The Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) is optimized for desktop virtualization workloads. Cisco UCS SmartPlay configurations help you easily and quickly deploy desktop virtualization by providing predefined configurations for every type of deployment scenario.
Desktop and application virtualization are increasingly popular ways for enterprises to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve efficiency, increase control, and expand connectivity. With virtual desktops, users can access their desktop images for laptops, thin clients, smartphones, or other devices from hosted, centralized infrastructure in a data center.
Although many enterprises are increasingly turning to desktop virtualization to address the need for increased business agility, risk mitigation, security, and support for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives, the appropriate infrastructure is critical to make these initiatives successful.
Cisco UCS provides the most optimized foundation for desktop and application virtualization infrastructure. The industry's first unified data center platform, Cisco UCS delivers a converged, programmable infrastructure that simplifies and accelerates enterprise-class application and service deployment in bare-metal, virtualized and cloud-computing environments. Unified, model-based management, end-to-end provisioning, and migration support come together in this next-generation data center platform to accelerate and simplify application deployment, with greater reliability and security.
Cisco UCS provides these important features:
• Integration of Cisco servers and network and I/O resources into one system
• Improvement of enterprise application availability and performance
• Scalability of service delivery to increase business agility
• Streamlining of data center resources to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)
• Radical reduction in the number of devices requiring setup, management, power, cooling, and cabling
Cisco UCS is changing the economics and performance of server-hosted client computing, delivering a robust, high-performance computing fabric on which desktop virtualization can be deployed.
These are the primary elements of Citrix desktop virtualization architecture:
• Citrix XenDesktop transforms Microsoft Windows desktops into virtual desktops for on-demand services to users on any device.
• Citrix Provisioning Services is commonly used to provision Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp environments.
• Citrix XenApp is an application delivery solution that enables any Microsoft Windows application to be virtualized, centralized, and managed and instantly delivered as a service to users anywhere and on any device.
The Cisco UCS controller node is the management server that hosts the hypervisor management software (such as VMware vCenter, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager [SCVMM], and Citrix XenCenter), Citrix Provisioning Services, and Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp brokers (Citrix Dynamic Desktop Controllers). It can also house other management tools to support the environment.
The Cisco UCS desktop workload node hosts Microsoft Windows XP/7/8 virtual desktops as virtual machines for Citrix XenDesktop deployments or as Microsoft Windows server virtual machines for Citrix XenApp deployments.
Figures 1 and 2 show the Cisco® desktop virtualization architecture.
The configurations listed in Tables 1, 2, and 3 provide some guidance on the target workloads based on asumptions about density, workload, and resiliency charateristics1.
Table 1. Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers SmartPlay Configurations for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp Workloads
Configuration
Configuration Description
Target Workload Description
Starter System Bundle 1 (starting with 300 users)
UCS-SP6-PR-B200
2 Cisco UCS 6248UP 48-Port Fabric Interconnects
1 Cisco UCS chassis with two Cisco UCS 2208 IOM Modules
4 Cisco UCS B200 desktop workload blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 16 x 16 GB (256 GB total)
• Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1240
Networking Infrastructure to support up to 20,000 virtual desktops
Management blade servers to support up to 2000 virtual desktops (for redundancy. add another Cisco UCS B200 M3 controller blade server)
Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blades to support 300 users, or Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blades to support 350 users
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
Need external storage to host virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and user data storage
Starter System Bundle 2 (starting with 400 users)
UCS-EZ-VDI-B200KT
2 Cisco UCS 6296UP interconnects
1 Cisco UCS chassis with 2 Cisco UCS 2208 IOM Modules
2 Cisco UCS B200 controller blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.40-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2665
• Memory: 8 x 16 GB (128 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1240
• 2 x 300-GB HDD
4 Cisco UCS B200 desktop workload blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 16 x 16 GB (256 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1240
• 2 x 300-GB HDD
Networking Infrastructure to support up to 20,000 virtual desktops
Management blade servers to support up to 2000 virtual desktops (with N+N redundancy)
Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blades to support 400 users, or Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blades to support 500 users
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
Need external storage to host VDI and user data storage
Expansion Bundle 1
(100 users)
UCS-EZ-PERF-B200M3
1 Cisco UCS B200 hosting blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 16 x 16 GB (256 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1240
XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blade to support 100 users
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
Need external storage to host VDI and user data storage
Expansion Bundle 2
(100 users)
UCS-EZ-PR-FIO-B200
1 Cisco UCS B200 hosting blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 16 x 16 GB (256 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1240
• Cisco UCS Fusion-io 785 GB module
Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blade to support 100 users
On-board server storage for nonpersistent Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload to support 100 users (includes VDI storage)
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
External storage to host user data storage only
Expansion Bundle 3
(120 users)
UCS-EZ-VDI-B200PK
1 Cisco UCS B200 hosting blade servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 8 x 16 GB (128 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1240
Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blade to support 120 users
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
Upgrade Option 1
UCSB-F-FIO-785M
1 Cisco UCS Fusion-io 785 GB Module
On-board server storage for nonpersistent Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload to support up to 100 users
Upgrade Option 2
UCS-EZ-M8GB-4PK
Memory: 4 x 8 GB (32 GB total)
32 GB of memory for upgrade to support power users on virtual desktop workload blade
Upgrade Option 3
UCS-EZ-M16GB-4PK
Memory: 4 x 16 GB (64 GB total)
64 GB of memory for upgrade to support power users on virtual desktop workload blade
Upgrade Option 4
UCS-EZ-300GB-2PK
HDD: 2 x 300 GB
Supports either OS boot drive
Upgrade Option 5
UCS-EZ-600GB-2PK
HDD: 2 x 600 GB
Supports either OS boot drive
Table 2. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers SmartPlay Configurations for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp Workloads
Configuration
Configuration Description
Target Workload Description
Starter System Bundle 1 (starting with 300 users)
UCS-EZ-VDI-C220KT
2 Cisco UCS 6248UP interconnects
2 Cisco Nexus® 2232PP 10 GE Fabric Extenders
2 Cisco UCS C220 controller rack servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.40-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2665
• Memory: 8 x 16 GB (128 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1225
4 Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Servers
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 8 x 16 GB (128 GB total)
• Cisco UCS VIC 1225
Networking infrastructure to support up to 20,000 virtual desktops
Management server to support up to 2000 virtual desktops
Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blades to support 350 users, or Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blades to support 300 users (with memory upgrade to 256 GB per server)
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
External storage to host VDI and user data storage
Expansion Bundle 1
(100 users)
UCS-EZ-VDI-C220PK
1 Cisco C220 M3 Rack Server
• CPU: 2 x 2.70-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2680
• Memory: 8 x 16 GB (128 GB total)
• LSI MegaRAID
• Cisco UCS VIC 1225
Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blade to support 120 users, or Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blade to support 100 users (with memory upgrade to 256 GB per server)
Assumptions:
Need to upgrade HDD for OS boot drives or use external storage
External storage to host VDI and user data storage
Upgrade Option 1
UCS-EZ-M8GB-4PK
Memory: 4 x 8 GB (32 GB total)
32 GB of memory for upgrade to support power users on virtual desktop workload server
Upgrade Option 2
UCS-EZ-M16GB-4PK
Memory: 4 x 16 GB (64 GB total)
64 GB of memory for upgrade to support power users on virtual desktop workload server
Upgrade Option 3
UCS-EZ-300GB-2PK
HDD: 2 x 300 GB
Supports either OS boot drive or VDI storage on rack servers
Upgrade Option 4
UCS-EZ-600GB-2PK
HDD: 2 x 600 GB
Supports either OS boot drive or VDI storage on rack servers
Table 3. Small and Medium-Sized Business (SMB) Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers SmartPlay Configurations for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp Workloads
Configuration
Configuration Description
Target Workload Description
SMB Bundle 1
(75 users)
UCS-EZ-C240-2690
1 Cisco UCS C240 Rack Server
• CPU: 2 x 2.40-GHz Intel Xeon processors E5-2690
• Memory: 16 x 16 GB (256 GB total)
• HDD: 24 x 600 GB SAS
• Cisco UCS VIC 1225
All-in-one configuration to support both the management infrastructure and Citrix XenDesktop virtual desktop workload blades to support 75 users, or Citrix XenApp hosted shared desktop workload blades to support 100 users
Assumptions:
OS boot drives on server
VDI and user data storage on server; no external storage required
1The sizing characterization in this document is provided for guidance purposes only. The characterization is based on a Microsoft Windows 7, 32-bit, 2-GB system with a knowledge worker user and the server running with 60 to 70 percent utilization. Cisco recommends that you assess and profile customer requirements to correctly size the workload and identify the appropriate configurations.
