VMware NetApp FAS 2050HA, Manual

Page: 14 / 21

4.4 INTELLIGENT READ CACHING
VDI by nature is a read-intensive technology and is very bursty in nature. This can be exemplified by
boot storms, login storms, and virus scan storms which all further increase the read-intensive and bursty
nature of a virtual desktop environment. Traditionally, these challenges are addressed by increasing the
cache for both ESX servers and storage devices, increasing the spindle count on the storage devices,
and adding more storage devices to offset the total workload.
However, NetApp intelligent caching, available natively in Data ONTAP 7.3.1, combined with VMware
Linked clones addresses these challenges. These two technologies work together to help customers
reduce their storage footprint for OS data and user data while increasing overall performance in the
environment and decreases the overall storage solution costs. VMware Linked Clones and NetApp
Intelligent Caching technologies eliminate the requirement for a large number of spindles to serve large-
scale read-intensive, bursty VDI workloads.
NOTE: For large-scale environments a Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) can also be used in
conjunction with the above technologies for even further performance gains and storage savings.
4.5 DEDUPLICATION SETUP
NetApp deduplication saves space on primary storage by removing redundant copies of blocks within a
volume. This process is transparent to the application and can be enabled and disabled on the fly. In a
VMware View environment using Linked Clones, this solution provides great value when we consider that
all users in the environment will have their own user data either on the “user data disk” (for persistent
desktops) and/or CIFS home directories (non-persistent desktops). In many environments user data is
duplicated multiple times as various identical copies and version of documents and files are saved. For
more information refer to
NetApp TR-3505: NetApp Deduplication for FAS, Deployment and
Implementation Guide.
Two separate User Data Disk and CIFS volumes are setup for user data for both persistent and non-
persistent desktops (one volume per controller) respectively. These volumes should have deduplication
enabled. To do this, please perform the following steps:
1. Connect to the controller’s system console, using either SSH, telnet, or serial console.
2. Execute the following command to enable NetApp dedupe for the gold volume:
sis on <gold volume path>
3. Execute the following command to start processing existing data:
sis start –s <gold volume path>
4. Execute the following command to monitor the status of the dedupe operation:
sis status
NOTE: Savings of up to 50% have been seen in environments using deduplication for CIFS home
directories. Such storage savings is also possible for the “user data disks” for persistent desktops as well.
13