DISRUPT 2020: Lessons Learned from a 30K User Horizon RDSH and VDI Deployment

Taking the Plunge at Scale with VMware Horizon, NVIDIA and IGEL

Very large environments are those that can gain the most value from a virtual app and desktop deployment, benefitting from simplified management, improving ROI, and enhancing end user compute security and compliance. But they can also be the most daunting to design and implement.

What if your task was to design and implement a 30,000 user VMware Horizon Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment? Where would you start and how would you avoid common pitfalls and obstacles?

In my upcoming DISRUPT 2020 Nashville presentation, “Lessons Learned from Designing and Implementing a 30K User VMware RDSH and VDI Environment,” I’ll share how we were able to tackle such a challenge, resulting in tremendous outcomes for this large enterprise customer. Deployments at this scale are truly an act of extreme ownership, teamwork and alignment, between partners, clients, hardware and software vendors. The individuals that worked together as a team, to pull off this deployment were the best and the brightest in the industry! I’m honored to play a pivotal role in the success of this project, to this point and into the future expansion.

In this session you’ll hear firsthand, how we took advantage of the latest advancements in Windows Server and Windows 10 to create a large-scale, modern end user computing environment, leveraging Horizon 7, initially for 15,000 concurrent user sessions (RDSH & VDI). I’ll share how we avoided some of the most common Horizon RDSH/VDI design and implementation pitfalls on our journey to delivering mission critical services to 30,000 users. In addition to VMware technologies, this solution took advantage of NVIDIA GRID vGPU Virtual Apps (vApps) and Virtual PC (vPC), along with IGEL Software-Defined Endpoints.

Included will be insights into the entire VMware EUC technology stack — Instant Clones, App Volumes, Dynamic Environment Manager (formerly know as UEM), Unified Access Gateway and Workspace ONE Access (formerly vIDM). I’ll also share how we included Hyper-Converged Infrastructure and 1,000+ NVIDIA Tesla GPUs deployed across hundreds of hosts, dozens of clusters and multiple datacenters. The result is an Active-Active, globally load balanced topology delivering impressive performance and availability for this large-scale enterprise organization.

If you know me, you know that I’m dedicated and passionate in advocating for EUC technologies in the IT community. Launching independent as an entrepreneur, I inspired and created YOUNG TECHNOLOGIES, LLC (“YOUNGTECH”) to empower clients to convert their technology roadblocks into a roadmap to success. I love sharing my knowledge and experiences and look forward to helping you achieve success, regardless of the scale of your deployment.

Take the scalability limits off of your next virtual desktop project. Join me at DISRUPT 2020 Nashville. Register today for the Cloud Workspaces Forum of the Year.