Overview
VDI solutions based on Dell PowerEdge, Dell storage, and Dell PowerSwitch networking provide flexibility as you scale, reducing the initial and future cost of ownership. Add physical and virtual servers to the server pools to scale horizontally (scaling out). Add additional resources to the individual components of the infrastructure to scale vertically (scaling up).
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 boundary for a Horizon block is the vCenter. The number of VMs a vCenter can host depends on the type of Horizon 8 VMs in use. 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, 25 compute nodes with 200 task-user VMs per node would reach the maximum number of VMs for the 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.
Scaling up
Each of the components within this design can be scaled up in the following ways:
- Dell PowerEdge servers
- Processors—If more processing power is required, higher core count and clock speed processors can be installed up to the highest model.
- Memory—Additional memory can be installed into each compute node up to the limit of the system architecture.
- GPUs—Additional or more powerful graphics cards can be installed up to the capacity of each compute server.
- Dell storage
- Storage Controllers—Many of the Dell storage systems support scaling up the storage controllers by swapping, clustering, and generational upgrades.
- Storage capacity and performance can be improved by adding additional disks to storage systems in empty drive slots or by adding expansion shelves.
For more information about Horizon pod and block architecture, and scaling, see the VMware Workspace ONE and VMware Horizon Reference Architecture.