In part 10 of my VCAP7-DTM Design exam series we take a look at the Horizon 7 Enterprise Reference Architecture.
To be honest, I didn’t study that much the last two weeks but I checked a few documents about App Volumes, Mirage, ThinApp and User Environment Manager.
This time I would like to summarize what I have learned from the reference architecture and the VMworld 2018 session called Architecting Horizon 7 Enterprise: The Official Reference Architecture (WIN3451BUR).
I only focus on the component design part since I already covered topics like use cases, business drivers, design methodology etc.
Horizon 7
A successful deployment depends on good planning and a very good understanding of the platform. The core elements include Connection Server, Composer, Horizon Agent and Horizon Client. Part 4 to part 9 cover the Horizon 7 component design and also provide more information on the following components.
Identity Manager
VMware Identity Manager (VIDM) can be implemented on-premises or in the cloud, a SaaS-based implementation. If you decide to go with the SaaS implementation, a VIDM connector needs to be installed on-prem to synchronize accounts from Active Directory to the VIDM service in the cloud.
If cloud is no option for you, you still have the possibility for the on-prem deployment and use the Linux-based virtual appliance. There is also a Windows-based installer available which is included in the VMware Enterprise Systems Connector. VMware’s reference architecture is based on the Linux appliance.
Syncing resources such as Active Directory and Horizon 7 and can be done either by using a separate VMware Identity Manager Connector or by using the built-in connector of an on-premises VMware Identity Manager VM. The separate connector can run inside the LAN in outbound-only connection mode, meaning the connector receives no incoming connections from the DMZ.
VIDM comes with an embedded PostgreSQL database, but it’s recommended to use an external database server for production deployments.
For high availability, based on your requirements, at least two VIDM appliances should be deployed behind a load balancer. After you have deployed your first appliance, you simply clone it and assign a new hostname and a new IP address.
App Volumes
As you still may know from part 8, App Volumes has two functions. The first is the delivery of applications for VDI and RDSH. The second is the provision of writable volumes to capture user-installed applications and the user profile.
For high availability, always use at least two App Volumes Managers which are load-balanced.
AppStacks are very read intensive, hence, you should place AppStacks on storage that is optimized for read operations. Writable volumes should be placed on storage for random IOPS (50/50). There reference architecture uses vSAN to provide a single highly available datastore.
For the SQL database it is recommended using an AlwaysOn Availability Group.
User Environment Manager
When User Environment Manager design decisions need to be made, you have to think about user profiles (mandatory, roaming, local) and folder redirection. As already described in part 9, VMware recommendation is to use mandatory profiles and folder redirection. Use appendix B if you need help configuring the mandatory profile.
The first key design consideration is using DFS-R to provide high availability for the configuration and user shares. Note: Connect the management console only to the hub member when making changes. DFS-R will replicated those changes to the spoke members.
The second consideration one is using GPO loopback processing.
Unified Access Gateway
In part 6 I mentioned that a UAG is typically deployed within the DMZ.
UAG appliances are deployed in front of the Horizon 7 Connection Servers and sit behind a load balancer. The Unified Access Gateway also runs the Content Gateway as part the AirWatch (WorkspaceONE UEM) service.
You have two sizing options during the appliance deployment:
- Standard (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 2’000 Horizon server connections, 10’000 AirWatch service connections)
- Large (4 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 2’000 Horizon server connections, 50’000 AirWatch service connections)
As you can see, the big difference here are the estimated AirWatch service connections per appliance. In production you would deploy dedicated UAG appliances for each service. Example:
- 2 standard size UAGs appliances for 2’000 Horizon 7 sessions (n+1)
- 3 large size UAG appliances for 50’000 devices using Content Gateway and per-App Tunnel which gives us a total of 100’000 sessions. The third appliance is for high availability (n+1)
vSphere and Physical Environment
The software-defined data center (SDDC) is the foundation that runs all infrastructure servers and components. The products and the licensing for the foundation are outside of the Horizon 7 product (except vSAN), but are required to deliver a complete solution.
And in my opinion this is what makes the whole solution so brilliant. Even I work for VMware, I would never say from the beginning that Horizon is better than XA/XD. This was also the case when I worked as a consultant for Citrix before I joined VMware in May 2018.
It depends on the requirements and use cases which need to be satisfied. That are the most important things if you choose a vendor or a specific technology. Our goal is to make the customer happy! 🙂
But I would say that VMware Horizon including WorkspaceONE is very hard to beat if you use the complete stack! But that’s another topic.
The vSphere infrastructure in the reference architecture includes vSAN and NSX. In part 5 I covered the basics of vSAN, but I think I maybe need to write a short overview about NSX and how you can use it with Horizon.
vSAN provides a hyper-converged storage optimized for virtual machines without the need for an external SAN or NAS. This means that the physical server not only provides the compute and memory resources, but also storage in a modular fashion. You can use vSAN for the management and resource block and follow a hybrid approach for the management resources and use all-flash vSAN for the Horizon resources.
I will not cover the vSphere design, but it’s important to understand that all components are operating redundantly and that you have enough physical resources to meet the requirements.
A general recommendation is to use at least 10 GbE connections, to separate each traffic (mgmt, VM traffic, vSAN, vMotion) and make sure that each of them has sufficient bandwidth.
NSX for vSphere
NSX provides several network-based services and performs several security functions within a Horizon 7 implementation:
- Protects VDI infrastructure
- Protects desktop pool VM communication with applications
- Provides user-based access control (user-level identity-based micro-segmentation)
If you want to use NSX you have to think about a NSX infrastructure design as the NSX platform adds new components (e.g. NSX manager) and new possibilities (distributed firewall and identity firewall).
The most important design consideration for Horizon 7 is the concept of micro-segmentation. In the case of Horizon 7, NSX can block desktop-to-desktop communications, which are normally not needed or recommended. Each VM can now be its own perimeter and this desktop isolation prevents threats from spreading:
The Horizon 7 reference architecture of probably the best document to prepare yourself for the VCAP7-DTM exam. What do the current VCAP7-DTM certified people say? What else needs to be covered? Jump to part 11
