VDI - Storage

One of the two main hardware considerations for any virtual desktop deployment is storage. While the virtual instances will need computing power on the server side, you'll also need to consider storage capacity for each instance running. Many popular virtual desktop packages prefer a SAN connected to the system rather than a NAS. What's the difference? Glad you asked! The basic difference between the two is a SAN (Storage Area Network) connects and appears to the server as local storage. Whether it is through iSCSI connections or fiber channel, the server acts and communicates as if the storage that is carved out is a physical disk or array. The SAN storage space can be expanded on the SAN controller. Speeds are generally better for a SAN than a NAS. Another word you'll want to research is IOPS. Go to a tech net article here on calculating iops or (input/output operations per second). The higher the IOPS the better the system.

A NAS is a Network Attached Storage device. It is a lot of hard drive space that you can utilize over the network. Obviously it will not have as good of read/write speed as a NAS, but can be much cheaper to purchase and support. Fiber channel switches are not cheap and iSCSI connections can be real fun if you don't know what you are doing. The VDI system we are using prefers a NAS. However, if it doesn't work out, the other systems we'd use prefer connecting to a SAN for performance.

So what to do? We went with NetApp precisely for this reason. NetApp can run either as a SAN or a NAS on the same box. So, while we might use the NAS side for virtual desktops, we can connect to the SAN side for other storage needs! We'll let you know how the installation and training goes and how difficult it is to manage. You can get an idea on NetApp's site for free as a guest user. This is only for a limited time.