{"id":540,"date":"2012-05-30T19:55:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T18:55:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myworldofit.net\/?p=540"},"modified":"2012-05-31T11:41:20","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T10:41:20","slug":"virtual-desktops-on-pci-e-ssd-intro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myworldofit.net\/?p=540","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD – Intro"},"content":{"rendered":"
This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Virtual Desktops on PCI-E SSD<\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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In this series I am going to be looking at how PCI-E SSDs can be used with VDI, I’ll be covering the hardware in use, the user experience and also why I believe PCI-E SSDs to be the best option to get your virtual desktops running as fast as possible.<\/p>\n

First this is the hardware I’ll be using throughout this series-<\/p>\n

HP ProLiant DL385 G7 Server<\/a>
\nP\/N – 470065-367<\/a>
\nAMD 6128HE 8 Core 2.0ghz Processor
\n44GB DDR3 RAM
\n4x15k 72GB Hard Drives with a p410i 1GB (used for boot only and HDD comparison in RAID5)
\nOCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB PCI-E SSD<\/p>\n

One of the great things about these PCI-E SSDs is they have really come down in price over the last 6 months, around December 2011 they were \u00a3460 (exVAT) but this one we managed to pick up from Novatech<\/a> (link<\/a>)\u00a0for just \u00a3372.<\/p>\n

All things being good you should seriously consider getting 2 of the RevoDrives (or any PCI-E SSD) and put them in software RAID1, you may then go wow that’ll be expensive (~\u00a3744) but lets consider the current cost of 8x72GB 15k SAS drives and a 1GB flash cache.
\nIf we say \u00a3150 per SAS drive and another \u00a3250 for the flash cache that would make a grand total of \u00a31,450 just on hard drive storage!<\/p>\n

For the software side of things we will be running the Microsoft Hyper-V<\/a> edition of Citrix VDI-in-a-Box<\/a> (link<\/a>) with Windows 7 as the client OS of choice.\u00a0The reason for using Hyper-V and not XenServer or VMware (as if I need a reason not to use VMware) is that the drivers for the OCZ RevoDrive 3 only work with Windows.<\/p>\n

Anywhos that’s all for now you can however see the teaser video below,\u00a0 do enjoy!<\/p>\n