VDI on Dell PowerEdge Infrastructure with 4th Generation AMD EPYC Processors
Download PDFFri, 14 Apr 2023 15:17:26 -0000
|Read Time: 0 minutes
Summary
Dell PowerEdge server improvements for VDI
The all-new Dell PowerEdge R7625 with AMD EPYC 4th Gen processors delivers up to 50 percent higher CPU density in terms of cores per server. This platform is based on the latest technology from AMD to provide better performance and improved scalability for a variety of workloads, including VDI.
Some of the platform enhancements that are especially relevant to VDI workloads are:
- CPU—Up to 50 percent more cores with up to 96 cores per socket, allowing VDI virtual machine (VM) per-node density increases and better VDI VM performance.
- Memory—33 percent more memory channels with 50 percent faster memory, allowing greater memory capacity and performance to support richer VDI desktop VM configurations for applications that require increased memory.
- I/O—PCIe Gen5 with twice the bandwidth, allowing for high-speed and low-latency NVMe drives, NICs, and GPU accelerators.
- Smart Cooling Technology—Advanced thermal designs and options, such as streamlined airflow pathways within the server, liquid cooling options, and so on, to keep CPUs, high-performance NICs, and GPUs cool and performing optimally.
- Boot Optimized Storage—The 3rd generation Boot Optimized Storage Solution (BOSS-N1), which has been enhanced with full hot-plug support for enterprise class M.2 NVMe SSDs. Additionally, the design is integrated into the server, eliminating the need to dedicate a PCIe slot and giving customers more flexibility with their choice of I/O slots and peripherals.
Benchmarking for VDI
Login VSI by Login Consultants is the industry-standard tool for testing VDI environments and server-based computing (RDSH environments). It installs a standard collection of desktop application software (for example, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat Reader) on each VDI desktop. It then uses launcher systems to connect a specified number of users to available desktops within the environment. Once each user is connected, the workload is started through a login script, which starts the test script once the user environment is configured by the login script. Each launcher system can launch connections to several ‘target’ machines (VDI desktops).
When designing a desktop virtualization solution, understanding user workloads and profiles is key to understanding the density numbers that the solution can support. At Dell Technologies, we use several Login VSI workload/profile levels, each of which is bound by specific metrics and capabilities, with two targeted at graphics-intensive use cases.
To understand the improvements that we can expect to see with the latest generation of servers compared with the prior-generation servers, we ran the same Login VSI benchmark against both servers. We used a Knowledge Worker profile consisting of 5 to 9 applications and 360p video. The following table shows the user VM configuration:
Table 1. Login VSI Knowledge Worker profile
Workload | VM profiles | ||||
vCPUs | RAM | RAM reserved | Desktop video resolution | Operating system | |
Knowledge Worker | 2 | 4 GB | 2 GB | 1920 x 1080 | Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit |
The following table outlines the test configuration of the hardware and software components:
Table 2. Hardware and software configuration
Component | Configuration |
Compute host hardware |
|
Management host hardware |
|
Storage | PERC with 6x mixed use SSDs (RAID 10) |
Network | Dell S5248-ON switch |
Broker | VMware Horizon 8 2209 |
Hypervisor | VMware ESXi 8.0.0 |
SQL | Microsoft SQL Server 2019 |
Desktop operating system | Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit, 22h2 version |
Office | Microsoft Office 365 |
Profile management | FSLogix |
Management operating system | Windows Server 2022 |
Login VSI | Version 4.1.40.1 |
Results summary—R7525 compared with R7625
Comparing the 32 core processors of the 4th Gen AMD EPYC to the 3rd Gen AMD EPYC using Login VSI showed approximately 30 percent improvement in VM density. At the same time, we observed approximately 11 percent improvement in response time.
The following table outlines the test results:
Table 3. Key results of Login VSI testing
Server | Density per host (higher is better) | User experience—VSI base (lower is better) |
PowerEdge R7525 | 265 VMs | 896 milliseconds |
PowerEdge R7625 | 345 VMs | 794 milliseconds |
Conclusion
With up to 96 cores per socket and significant increases in memory bandwidth, Dell PowerEdge servers with 4th Gen AMD EPYC processors continue to provide best-in-class features and specifications to satisfy the most demanding workloads. For VDI workloads, with the same number of cores, we observed a 30 percent increase in density with more than 11 percent reduction in response time.