectations prior to production and the importance of determine the VDI environment user roles.

Understanding and getting a grasp on your VDI IOPs is one of the most important attributes for a success VDI Deployment.

Successful desktop deployments involve doing your homework, understand the technology and research "lessons learned" from others that have deployed. You can't believe everything you read, so you will have to dig through the marketing hype to get to the valued information.

One item I would like to point out is the use of tools to validate your VDI deployments. Storage is about 40% of the overall cost of any VDI deployment, so if you have the ability to prove out your IOPs on a small scale system before large scale deployments with your expected user profile usage, that is ideal. Personally I like using IOMeter to generate "simulated" user I/O since this tool has the ability to custom generate scripts. If you have a knack for scripting, couple with this "Autologon" and login scripts and you can deploy 100's of VDI desktops through your provsiioning manager (View Manager, PVS, DDC, etc..) to burn-in your environment prior to production that will launch IOMeter scipts. I also recommend AutoIT VBScript builder as well to simulate launching and type withing applications.

Below are a few links that provide details on IOPs and VDI solutions from "real world" implementations:

Windows 7 IOPS:

“Windows 7 IOPS for VDI: Deep Dive”

Virtualization blogs (just a few):

http://myvirtualcloud.net/
http://blogs.vmware.com/view/
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/default.aspx
http://www.petri.co.il/forums/index.php

Please feel free to comment or contact me for more details:

Dave Harmon