Home > Storage > PowerStore > Virtualization and Cloud > VMware Horizon 8 with Dell EMC PowerEdge R6525 Servers and Dell EMC PowerStore 9000 > Volume count
There are several factors that determine the optimal volume count with Horizon 8 on PowerStore. The volume count varies based on the scenario. Performance and management overhead are typically the two most important factors when determining the number of volumes.
For performance reasons, a minimum of 16 volumes is recommended for a VDI environment. This configuration ensures good queue balancing and reduces I/O bottlenecks.
Balance this volume recommendation with the need to keep the volume count low to reduce management overhead. The VMware guidance for volume count should also be considered. This test shows that having 16 volumes supports 2,500 users from a performance perspective. Using more volumes than is necessary may have an impact on VM recovery time from a backup. Using array-based snapshots reduces recovery time and minimizes the impact of higher user-per-volume counts.
This test uses 16 volumes (datastores) for 2,500 virtual desktops.