Deep Dive Comparison of DaaS & VDI Architecture Part 2
Posted on 10 May 2016 by Ray Heffer
In part 1 of this blog series, I discussed the Horizon 7 architecture and a typical single-tenant deployment using Pods and Blocks. In this post I will discuss the Horizon DaaS platform architecture and how this offers massive scale for multiple tenants in a service provider environment.
Horizon DaaS Architecture
The fundamental difference with the Horizon DaaS platform is multi-tenancy architecture. There are no Connection or Security servers, but there are some commonalities. I mentioned Access Point previously, this was originally developed for Horizon Air, and is now a key component for both Horizon 7 and DaaS for remote access.
If you take a look at the diagram above you’ll see these key differences. Let’s start with the management appliances.
There are five virtual appliances (OVA) used for Horizon DaaS; Service Provider, Tenant, Desktop Manager, Resource Manager and Access Point. When these appliances are deployed, they are always provisioned as an HA pair (master/slave), except for Access Point which is active/active across multiple appliances. No load-balancer is required, only for multiple Access Point appliances. The remaining virtual appliances use a virtual IP in the master/slave configuration. There is only a single OVA (template), and upon initial installation, the bootstrap process uses this template as a base for each of the virtual appliance types.
I’ve already introduced Access Point with the Horizon 7 architecture previously, but it’s worth mentioning that this is a recent addition. Previously with the original Desktone product and subsequent versions of Horizon DaaS platform, remote access was provided using dtRAM (Desktone Remote Access Manager). The dtRAM is also a virtual appliance (based on FreeBSD and pfSense) and still available, but I would now recommend using Access Point for the latest features.
Service Provider
The service provider has two different types of virtual appliance (HA pair); the Service Provider and Resource Manager.
The Service Provider appliance provides the Service Center portal where the provider can perform a number of activities including Desktop Model management, Tenant management, monitoring and discovery of infrastructure resources. This appliance also contains a Resource Manager service which targets and deploys other management virtual appliances. For example, when a Tenant Appliance pair is created, it’s name, networks, IP address, and so on, are stored in the FDB (Fabric Database). The Service Provider appliance then instructs the resource manager service to clone a tenant appliance.
Resource Manager
The Resource Manager virtual appliance communicates with the infrastructure (vCenter) to carry out desktop provisioning, and provides management of all desktops for tenants. Unlike Horizon 7 that can provision View Composer linked clones, Instant Clones or full clones, only full clones are currently supported with Horizon DaaS. Resources are assigned to tenants so they can consume compute, storage and network for virtual desktops.
It’s important to note that Resource Manager appliances are tied to the service provider, and not the tenant.
Tenant
The tenant also has two different types of virtual appliance (HA pair); Tenant and Desktop Manager virtual appliance.
The Tenant appliance provides a web-based UI (Enterprise Center) for both the tenant end-user and IT administrator. End-users can manage their own virtual desktops, and the administrator functions allow for creation and management of the tenant desktops.
Other tenant operations provided by Enterprise Center, include:
- Domain registration
- Gold pattern conversion
- Desktop pool creation
- AD user and group assignment to virtual desktops
The Tenant virtual appliance also contains a Desktop Manager component which brokers connections to tenant virtual desktops. Each Desktop Manager supports up to 5,000 virtual desktops. If more are required then a HA-pair of Desktop Manager virtual appliances can be deployed.
Desktop Manager
The Desktop Manager virtual appliance is the same as the Tenant appliance, but does not include the brokering or Enterprise Center portal. You can deploy Desktop Manager appliances to scale beyond the 5,000 virtual desktop limit.
Resources are assigned to the Desktop Manager for consumption by the tenant. In some cases you may have a vSphere cluster dedicated for 3D workloads with vDGA pass-through. These 3D specific resources would be dedicated to a Desktop Manager virtual appliance pair.
Each virtual desktop is installed with the DaaS Agent which sends heartbeats to the Desktop Manager in order to keep track of it’s state.
Networking
As shown in the above diagram, there are three networks associated with Horizon DaaS; Backbone Link Local network, Service Provider network, and tenant networks.
The Backbone Link Local network is a private network that is dedicated for all virtual appliances. Although the Tenant virtual appliances are connected to this network, there is no access from the tenant network.
The Service Provider management network provides access for service provider administration of the Service Provider appliances, and vSphere infrastructure.
The Tenant network (per tenant) is dedicated for virtual desktops. This also has IP connectivity to the tenants supporting infrastructure such as Active Directory, DNS, NTP, and file servers.
Horizon DaaS Terminology
| Terminology | Description |
|---|---|
| Desktop | Virtual desktops for end users |
| Management Appliance | Virtual appliances that host the DaaS platform |
| Template | Base virtual machine (OVA) used to create management appliances (in HA pairs) as they scale out. Static content for all management appliances (Ubuntu, JBOSS, postgres, memcached, OpenSSL, etc.) |
| Gold Pattern | Base virtual machine for tenants to clone desktops |
| Organization | Service Provider or Tenant (customer) |
| Access Point | Linux virtual appliance that resides in the DMZ, providing remote access to desktops. Typically resides behind a load-balancer |
| DaaS Agent | Deployed in each virtual desktop along with View Agent and View Agent Direct Connect |
| Fabric | The fabric contains the DaaS platform configuration data and control logic |
Conclusion
VMware Horizon® is a family of desktop and application virtualization solutions that has matured significantly over the past few years. vCloud Air Network service providers can provide customers with either a managed Horizon 7 platform, or Desktop as a Service with Horizon DaaS.
Both Horizon 7 and Horizon DaaS offer virtual desktops and applications, and used in combination with App Volumes, applications can be delivered in near real-time to end-users.
Access Point provides remote access to both Horizon 7 and Horizon DaaS which provide many advantages to the service provider. With their active/active scalable deployment, and hardened Linux platform, service providers and customers can benefit from multiple authentication and access methods from any device and any location.
For both Horizon solutions, RDSH continues to be an attractive choice for delivering desktop or application sessions. These can either be presented to the user with the Horizon Client, or with integration with Workspace ONE and Identity Manager.
Finally, the vCloud Air Network is a global ecosystem of service providers that are uniquely positioned to supply modern enterprises with the ideal VMware-based solutions they need to grow their businesses. Built on the foundation of existing VMware technology, vCloud Air Network Service Providers deliver a seamless entry into the cloud. You can learn more about the vCloud Air Network, or search for a vCAN service provider.