Understanding storage traffic characteristics on enterprise virtual desktop infrastructure

Abstract

Despite the growing popularity of enterprise virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), little is known about its storage traffic characteristics. In addition, no prior work has considered the detailed characteristics of virtual machine (VM) behavior on VDI. In this paper, we analyze the enterprise storage traffic on commercial office VDI using designated VMs. For 28 consecutive days, we gathered various types of traces, including a usage questionnaire and active and passive measurements. To characterize the storage traffic, we focused on two perspectives: fibre channel (FC) traffic and VM behavior. From the FC traffic perspective, we found that read traffic is dominant, although the applications are similar to those in a previous small-scale VDI. In particular, the write response time of large transactions, e.g.,128 KiB, is strongly affected by a slight decrease in cache hits during an update storm. From the VM behavior, we found that all active user VMs generate only 25% of traffic. Although a few VMs generate massive traffic, their impact is small. These characteristics are unique in comparison with the small-scale VDI. Our results have significant implications for designing the next generation of VDI and improving its performance.