Red Hat ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS Manuale utente

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RED HAT ENTERPRISE

VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS

SOLUTION GUIDE

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

3BENEFITS OF DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

3BENEFITS FOR IT DEPARTMENTS

3 Advantages Relative to Traditional or Physical Desktops

4 Advantages Relative to Terminal Services Models

4 BenetsforEndUsers

5DRAWBACKS WITH CURRENT VIRTUAL DESKTOP SOLUTIONS

5 User Challenges with Existing Virtual Desktop Solutions

5 ITChallengeswithExistingRetrottedVirtualDesktopSolutions

6DESCRIPTION OF RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS

6 OverviewofBenets

6 Components of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

7 Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor

9 Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager

12 SPICE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

BENEFITS OF DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

The advent of virtualization technology on x86 platforms has allowed a radically new, cost-effective model

of desktop delivery. It allows IT to centrally manage, maintain, and enforce policies on desktops in a much

more effective and holistic manner than traditional desktops (individual PCs running an operating system

(OS) and applications) and legacy SBC/terminal services solutions (shared OS and applications). This enables

bettercomplianceandalsoleadstoasignicantreductioninthetotalcostofownership.Inaddition,virtual

desktops can enable powerful new functionality for end users.

ThispaperdiscussesindepththebenetsofthevirtualdesktopmodelandhighlightsRedHatsolutions.

ItalsocoverssomeofthesignicantdifferencesbetweenRedHatsolutionsandexistingvirtualdesktop

solutions.

BENEFITS FOR IT DEPARTMENTS

FromanITperspective,virtualdesktopsallowmanybenetsrelativetotraditionaldesktopdeliverymodels

(physical desktops and terminal services).

ADVANTAGES RELATIVE TO TRADITIONAL OR PHYSICAL DESKTOPS

Security and compliance: Data resides within physically secured datacenter, rather than on less-secure•

client devices.

Rapid provisioning: Desktops can be centrally provisioned, maintained, and de-provisioned as required.•

Centralized storage and back-up: Entire desktop images can be centrally backed up using the enterprise’s•

storage infrastructure.

Signicantlyreduceddesk-sidevisits:Becauseauser’sPCisnowavirtualmachineorale,itcanbe•

backed up and restored very easily. The ability to snapshot a virtual desktop and “instantly re-image” it

signicantlyreducesthecostofsupport.

Highavailability:Intraditionaldesktopmodels,ifauser’sharddiskcrashesitleadstoasignicant•

amount of downtime. In the case of virtual desktops, hard disk failures cause no downtime and no support

overhead for IT.

Canonical hardware for desktops instead of multiple classes of machines: Virtualization enables•

a canonical view of everything from the hardware to the OS and applications. Hence, IT organizations

do not have to spend an inordinate amount of time testing and regression testing applications and

operatingsystemsonmultipleclassesofhardwarewithdifferentdrivers.Thisgreatlysimpliesdesktop

image management.

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

Power savings: Thin clients consume 1/4 the power that physical desktops require. Often power•

consumptionforaphysicaldesktopcanbeintheexcessof$200peryear.Thiscanbesignicantly

reduced using a hosted virtual desktop model.

ADVANTAGES RELATIVE TO TERMINAL SERVICES MODELS

Inadditiontotheabovebenetsrelativetotraditionaldesktops,hostedvirtualdesktopsoffersignicant

advantages over the traditional terminal services models:

Fully functional desktops for users: Traditional terminal services models are restrictive to users in that they•

donoteasilyallowuserstoinstallapplications,changeproles,orchangesettingsliketheyareusedto

doing with their physical desktops. In a virtual desktop model, each user has a dedicated operating system

and set of applications. From an end-user perspective it looks and feels exactly like a traditional desktop.

No expensive re-writing of applications: Many applications have to be re-written to work well in a multi-•

user terminal services model. With virtual desktops, existing enterprise applications can be taken as-is

and deployed in exactly the same manner.

Complete isolation: A faulty or heavy application run by one user can bring an entire server running•

terminal services down, despite some of the isolation features present in the current generation of

terminal services products. In virtual desktops, the user is completely isolated. Running a faulty or very

heavy application brings only the user’s virtual desktop down, and does not impact the performance of

other users that may be on the same server.

Fasterintroductionofnewapplications:Incurrentterminalservicessolutions,itisverydifcultforITto•

introducenewapplications.Conictswithexistingapplicationsarecommon,andgettingtheapplication

to work often requires re-writing and re-testing applications. In the virtual desktop model, introducing

new applications is much easier because it resembles the traditional desktop model, but offers the

additionaladvantageofaunied/canonicalhardwareview.

BENEFITS FOR END USERS

Improved productivity via access to a fully functional desktop from anywhere: Since the virtual desktop•

runs on a server in the datacenter, users can have access to their fully functional desktop from any client

with a browser and a remote connection protocol. Unlike other models (like terminal services) where only

a few applications with limited functionality can be given to users when they access the system remotely,

virtual desktops allow the entire desktop, including all applications, to be delivered to a user. From a

user’sperspective,itisexactlylikebeingphysicallyintheofce.

Improvedproductivityviasignicantlylowerdowntime:Todayifauser’sPCcrashes,orharddiskfails,•

it takes at least a day for the user to get up and running. In a virtual desktop model, the user could

walk over to another client and be up and running in no time. The state of the desktop is maintained on

hardware in the datacenter, and the client is stateless.

Multiple desktops on-demand: Users can have multiple desktops. For example, a user needs access to•

anancedesktopfortheendofthequarter.ITcouldprovision(instantly)adesktopwithalltherequired

nanceapplications.Thiscouldbeavailabletotheuserforapre-denedperiodoftimeoruntilthe

desktop is no longer required. Additionally, the multiple desktop capability can be exploited to enable

a seamless transition between operating systems. For example, if an organization is migrating from

Microsoft® Windows®XP to Windows 7, a user could be given two virtual desktops (one of each) during

the period of the transition. Once all the applications have been migrated, and the user is accustomed to

the new environment, the old one could be de-provisioned.

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

DRAWBACKS WITH CURRENT

VIRTUAL DESKTOP SOLUTIONS

Althoughhostedvirtualdesktopsoffersignicantadvantagesrelativetotraditionaldesktopdeliverymodels,

the current solutions suffer from several drawbacks both from a user perspective and from an IT perspective.

USER CHALLENGES WITH EXISTING VIRTUAL DESKTOP SOLUTIONS

The biggest problem with current desktop virtualization solutions is the end-user experience.

User experience: Remote connection protocols such as RDP do not provide for a good or transparent•

end-user experience. RDP was designed in the terminal services era when multimedia was not a large

part of the corporate computing experience.

Graphics: Graphic-enabled websites, video, and audio playback for training videos, company broadcasts,•

andotherrichmediastreamsposesignicantproblems.Inaddition,manyoftoday’ssolutionsdonot

support multiple monitors in a seamless manner.

Bi-directional audio/video: Emerging multimedia applications like soft and IP phones or video•

conferencing clients do not work with existing virtual desktop and connection protocol solutions.

Peripheral support: Current solutions have limited support (if any) for connecting USB peripherals such•

as PDAs or storage devices to the client, and having them appear connected to the virtual desktop.

IT CHALLENGES WITH EXISTING RETROFITTED VIRTUAL DESKTOP SOLUTIONS

Inadditiontotheend-userchallenges,currentsolutionsaredifculttoimplementandmanagefroman

ITperspective.Thisisbecausemostexistingvirtualdesktopsolutionsareretrottedservervirtualization

solutions,andlacktheessentialfunctionalityrequiredforvirtualdesktops.Specically:

User experience and system load/economics: The user experience problem described above is not only•

a user problem, but also an IT problem. The reason for this is that if the user experience is not the same

or better than a physical PC, end-users will never accept it and will always escalate issues with IT. In

addition, RDP-based systems are very heavy on the host CPU, especially when processing multimedia.

This reduces the density of virtual desktops on a server, which in turn increases the overall system cost

becauseITneedsmoreserverstosupportagivennumberofvirtualdesktops.Thismakesretrotted

server virtualization solutions cost-prohibitive.

System scalability: Server virtualization solutions are designed to scale to hundreds of virtual servers,•

whereas virtual desktop products are required to scale in the thousands for production deployments.

Consider an example of an enterprise that has 100 virtual servers. This is a medium-to-large size

deployment. Using an industry average of 45-50 desktops per server, a similar scale deployment in the

desktop domain would be about 5,000 virtual desktops. This means 5,000 images, 5,000 users, and

5,000 clients. Very quickly, this gets to be two orders of magnitude larger in terms of the number of

objects to manage. Hence, virtual desktops require a virtualization management system designed to

scaletothousandsofvirtualmachines.Retrottedservervirtualizationmanagementsystemssimply

cannot meet this requirement.

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

End-user support: In the case of server virtualization, the management system is designed to serve end•

users that are server administrators or application managers. These are sophisticated users that need

a different kind of support. They likely know when they need to add more networking, processing, or

memory to a virtual server. A desktop systems administrator needs to deal with end user problems. End

userscancallwithproblemsrangingfromemailapplicationdifcultiestodesktopcrashes.Thedesktop

administratorneedstobeabletoquicklyndtheuser’sdesktopoutoftensofthousandsofdesktops,

cross-correlate different pieces of information, and quickly troubleshoot issues while the user remains

on the phone. This requires a different kind of a management system than what is currently offered by

server virtualization vendors.

System integration: Virtual server management systems need to integrate with very different back-end•

systems as compared to virtual desktop management systems. On the desktop side, the systems need

to work seamlessly with Microsoft Active Directory and the enterprise desktop build process. It may also

need to interface with application streaming technology and management systems. These requirements

are very different than those for a virtual server management system.

TheaboveproblemsmakeitdifcultandexpensiveforITtodeployvirtualdesktopsolutionsonalargescale.

DESCRIPTION OF RED HAT ENTERPRISE

VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS

OVERVIEW OF BENEFITS

Red Hat®EnterpriseVirtualizationforDesktopsisavirtualdesktopsolutionthatprovidesthebenetsof

virtual desktops such as centralized management, maintenance, and policy enforcement, while eliminating

the drawbacks of existing solutions. This is a fully integrated component of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization,

a comprehensive and highly scalable platform for both virtual servers and virtual desktops. With Red Hat

Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, end users experience no difference relative to working on a physical

desktop. Graphics intensive applications, multimedia applications like softphones (IP phone clients), and

video confe-rencing all work as they do today on physical desktops. From an IT perspective, Red Hat

Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops is easy to set up, manage, and scale.

COMPONENTS OF RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS

From a high level, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops is a software solution that will run on

commodityhardwareandconsistsofthreecomponents(seegureonpage7):

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor: The server (or cluster of servers) that actually runs the•

users’ virtual desktops.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager: The management system for all components of•

the system.

SPICE• ™: An open source, adaptive remote rendering technology that allows users to “see” their virtual

desktop, and interact with it.

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION HYPERVISOR

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor is a bare metal hypervisor designed for the sole purpose

of hosting virtual machines. It is an extremely lightweight piece of software, having a footprint of less than

100megabytes.ItiseasilyinstalledandcanbebootedfromeitherPXE,ash,localdisk,ornetworkstorage.

Built upon the Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernel with KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) technology, the

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor features market-leading scalability of 96 cores and 1TB of

memory, with guests scaling up to 16 virtual CPUs and 256GB of memory.

COMPONENTS OF RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION FOR DESKTOPS

Virtual desktops

Thin client or

repurposed PC

SPICE remote

rendering

technology

Red Hat

Enterprise

Virtualization

Hypervisor

STORAGE

DIRECTORY

SERVICES

Red Hat

Enterprise

Virtualization

Manager

Image manager

Connection broker

Provisioning manager

HA manager

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION HYPERVISOR: VIRTUAL DESKTOPS

As described above, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor runs Linux, KVM, a resource

optimization layer, and then the virtual desktops. The virtual desktops can be either Microsoft Windows

or Red Hat Enterprise Linux desktops.

Desktop Optimization

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor runs a resource optimization layer that is tied very closely

to KVM and plays a role in improving the density of virtual desktops on the server, assisting in the remote

rendering of the virtual desktop, and enabling the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor to be a part

of the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor cluster.

The desktop optimization layer includes several industry-leading algorithms and mechanisms like memory

page sharing (done at the host level) or memory ballooning (done at the guest with host level interaction) to

improve the density of virtual desktops on a given Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor server.

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION HYPERVISOR: KERNEL-BASED VIRTUAL MACHINE (KVM)

diagram_RHEV_VDH_cluster.ai

Virtual Desktops

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor

Desktop optimization

Red Hat

Enterprise Linux KVM

KVM has several advantages over existing proprietary

and other open source virtualization solutions.

One of the primary reasons KVM is a superior

architecture is that KVM is part of the Linux kernel.

Hence, all the improvements made by the vast open

source community around the Linux scheduler,

memory management system, or other components

accrue naturally to the KVM virtualization platform.

Previous generation virtualization solutions are

essentially proprietary operating systems

(a hypervisor is an operating system of operating

systems) and have to maintain their own OS and

take on the burden of constantly improving this OS.

These include the scheduling mechanism, memory

management, and hardware support to keep up with

the latest technology. This places other solutions at

asignicantdisadvantagerelativetoKVM.

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is the front-end for the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Hypervisor and contains all of the control functions required for the virtual desktop solution. It is, in effect,

the management system for the entire Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops solution. It manages

the provisioning process, connection protocol, user sessions log-on/log-off, virtual desktop pools, virtual

desktop images, and the high availability/clustering system.

ITadministratorscansearchforusers,desktops,servers,andspeciceventsfromasimpleinterface,and

can then manage or act upon any selected component. The search mechanism also supports complex

queries and cross correlation of data for quick troubleshooting. Some examples of management queries are:

Vms: user.username = *John* AND template.name = *xp* AND Apps = *ofce* •

This will show you all desktops that belong to the user “John” that have been derived from a Windows XP

template,andthathaveMicrosoftOfce®installed. Out of the thousands of desktops that IT may have

in the system, the administrator can quickly locate this desktop and provide assistance to the user if

required.

Vms: CPU_Usage > 90 AND Hosts.Name = vs-a•

This returns all desktops that are on vs-a that have a CPU usage of >90 percent. This enables IT to live-

migrate the desktop away from that server, and troubleshoot it if required. IT can also log into the console

ofthatmachine,andxanyissuesthatmayexist.

RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION MANAGER FOR DESKTOPS

Red Hat designed the management system from

the ground up for virtual desktops. Users are able

to manage every single component or object in

the system from one management interface that is

easy to use and scalable to thousands of desktops.

As opposed to traditional server virtualization

management systems that are hierarchical and

tree-based, the Red Hat management system is

entirely search-based.

Image Manager

Connection Broker

Provisioning Manager

HA Manager

Event Manager

Red Hat Enterprise

Virtualization Manager

Operating system

Red Hat

Enterprise Virtualization

Manager

diagram_RHEV_Manager_Desktops.ai : 03/09

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Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops

Thesystemwasdesignedtoquicklyndinformationaboutanyobject(desktop,users,ortemplates),sothat

administrators can then manage or operate on that object.

In addition, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager has a PowerShell API which allows easy scripting

of power saving policies, load balancing policies, and other bulk operations.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager: Connection Broker

IT administrators are able to instantly provision new desktops for users. All that is required is to go to the

provisioning manager, specify the base image to be used (usually a template created in the image manager),

specify the number of CPUs and required amount of memory and disk space, and then attach a user (or

multiple users if it is going to be a shared desktop) to that particular virtual desktop.

The provisioning manager is able to be connected to the enterprise active directory (AD) to import

permissions and policies that can be applied to the created virtual desktops.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager supports two desktop models: A dedicated desktop for a user, or

a shared desktop for a group of users called desktop pools. In Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager,

there are three types of pools— automatic, manual, and time-based.

The connection broker determines whether a user has a dedicated virtual desktop or is required to use a

desktop pool. If it is the former, then the connection broker will establish a connection with the user’s own

virtual desktop. If the user is to use a pool of virtual desktops, then the connection broker will connect the

usertotherstavailableshareddesktopbelongingtoacertainpool.

The connection broker will also determine the most appropriate connection protocol for the users (see below

for a detailed discussion on the connection protocols).

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