Desktop Virtualization at Sheridan: Past, Present and Future James - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Desktop Virtualization at Sheridan:

Past, Present and Future

James Duncan

Director, Information and Communication Technology james.duncan@sheridancollege.ca

Ian Colquhoun

• Sr. Systems Architect / Team Lead

ian.colquhoun@sheridancollege.ca

Vicken Awakian

Systems Administrator vicken.awakian@sheridancollege.ca

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Agenda

• Use cases for Desktop Virtualization at Sheridan
• Move from Pilot into large scale Production
• Move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)
• Overview of our Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• Lessons Learned / Next Steps

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Sheridan’s VDI use cases: 1. Academic Lab and Open Access Desktops 2. Administrative Desktops 3. Mobile Computing 4. Distance Education 5. ”Other” Overall goal – common end user computing platform for anywhere, any device access

Sheridan’s Use Cases for VDI OVERVIEW

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• Replacement of traditional desktops with Zero Clients

(hardware terminals with no local CPU, GPU or disk storage)

• The user experience is largely the same as before; students

log in to use a Windows desktop with a display, keyboard and mouse

• Primarily used by non-mobile students
• Hardware costs (Zero Client + Infrastructure + Licensing) is

slightly less expensive than previous desktops used; additional savings when factoring in ease of management

• Funded by existing lease streams – separated into capital

hardware costs (Zero Client) and lease infrastructure costs (Storage + Servers) Over 800 Zero Clients deployed Trafalgar, HMC, and Davis Learning Commons and some selected labs Various Dell Wyse Zero Clients

Academic Desktops OVERVIEW – USE CASES

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Staff Desktops OVERVIEW – USE CASES

• As with Academic Lab / Learning Commons machines, these

replace traditional desktops in staff / faculty areas

• Can be used in a 1:1 user/device model, or can be highly effective

in hoteling scenarios, where staff or faculty use any available device but need a consistent computing experience

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) similar to academic computing;

additional savings possible if VDI enables hoteling rather than dedicated machines

• Funded by existing lease streams or departmental cost transfers

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Mobile Computing OVERVIEW – USE CASES

• Migration from College-provided hardware (Rent and Lease to

Own) to “bring your own device” (BYOD) created support issues for IT and user experience issues for some students & faculty when trying to use applications in a highly heterogeneous computing environment

• VDI can provide a standardized desktop environment for students

and faculties again where software is most problematic

• Students access the desktop using a Horizon View client from their

laptops (Windows or OS X)

• Associated cost is per-VM only (no Zero Client required)

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Distance Education OVERVIEW – USE CASES

• Similar challenge as Mobile Computing (supporting College

software in a ‘bring your own device’ paradigm), except students are not on campus

• Provides remote access to a standardized computing environment
• Some software is difficult to support remotely, or the vendor may

not allow for it to be installed on computers not owned by the College

• As with mobile computing, cost is for VMs only

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Other use cases OVERVIEW – USE CASES

• Provide Windows desktops in an otherwise OS X lab environment

(e.g. where most software required by program runs in OS X but some runs only in Windows)

• Software upgrade pilots / trials (e.g. Windows + Office)
• Providing access to legacy software versions (e.g. Office 2010)
• Others?

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Various Project Phases PROJECTS

• Pilot (2011-14)
• Proof of Concept in satellite campus labs and Learning Commons
• Production (2013/14)
• Infrastructure Design
• Infrastructure Deployment
• Open Access Labs and Learning Commons Zero Client

Deployment

• Expansion (2014-2016)
• Distance Education
• Mobile Computing
• Administrative Users
• Move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (2017)

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Move to HCI PROJECTS

• Past Infrastructure
• Came off lease at end of 2016
• “FlexPod” architecture – Cisco UCS + NetApp
• Strategic decision to move to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
• Lower overall cost of ownership
• More predictable cost modelling
• Linear scalability
• RFP Process
• Evaluated a number of HCI offerings, selected VMware VSAN (deployed on
• ur current Server Platform of Record – Cisco UCS)
• Migration Project
• Upgrade to VMware Horizon View 7 in conjunction with migration to VSAN

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Infrastructure

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Where We Were INFRASTRUCTURE

• VMware View 5.3
• traditional hardware layout (based on FlexPod)
• Cisco C240 M3 server nodes
• datastores NFS from NetApp arrays
• 2 clusters located in 2 separate datacentres
• single namespace – desktop.sheridancollege.ca
• facilitated by complex load balancing

configuration (F5)

• went live while F5 config was still in beta!

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INFRASTRUCTURE Horizon View 7 High-Level

• Utilizes datacenters in both HMC and

Trafalgar campuses for scale and site redundancy

• Multiple servers in each datacenter to

provide additional scale and redundancy

• Load Balancers provide automatic failover

and load distribution

• Employs Hyper-Converged architecture

(VMware vSAN) to simplify management, allow cost predictability, leverage linear scalability

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Server Configuration INFRASTRUCTURE

• Cisco UCS C240 M4S2 – 10 per campus
• 2 CPUs (14 cores each) (Xeon E5-2690 v4)
• 512GB RAM (16 x 32GB DIMMs)
• 1 x 800GB Ent. SAS SSD 12 Gpbs (vSAN cache)
• 3 x 960GB Ent. SATA SSD 6 Gpbs (vSAN capacity)
• Teradici PCoIP offload cards
• 26 TB per site total
• supports VM density of 80-100:1 (or more)

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F5 iApp vs. CloudPod INFRASTRUCTURE

• we used the F5 View5 iApp to allow a single

namespace to be presented into our two clusters

• bleeding edge at the time, no one else was doing

multi-site load balancing for View

• the iApp would do lookups into the View Events

database to find valid existing sessions for the user and into Active Directory to establish home site for the user for persistent pools based on groups

• unfortunately somewhat unstable and lead to
• dd, hard to diagnose problems
• upgrading to View 7 allowed us to leverage the

CloudPod feature instead

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F5 iApp vs. CloudPod INFRASTRUCTURE

• ur CloudPod contains 2 pods (clusters)
• each cluster is a “site”
• each site is aware of global pool entitlements as

well as the state of all current sessions

• a user can be assigned a home site which allows

those with access to persistent pools to always make it to their desktop regardless of which site they connect to

• existing sessions to non-persistent pools can be

reestablished regardless of which site they connect to

• load balancing simplified!

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DESKTOP POOLS

Currently running 7 pools on 2 sites (14 pools total) five floating two Dedicated Requirements for the Desktop pools were derived from users and assessment tool. Baked in apps on demand/roaming apps and ThinApps. And a mix of Global and local Entitlements

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GLOBAL ENTITLEMENTS

Defining Global Entitlements Name, Display protocol, HTML Access, pools. AD groups have access to Global Entitlement or Local Entitlements Global Entitlements everywhere except if you want to honor Connection server restrictions.

Academic Desktop acd_traf acd_miss Student Faculty Groups Pools

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Two Scenarios GLOBAL ENTITLEMENTS Academic Desktop acd_traf acd_miss Student Faculty Pools Admin Desktop adm_traf adm_miss Staff Faculty Pools Floating Dedicated

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• Cost modelling
• Governance of extra capacity
• Software/App Store - deliver apps instead of full desktops for mobile computing
• HTML5 (Blast Access) instead of full client
• App Volumes

Next Steps DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

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Thank You