Home > Workload Solutions > Virtual Desktop Infrastructure > Design and Implementation Guides > Dell Validated Designs for VDI—Designs for VMware Horizon vSAN Ready Nodes > Scaling Guidelines
vSAN-based solutions provide flexibility as you scale, reducing the initial and future cost of ownership.
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 limits of the hypervisor at 64 nodes per block restricts the scaling limit for vSAN.
The boundary for a Horizon block is the vCenter. The number of VMs a vCenter can host depends on the type of Horizon 8 VMs being used. The recommended limit of virtual machines per vCenter is 20,000 full-clone or instant-clone VMs.
Sizing recommendations change over time as updates are released and qualifications are performed. See the VMware Configuration Maximums website for the latest recommendations.
This Dell Validated Design for VDI uses instant clones, as shown in the following figures. VMware recommends a limit of 5,000 instant-clone VMs per block. With these limits in mind, 20 compute nodes with 200 task-user VMs per node would reach the maximum number of VMs for the block.
The following figure shows a 5,000-user Horizon block:
The following figure shows a scale-out to a 20,000-user Horizon vSAN pod with 5,000 user blocks. Each block contains its own vCenter Server instance and VDI components:
Note: The management cluster sizing numbers in the preceding diagrams are recommended minimums; sizing must be carefully considered as part of any deployment.
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 Horizon pod and block architecture, and scaling, see VMware Workspace ONE and Horizon Reference Architecture in the VMware Digital Workspace Tech Zone.