The increased growth in the amount of data that is stored in file shares and user home directories across IT environments in recent years has resulted in an increased focus on the need to better manage this unstructured data. As a result, many organizations are deploying dedicated file workload solutions with capabilities such as cloud file tiering and single file system namespaces across their IT infrastructure, including for file workloads in a VDI environment.
Dell Technologies provides several solutions for different types of file workloads.
Dell EMC PowerStore storage
Dell EMC PowerStore T storage is simple, unified storage that enables flexible growth with intelligent scale-up and scale-out capabilities and public cloud integration.
Dell EMC PowerStore T is ideal for general-purpose NAS/SAN mixed workload consolidation, smaller file workloads (including small to midsized VDI environments), and transactional databases.
The following figure shows an example of a 5,000-user VDI deployment using Dell EMC PowerStore T storage for file shares:
Figure 6. 5,000-user pod on Dell EMC PowerStore T
When you are deploying Dell EMC PowerStore T in a VDI environment, Dell Technologies recommends that you deploy a separate PowerStore T storage system with a vSphere HA cluster or block. Each PowerStore T system can scale up to four appliances per cluster. This structure provides the greatest scalability, resiliency, and flexibility when deploying and maintaining file services for the overall user pod. As unstructured data storage needs grow over time, the capacity of each PowerStore T storage system can be scaled up or out independently with minimal user impact. You have the choice to deploy alternative architectures to the one suggested here, but you should carefully consider the tradeoffs.
For guidance about selecting an appropriate PowerStore T storage solution for your file workload requirements, see the Dell EMC PowerStore website.
Dell EMC PowerScale file storage
Dell EMC PowerScale storage is a scale-out NAS solution for any file workload.
The PowerScale system is ideal for a wide range of file workloads (including large-scale enterprise VDI environments requiring a single file system namespace), high-performance computing (HPC), archiving, and infrastructure consolidation.
The following figure shows an example of a 20,000-user VDI deployment using PowerScale scale-out storage with a single namespace:
Figure 7. 20,000-user pod on PowerScale system
When you are deploying a PowerScale storage system in a VDI environment, Dell Technologies recommends that you deploy a separate PowerScale system with a vSphere HA cluster or block. This structure provides the greatest scalability, resiliency, and flexibility for deploying and maintaining file services for the overall user pod. As unstructured data-storage needs grow over time, you can scale up the capacity of each PowerScale storage system independently with minimal user impact. In addition to scaling up each PowerScale chassis, you can also scale out a PowerScale system by using the Dell EMC OneFS operating system. Thus, multiple PowerScale systems can provide a single volume and namespace that all user pods in a data center can access.
As shown in the previous figure, you can scale out the system as the VDI environment grows. You can deploy alternative architectures to the architecture suggested here, but first consider the tradeoffs carefully.
For guidance about selecting an appropriate PowerScale storage solution for your file workload requirements, see the Dell EMC PowerScale website.
