A VMware Horizon solution on Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525 servers based on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors
Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:38:14 -0000
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Many VDI deployments experience performance issues and poor user experience when trying to maintain a cost-effective consolidation ratio. A higher consolidation ratio of virtual machines to physical servers offers better economics and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The amount of TCO benefits might vary depending on the size of your VDI environment. It is a challenge for today’s organizations to deploy a cost-effective VDI environment while striking the right balance between performance and density.
The Dell Technologies Ready Solutions for VDI team provides a solution that resolves these challenges. It uses VMware Horizon based on Dell EMC PowerEdge R7525 servers equipped with new 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. The PowerEdge R7525 is a highly scalable, two-socket 2U rack server that delivers powerful performance and flexible configuration options. The servers are equipped with 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors that can accommodate up to 64 cores per socket. A dual-socket R7525 server can have up to 128 cores, providing excellent user densities and a lower TCO for your VDI deployment. This solution offers you the flexibility to correctly size your VDI environment for performance and an exceptional end-user experience.
In this blog, we will discuss the key benefits of this solution and the results of performance testing carried out by the Dell Technologies Ready Solutions for VDI team.
Key benefits of the solution
- High performance and density: PowerEdge R7525 servers based on 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors are designed for performance and with a high number of cores per CPU socket you can achieve higher user densities per server.
- Lower security risks with a diverse CPU architecture: The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors in this solution present an opportunity to diversify the CPU architecture within your data center. A data center with diverse CPU architecture poses a lower risk to your organization during security threats. Customers can move business-critical data to an appropriate and safe environment while a security event is resolved. With AMD Infinity Guard, which includes the AMD secure processor, Secure Memory Encryption (SME), and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) capabilities, you can minimize potential attack surfaces and deploy your workloads with confidence.
- Excellent graphics capability: The solution also offers excellent graphics performance with the capability of hosting up to 6 NVIDIA T4 cards (each with x16 PCIe lane access) on the PowerEdge R7525 server, providing up to 96 GB of graphics frame-buffer per server.
Solution performance testing
The Dell Technologies Ready Solutions for VDI team used the Login VSI benchmark tool for performance testing. We performed testing on a 3-node VMware vSAN cluster based on PowerEdge R7525 servers with a ‘Density Optimized’ configuration. VMware ESXi 6.7 update 3 was used as the hypervisor and the Horizon 7 virtual desktops were provisioned by instant clones. See Figure 1 for the solution stack.
Figure 1: VMware Horizon on PowerEdge R7525 solution stack
The environment configuration was:
- PowerEdge R7525 server (Density Optimized configuration)
- 2 x AMD EPYC 7502 (32 core @2.5 GHz)
- 1024 GB (16 x 64 GB @ 3200 MHz)
- 2 x 800 GB WI SAS SSD (cache)
- 4 x 1.92 TB MU SAS SSD (capacity)
- Mellanox Connect X- 5, 25 Gbe Dual port SFP28
- 6 x NVIDIA T4
- vSAN all-flash datastore
- VMware ESXi 6.7u3 hypervisor
- VMware Horizon 7.10 VDI software layer
See Table 1 for the VM configuration that we tested for different Login VSI workloads. For details of the test environment, configuration and testing process and an analysis of the test results, see the Reference Architecture Guide available on the Dell Technologies VDI Infohub.
Table 1 : Virtual machine configuration for different Login VSI workloads
Figure 2 shows the recommended density figures per host for Login VSI workloads based on our performance testing. We recommend these density figures after monitoring and analyzing a combination of host utilization parameters (CPU, memory, network and disk utilization) and Login VSI results. We monitored the relevant host utilization parameters and applied relatively conservative thresholds for the Login VSI testing. Thresholds are carefully selected to deliver an optimal combination of excellent end-user experience and cost-per user while also providing burst capacity for seasonal or intermittent spikes in usage.
Figure 2: Horizon on PowerEdge R7525 solution user density figures
Conclusion
Our performance testing achieved excellent consolidation ratios for the solution while maintaining good performance for typical VDI workloads. PowerEdge R7525 servers based on AMD processors come with dual-socket CPUs that can host up to 128 cores per server, increasing user density within VDI environment.
If you are running a mixed workload on your hypervisor, including your VDI workload, there is a limitation using VMware licensing greater than 32 cores. See the licensing details here. However, this limitation doesn't apply to VMware vSphere Desktop edition intended only for deploying desktop virtualization and is licensed based on powered-on desktop virtual machines.
The high CPU core density per server results in exceptional user densities and high performance for VDI workloads. The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors with high core counts present an opportunity to design your VDI environment with CPU oversubscription ratios that result in the right balance between performance and user density.