It is important to understand user workloads and profiles when designing a desktop virtualization solution to analyze the density numbers that the solution can support. At Dell EMC, we use five Login VSI workload/profile levels workload/profile, each of which is bound by specific metrics and capabilities with two targeted at graphics-intensive use cases.

We will present more detailed information in relation to these workloads and profiles below, but first it is useful to define the terms “profile” and “workload” as they are used in this document.

• Profile – Is the configuration of the virtual desktop - number of vCPUs and amount of RAM configured on the desktop and available to the user.
• Workload – Is the set of applications used by performance analysis and characterization (PAAC) of Dell EMC VDI solutions (for example Microsoft Office applications, PDF Reader, Internet Explorer, and so on.)

Load-testing on each profile is carried out using an appropriate workload that is representative of the relevant use case and summarized in the table below:

Table 4.              Login VSI workload

Resource monitoring

The following sections explain respective component monitoring used across all Dell EMC solutions where applicable.

• VMware vCenter is used for VMware vSphere-based solutions to gather key data (CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network usage) from each of the compute hosts during each test run. This data is exported to .csv files for single hosts and then consolidated to show data from all hosts (when multiple is tested). While the report does not include specific performance metrics for the Management host servers, these servers are monitored during testing to ensure they are performing at an expected performance level with no bottlenecks.
• PowerFlex REST API captures the storage performance data (Read & Write), IOPS, and latency through PowerFlex Gateway during each test run.

Resource utilization thresholds

The purpose of this test is to determine the user density at a reasonable system load. Testing to system failure is out of scope. To achieve a reasonable system load, target thresholds for system resources are set in the table below. These thresholds reflect a system that is well utilized but not near failure.

Table 5.              Resource utilization thresholds