Storage tiering and I/O distribution

Earlier in this chapter, we discussed VMware View tiered storage and the ability to assign different datastores or exports to different types of disks. Now, we will discuss how those tiers interact with the storage infrastructure from an I/O perspective.

VMware View 4.5 introduced the ability to select a dedicated datastore, where replica disks are stored. The VMware View Architecture Guide recommends that this datastore should be served by a pool of SSDs. SSDs generally provide a larger amount of IOPS and throughput.

As mentioned earlier, common scenarios where high performance and high throughput are required occur during boot and login storms and during large scale application deployment to users or AV updates. As an example, Windows 7 can generate up to 700 IOPS during boot time. Another good example is if the Refresh on logoff option is used in conjunction with floating pools, it is common to see utilization peaks at the end of the work shift, when...