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VDI Design Guide—Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on VxRail and vSAN Ready Nodes
Executive summary Solution architecture
Architecture overview
Scaling the solution
Enterprise solution pods
Key components Design sizing and guidelines Design enhancements Conclusion References

Scaling the solution

Home > Integrated Products > vSAN Ready Nodes > Guides > VDI Design Guide—Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on VxRail and vSAN Ready Nodes > Scaling the solution

Scaling the solution

  • vSAN-based appliances solutions provide flexibility as you scale, reducing the initial and future cost of ownership. Add additional physical and virtual servers to the server pools to scale horizontally. Add virtual resources to the infrastructure to scale vertically.

    Scaling out

    Each component of the solution architecture scales independently depending on the required number of supported users. You can add appliance nodes at any time to expand the vSAN SDS pool in a modular fashion. The scaling limit for vSAN is restricted by the limits of the hypervisor at 64 nodes per block.

    The recommended limit of linked clones per cluster is 4,000.

    Each instance of VMware vCenter can service a maximum of 4,000 linked or full clone virtual machines. A Citrix "pod architecture" consists of a virtual desktop "site" and one or more "zones" at each site. The following figure shows a 4,000-user MCS linked clone/vSAN configuration, which equates to a single zone within a site:

    Figure 2. Single 4,000-user pod

    The following figure shows a scale-out of 20,000 MCS linked-clone VMs with vSAN. The recommended limit for a zone is 10,000 sessions. In this example, there are two sites with three zones each. The sites are load-balanced and presented to the users as a single entity.

    Figure 3. Scaleout for 20,000 users

    Scaling up

    Dell Technologies recommends a validated disk configuration for general-purpose VDI. These configurations leave drive slots available for future vertical expansion and ensure that you protect your investment as new technology transforms your organization.

    Note: These configurations can accept additional or faster processors or memory than the guidance provided here.

    For more information about Citrix best practices for scaling, see Citrix VDI Handbook and Best Practices.