VMLab A Desktop Virtualization Testbed for ... - Merit Network

							VMLab: A Desktop Virtualization Testbed
     for Research and Education
   Prasad Calyam, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator) pcalyam@osc.edu

   Alex Berryman (Student Research Assistant) berryman@oar.net
     Rohit Patali (Graduate Research Associate) rpatali@oar.net



                Merit Desktop Virtualization Summit
                        1st December 2010
              Topics of Discussion
•  VMLab Overview
   –  Hardware and Software
   –  Project Web-portal
•  VMLab Use Cases
   –  Administrator Sandboxes
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Classroom Labs
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Research and Development
      •  VDBench Toolkit, NSF GENI Experiment
•  VMLab Future Work
                                                              2
              Topics of Discussion
•  VMLab Overview
   –  Hardware and Software
   –  Project Web-portal
•  VMLab Use Cases
   –  Administrator Sandboxes
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Classroom Labs
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Research and Development
      •  VDBench Toolkit, NSF GENI Experiment
•  VMLab Future Work
                                                              3
                      VMLab Overview
•  OSC/OARnet VMLab – http://vmlab.oar.net
   –  Proof-of-concept testbed for desktop virtualization experiments
       •  Established in June 2009

   –  Sponsors
       •  Funding Sources: Ohio Board of Regents, VMware, Dell, National
          Science Foundation
       •  Hardware/Software Donations: IBM, VMware, HP, Wyse, Dell

   –  Used for various tabletop experiments over the last 8 months
       •  Research: Desktop Pools Management, Application Virtualization, Thin Client
         Protocols Evaluation, “VDBench” v0.1 Tool Development
       •  Classroom Labs: Moldflow for OSU ISE Dept., Remote Visualization w/GPU for
         OSU SAIC, Remote Instrumentation for YSU Chemistry
       •  Sandboxes: Many System Administrators (8 Ohio,1 Texas), Marketing Demos


                                                                                    4
        Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
•  VMware View is one of the popularly used VDI solutions
   –  Personalized user desktops, applications and data access while
      maintaining centralized control and security




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       VMLab Hardware Components
•  IBM donation to VMLab – 50+ desktop users can be supported
   –  2 IBM HS22 Intel Blade Servers
       •  2 Quad Core CPU’s each, 32 GB of RAM each, 4 NIC’s each
   –  9 TB Shared SAS Storage + 300 GB Solid State Array
•  Network Emulator – Dual-NIC PC-router
•  Thin Clients
   –  HP t5730, Dell FX100, WYSE C90, Teradici Zero State Client, Pano Logic
      Zero State Client, Wyse PocketCloud for iPhone/iPad, Microsoft RDP,
      Open-source VNC




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       VMLab Software Components
•  VMware vSphere 4.5 (ESXi 4.5); View 4.5
   – Windows Server 2003
       •  vCenter, View Manager, View Composer, ThinApp, Active Directory,
          (vCloud Director)
•  Virtual Machines – Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Linux
•  Network Emulator – Netem on Linux Kernel 2.6.15
•  User Applications
   –  Novice User: MS Word, Acrobat Reader, IE Browser
   –  Expert User: MS Word, Acrobat Reader, IE Browser, Windows Media,
     Flash Video, Matlab, MoldFlow, VLC Player, VolSuite




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            VMLab Project Web-portal
•  Project Website and Testbed Gateway - http://vmlab.oar.net
   •  Central site for information on VMLab testbed resources and
      capabilities
   •  Placeholder for study results, presentations and the virtual desktop
      performance benchmarking toolkit release (VDBench v0.1)
   •  Enables hands-on access to run your own remote desktop
      virtualization experiments in VMLab!




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              Topics of Discussion
•  VMLab Overview
   –  Hardware and Software
   –  Project Web-portal
•  VMLab Use Cases
   –  Administrator Sandboxes
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Classroom Labs
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Research and Development
      •  VDBench Toolkit, NSF GENI Experiment
•  VMLab Future Work
                                                              9
    Use Case: Administrator Sandboxes
•  Users and their Requirements
   –  Central State University
       •  Install VMware technologies, Test configuration options
   –  The Ohio State University
       •  Web-portal VM staging, Electronic Lab Notebook
   –  Belmont Technical College
       •  Deploy and administer of Windows XP/7 Desktops
   –  Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine & Pharmacy
       •  Deploy and administer of Windows XP/7 Desktops, Video Streaming
   –  University of Findlay
       •  Install VMware technologies, Test configuration options
   –  Baldwin Wallace College
       •  Install VMware technologies, Test configuration options
   –  Bowling Green University
       •  Install VMware technologies, Test configuration options
                                                                      10
 VM Environment and Networking Setup
•  Each Sandbox had a dedicated virtual network with separate
   blade, storage and firewall resources
   –  User meetings, requirements gathering, MOUs, Billing, …
•  VPN had to be setup for WAN connections
    –  Avoids having public IP address to all VMs
       •  PCoIP protocol client must be able to directly connect to virtual
          desktop with a public IP address or a VPN
   –  OpenVPN server was deployed with pfSense on a VM to
      accept VPN connections from any external IP address
       •  Virtual pfSense server also is a firewall appliance that we used
          to handle all traffic between the virtual desktops and the Internet
       •  Firewall rules were set/modified to block access to certain ports
          and addresses based on the VM requirements
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                     Classroom Labs
•  Users and their Requirements
   –  The Ohio State University, Dept. of Chemistry
       •  Electronic Lab Notebook for scientific instrument data management
   –  The Ohio State University, Dept. of Industrial and Systems
      Engineering
       •  Multiple Moldflow VMs
       •  Data sharing and folder permissions to enable faculty/student group
          access, content management
           –  Faculty distributed source files and documents by placing them in a
              write-protected network share mapped to Z: drive on each student VM
       •  Moldex3D VMs for student simulations
   –  The Ohio State University, Small Animal Imaging Center
       •  VolSuite/VolQuiz VMs that are used for surgical training of students


                                                                                12
 VolQuiz Remote Visualization Demo-I
•  VMware View Manager does not have capabilities to directly
   interface with GPU hardware
•  Evaluated solutions involving connection brokers and gatekeepers to
   help improve user accessibility and ease-of-use for remote
   visualization over wide-area networks
•  Demo at 2009 Fall Internet2 Meeting, San Antonio




                                                                    13
 VolQuiz Remote Visualization Demo-II
•  Evaluated integration of state-of-the-art thin client protocols such as
   PCoIP with encapsulation of custom VNC remote access solutions
•  Demo at Summer 2010 Internet2/ESCC Joint Techs Conference,
   Columbus OH




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            Motivations for Research
•  Recent advances in thin clients and the numerous benefits in
   transitioning user desktops to cloud environments
   –  Convenience, Cost savings, Green IT, Security, …
•  Need for “system-aware”, “network-aware”, “human-aware”
   frameworks and tools to deploy virtual desktop clouds
   –  Existing work focuses mainly upon system (i.e., CPU and
      memory) measurements for server-side resource adaptation
   –  Our focus is to couple client-and-server resource adaptation with
      measurements of network health and user experience
       •  Minimize cloud resource over-commitment
       •  Avoid guesswork in configuring thin client protocols
       •  Deliver optimum user experience of virtual applications


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                  VMLab Experiments
•  VDI Scalability
    –  Stress test VMs under various user application work loads
        •  User Applications: MS Excel, IE Browser, Windows Media Player,
           Matlab
    –  We used “Autoit” user application work loads (scripts for
       repeatable and automated GUI interactions with key presses,
       mouse movements)
•  VDI Reliability
    –  Evaluate performance of remote desktop protocols
        •  Protocols Evaluated: Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), HP
           Remote Graphics Software (RGS), Teradici PC-over-IP (PCoIP),
           VNC Remote Frame Buffer Protocol (RFB)
    –  We used Netem for network (e.g., bandwidth, delay, loss)
       emulation
                                                                            16
VDBench Toolkit and Testbed Setup




                                    17
VDBench User Tasks Simulation




                                18
                       VMLab Experiments
                                        I. User Load Simulation




                                                 III. User Pool Profiling




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II. Slow-motion Application Interaction Benchmarking
  Cloud Experiments on NSF GENI Facility
•  Extend VMLab to a virtual desktop cloud with 3 data centers in
   the NSF GENI Testbed Facility – http://www.geni.net
   –  West, South & East US locations with L2/L3 network connectivity
   –  Install VMware ESXi, Other hypervisors, VDBench tools, …
•  Provision “sandbox” and “desktop” VMs within User slices
   –  For GENI experimenters, Classroom Labs, Internet users, …
   –  VMs will host trial and open-source software for users
       •  OS (e.g., Windows 7, Ubuntu), Office Suite (e.g., Word, GIMP), Gaming
          Server (e.g., Counter Strike), Scientific computing (e.g., Matlab, Octave)
   –  Users generate synchronous and asynchronous loads
•  Profile “monitor” and “user” VMs under various load conditions
   and investigate decision schemes for resource allocation
   –  “Monitor” VMs are instrumented to perform experiment runs
   –  User loads trigger performance data logging in monitor VMs
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   Anticipated Duration of Experiments
•  Synthetic profiling experiments generally take 2 hrs for a load
   point, hence about 100 hrs (4 days) for a total run
•  Real user profiling experiments might need atleast 14 days for
   a total run
   –  Total run time is the sampling duration of active VM usage that
       provides a baseline to develop a user profile snapshot
   –  Industry standard is 45 days…
•  Longer sampling periods help in better profiling
•  We expect to have several experiment runs based on a variety
   of virtual desktop application use cases



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         Potential Research Questions
•  What are trends of thin-client based user activities and their
   impact on resource consumption in virtual desktop pools?
   –  Is memory the most contended resource in virtual desktop
       clouds? (i.e., users will idle CPUs but keep their desktop applications open)
•  What are the challenges in coupling network and human
   performance components in decision schemes?
   –  What are the trade-offs in client-based (e.g., VNC) versus server-
      based thin client adaptation (e.g., RGS)? (i.e., thin client protocol
      consuming less resources is due to network bottleneck or light usage)
•  How to build scalable testbeds that can support thin-client
   based virtual desktop staging experiments?
   –  How to develop effective VM benchmarking tools as well as
      synthetic load profiles that emulate real user loads? (i.e.,
      characteristics of steady state, spikes/bursts, flash crowds)

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              Topics of Discussion
•  VMLab Overview
   –  Hardware and Software
   –  Project Web-portal
•  VMLab Use Cases
   –  Administrator Sandboxes
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Classroom Labs
      •  User requests, VM environment and networking setup
   –  Research and Development
      •  VDBench Toolkit, NSF GENI Experiment
•  VMLab Future Work
                                                              23
   Remote Instrumentation Proof-of-Concept

•  VMLab as a platform to evaluate technologies before transitioning
   users into HPC and networking production environments




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                 VMLab Future Work
•  Shared services based on VMware technologies to provide
   testbed access to USO user communities
   –  For institutions that lack resources to build similar testbeds
       •  Evaluate upcoming VMware View features, Windows 7
          migration, etc.
   –  Persistent and Non-persistent desktops for testing amongst
      scientific user communities
   –  VMware related disaster data recovery service
   –  Community cloud pilot studies
   –  Cyber-security research, e.g., virtual machines to attract and
      analyze web-malware



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Thank you for your attention!