CBRC on myvirtualcloud.net

CBRC-like Functionality For Any VDI Solution with Nutanix

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 08:47:00 +0000

It is amazing when your world turns upside down and a technology that used to be awesome becomes mostly irrelevant. It amazes me how fast technology evolves and help organizations to achieve better performance and lower OPEX.

For a long time I have discussed the benefits of CBRC (Content Based Read Cache) available with Horizon View 5.1 onwards, allowing Administrators to drastically cut-down on read IO operations, offloading the storage infrastructure and providing greater end-user experience.

Here are few of the blog posts I wrote on CBRC technology: Understanding CBRC (Content Based Read Cache), Understanding CBRC – RecomputeDigest Method, Sizing for VMware View Storage Accelerator (CBRC), View Storage Accelerator Performance Benchmark, CBRC and Local Mode in VMware View 5.1, View Storage Accelerator (CBRC) Hashing Function.

CBRC helps to address some of the performance bottlenecks and the increase of storage cost for VDI. CBRC is a 100% host-based RAM-Based caching solution that helps to reduce read IOs issued to the storage subsystem and thus improves scalability of the storage subsystem while being completely transparent to the guest OS. However, CBRC comes at a cost.

When the View Storage Accelerator feature (CBRC) is enabled, a per-VMDK digest file is created to store hash information about the VMDK blocks. The estimated size of each digest file is roughly:

Here is why your Horizon View deployment is not performing to it's max!

Mon, 16 Dec 2013 14:30:32 +0000

In Horizon View 5.1, VMware introduced a feature called PhoneHome. PhoneHome is an opt-In option for anonymous usage statistics collection. All data is anonymized and untraceable, and phonehome will collect information on versions, features used, system architecture choices and deployment scale. This information is used by VMware to provide better support and enhance to the most popular features. In addition to that VMware can use this data collection to better align research and development priorities to match the way customer are actually using Horizon View.

PernixData FVP accelerate your Horizon View deployment

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 12:02:10 +0000

I recently spent couple days testing PernixData FVP caching solution in my home lab. Before I talk about FVP let me talk about my home lab. My home lab is not very fancy if compared to some of my vExpert colleagues, especially since it’s three years old hardware. It’s a white-box with a Gigabyte X58A-UD5 motherboard, 12GB RAM Kingston DDR3 2000Mhz and a Intel iCore7 960 processor clocked at 3.20 GHz. For internal storage I have a SSD Kingston 128GB SSDNow V+ and an external IOmega IX4-200 2TB. I boot ESXi 5.1 from a USB stick.

Don’t dismiss the huge benefits of Linked Clones!

Sun, 10 Nov 2013 17:21:34 +0000

Did you know that the quote ‘With great power comes great responsibility” is not an original quote crafted by Ben, the uncle of our Spidey friend? In fact, the quote was first coined by François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) in 1832.

Why is Content-Based Read Cache (CBRC) so important for Horizon View and VSAN?

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:34:43 +0000

This article builds on top of my previous two articles about Horizon View and VMware Virtual SAN. Here are the aforementioned articles: How does VMware VSAN help Horizon View?, and How is Horizon View configured for VMware VSAN?

The CBRC (Content Based Read Cache) was introduced with vSphere 5, allowing Horizon View administrators to leverage it the feature via the Horizon View administrative console. CBRC help administrators to address performance bottlenecks and the increase in storage cost for VDI.

Open letter to non-persistent VDI fanboys...

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 08:20:27 +0000

An article that recently sparked my interest was authored by Harry Labana on Brian Madden’s blog entitled “Searching for a new way to enable non-persistent VDI. Can we leapfrog traditional PC management?”. I was suddenly taken back to early 2011, when I wrote an article entitled “Floating Pools are the way to go….”.

View VSA Recompose Time Issue & Workaround

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:10:21 +0000

The View Storage Accelerator (aka VSA or CBRC) feature is part of vSphere 5 and later and is used by VMware View. VSA helps to address some of the performance bottlenecks and the increase storage cost for VDI. CBRC is a 100% host-based RAM-Based caching solution that helps to reduce read IOs issued to the storage subsystem and thus improves scalability while being completely transparent to guest OSs.

View Storage Accelerator and View Storage Tiering [Unsupported]

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:43:00 +0000

I recently received a question from a colleague about the use of the View Storage Accelerator (also known as CBRC) not being supported when View Replica Tiering is enabled. He also pointed to an article published on the End-User Computing Blog http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2012/05/view-storage-accelerator-in-practice.html that clearly states “Use of View Storage Accelerator is not supported when View Replica Tiering is enabled”.

View Storage Accelerator in VMware View 5.1 [WhitePaper]

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:13:00 +0000

VMware Staff engineer Sivaprasad Govindankutty has produced a very detailed technical white paper that provides a thorough understanding of how the content-based read cache (CBRC)
functions with vSphere 5.0, and how it is integrated in VMware View 5.1. It will also provide a detailed explanation of configuring View Storage Accelerator (also known as Host Caching) for View desktops.

CBRC and Local Mode in VMware View 5.1

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:18:08 +0000

This is a quick post.

In the last couple weeks I have seen two customer and partner email threads discussing the use of CBRC and Local Mode in VMware View 5.1.

After reading this excellent blog post from Narasimha Krishnakumar, Staff Product Manager, one of our partners asked the following question:

View Storage Accelerator (CBRC) Hashing Function

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:10:25 +0000

VMware View Storage Accelerator uses a vSphere platform feature called CBRC (Content Based Read Cache). CBRC is an in-host RAM cache for VMDK blocks frequently accessed by virtual desktops.

When VMware View Storage Accelerator is enabled (OS disk, or OS and Persistent Disks), a per-VMDK digest file is created to store the hash information about logical block in VMDK disks. This information is stored using SHA1 cryptographic hash function. SHA-1 is the most widely used of the existing SHA hash functions, and is employed in several widely used applications and protocols.

View Storage Accelerator Performance Benchmark

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:07:23 +0000

EMC has recently conducted some VMware View 5.1 validation tests with their VSPEX pre-validated architecture. As part of the validation tests EMC also captured some awesome performance data where we can clearly see the benefits delivered by the new View Storage Accelerator feature.

VMware View VDI Flash Calculator v2.8 Released

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:30:14 +0000

I have just uploaded a new release of the online VMware View VDI Flash Calculator supporting new VMware View 5.1 features. View 5.1 is not available for download just yet, however many VMware partners and customers are already designing and sizing their VDI infrastructures with View 5.1 in mind. For this reason I am publishing this release of the calculator a little bit before View 5.1 goes public (GA).

Sizing for VMware View Storage Accelerator (CBRC)

Wed, 02 May 2012 08:10:39 +0000

As VMware View 5.1 launches administrators will start to trial the new View release, and in special they will test the benefits of View Storage Accelerator. This article is focused in helping administrators to properly size hosts and storage for use with CBRC.