VDI, vVols and Nachos at Wisconsin VMUG
Quality of life may not be the first thing you think of in relation to VMware, but last week’s Wisconsin VMUG highlighted technologies that aim to improve QoL for those of us working in the VM world, from IGEL’s take on VDI to a deep dive with Netech into vVols.
IGEL’s take on VDI features their thin client / zero client devices. Gary Sharp, sales director North America, also highlighted their software’s ability to repurpose existing machines as thin clients, and IGEL’s “pay once” model – a real savings for IT departments.
Fun fact: IGEL is German for hedgehog. (See above.)
Adam Bergh, data center practice lead at Netech, did a vVols 1.0 deep dive, including a demo. VVols is a policy-based storage management system, allowing more of the heavy lifting to be offloaded to storage.
Based on the demo and information shared in the presentation, vVols is poised to become a powerful tool for managing storage. It eases deployment of VMs, simplifying were things should be so VM administrators don’t have to worry about tasks like multi-pathing. It also gets around a lot of storage limits: no 256/ host limitation, no restriction on data store size.
vVols currently has some important limitations, which will be addressed in subsequent releases. Those include: array-based replication, no support for VMware’s site recovery manager (SRM), and the inability to use multiple vendors on the same vVol architecture. It’s not supported by Horizon View, except on NetApp devices.
vVols is free with vSphere 6.0 standard, so set up a test environment and play with it. From what we saw, when vVols is production-ready, it will be a very powerful tool for managing storage.
Every meeting features a user presentation as well as a roundtable discussion of challenges faced by real users in their landscapes. It’s always amazing to hear the variety of questions and specific technical information that gets shared at every Wisconsin VMUG, and last week’s roundtable was especially informative.
Sean Massey, data center engineer at AHEAD and VMUG organizer, discussed solving the persistence problem relative to application delivery for VDI environments.
Persistent desktops are managed like a traditional desktop: they must be backed up, if the desktop breaks, the user can’t work, and Windows upgrades are challenging. Non-persistent desktops must have the apps baked in, or they need complex containering via Thin App or AppV. In addition, multiple base images are needed to support different app requirements among users/roles, and there are roaming profiles and saved user settings.
What’s needed is the best of both world. Massey suggest layers, like nachos.
- Chips = OS
- Cheese = apps all users get (because all nachos have cheese, amirite?)
- Toppings = apps for particular users/roles
Massey discussed several layering solutions, from Unidesk, Liquid Labs Flexapp and the solution he used in the use case presented, App Volumes from VMware.
The challenge? Create a system of supply management for hundreds of desktops, making a consistent experience for everyone. Software upgrades at image level rather than every desktop or every separate image. Instead, there’s one location using virtual tech.
A question about upgrading Horizon View kicked off the roundtable discussions. Horizon View upgrades from 5.5 and earlier require careful planning, as an intermediate upgrade may be needed. Check VMware’s software compatibility list, and be sure to upgrade software components in the correct order – for some reason, this is even more necessary than usual.
Big warning/ huge pro tip regarding vCloud Director: don’t ever shut down DRS. It relies on resource pools, so if you shut it down, you’ll lose access to your cloud environment.
It’s estimated that only 700 customers currently use NSX, and there’s speculation that there will be an NSX announcement at VMworld later this month. The next Wisconsin VMUG will feature a VMware rep who will share in-depth information on the news out of VMworld. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, Oct. 6, at Promega in Madison.
As always, a big thank you to Wisconsin VMUG for sharing so much timely, useful information.