Sizing a Horizon environment for Virtual SAN

In this section, we will explore how to properly size our VMware ESXi servers so that they can accommodate VSAN in addition to the Horizon desktops. This section assumes that you are already aware of the storage, networking, and CPU requirements of the Horizon desktops themselves and are only looking to add VSAN as your virtual desktop storage platform.

Tip

In this chapter, we will focus on VSAN designs that use a combination of flash and magnetic disks. VSAN 6.2 introduced deduplication and compression capabilities for all-flash VSAN configurations, new monitoring dashboards, and other features. While the price of flash storage continues to drop at a steady rate, it is not yet at a point where it has become the default option for all Horizon deployments.

ESXi Server CPU requirements

Prior to determining vSphere's host, disk, or flash-based storage requirements, we must first ensure that our hosts have sufficient CPU resources available. VMware recommends...