Deploy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with High-Performance Computing (HPC)
Deliver and scale virtual desktop computing environments securely with a high-performance cloud computing architecture.
Architecture
This architecture deploys virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with high-performance computing (HPC) in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
The following diagram illustrates this reference architecture.
The architecture has the following components:
- Region
An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region is a localized geographic area that contains one or more data centers, called availability domains. Regions are independent of other regions, and vast distances can separate them (across countries or even continents).
- Availability domains
Availability domains are standalone, independent data centers within a region. The physical resources in each availability domain are isolated from the resources in the other availability domains, which provides fault tolerance. Availability domains don’t share infrastructure such as power or cooling, or the internal availability domain network. So, a failure at one availability domain is unlikely to affect the other availability domains in the region.
- Virtual cloud network (VCN) and subnets
A VCN is a customizable, software-defined network that you set up in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region. Like traditional data center networks, VCNs give you complete control over your network environment. A VCN can have multiple non-overlapping CIDR blocks that you can change after you create the VCN. You can segment a VCN into subnets, which can be scoped to a region or to an availability domain. Each subnet consists of a contiguous range of addresses that don't overlap with the other subnets in the VCN. You can change the size of a subnet after creation. A subnet can be public or private.
- Internet gateway
The internet gateway allows traffic between the public subnets in a VCN and the public internet.
- Route table
Virtual route tables contain rules to route traffic from subnets to destinations outside a VCN, typically through gateways.
- Compute
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute service enables you to provision and manage compute hosts in the cloud. You can launch compute instances with shapes that meet your resource requirements for CPU, memory, network bandwidth, and storage. After creating a compute instance, you can access it securely, restart it, attach and detach volumes, and terminate it when you no longer need it.
- Bastion host
The bastion host is a compute instance that serves as a secure, controlled entry point to the topology from outside the cloud. The bastion host is provisioned typically in a demilitarized zone (DMZ). It enables you to protect sensitive resources by placing them in private networks that can't be accessed directly from outside the cloud. The topology has a single, known entry point that you can monitor and audit regularly. So, you can avoid exposing the more sensitive components of the topology without compromising access to them.
- Load balancer
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Load Balancing service provides automated traffic distribution from a single entry point to multiple servers in the back end.
- File storage
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure File Storage service provides a durable, scalable, secure, enterprise-grade network file system. You can connect to a File Storage service file system from any bare metal, virtual machine, or container instance in a VCN. You can also access a file system from outside the VCN by using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect and IPSec VPN.
- Object storage
Object storage provides quick access to large amounts of structured and unstructured data of any content type, including database backups, analytic data, and rich content such as images and videos. You can safely and securely store and then retrieve data directly from the internet or from within the cloud platform. You can seamlessly scale storage without experiencing any degradation in performance or service reliability. Use standard storage for "hot" storage that you need to access quickly, immediately, and frequently. Use archive storage for "cold" storage that you retain for long periods of time and seldom or rarely access.
- High-performance computing
Designed for high-performance computing workloads that require high frequency processor cores and cluster networking for massively parallel HPC workloads.
Recommendations
Use the following recommendations as a starting point to deploy virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with high-performance computing (HPC) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Your requirements might differ from the architecture described here.
- VCN
When you create a VCN, determine the number of CIDR blocks required and the size of each block based on the number of resources that you plan to attach to subnets in the VCN. Use CIDR blocks that are within the standard private IP address space.
Select CIDR blocks that don't overlap with any other network (in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, your on-premises data center, or another cloud provider) to which you intend to set up private connections.
After you create a VCN, you can change, add, and remove its CIDR blocks.
When you design the subnets, consider your traffic flow and security requirements. Attach all the resources within a specific tier or role to the same subnet, which can serve as a security boundary.
Use regional subnets.
- Security lists
Use security lists to define ingress and egress rules that apply to the entire subnet.
- Cloud Guard
Clone and customize the default recipes provided by Oracle to create custom detector and responder recipes. These recipes enable you to specify what type of security violations generate a warning and what actions are allowed to be performed on them. For example, you might want to detect Object Storage buckets that have visibility set to public.
Apply Cloud Guard at the tenancy level to cover the broadest scope and to reduce the administrative burden of maintaining multiple configurations.
You can also use the Managed List feature to apply certain configurations to detectors.
- Security Zones
For resources that require maximum security, Oracle recommends that you use security zones. A security zone is a compartment associated with an Oracle-defined recipe of security policies that are based on best practices. For example, the resources in a security zone must not be accessible from the public internet and they must be encrypted using customer-managed keys. When you create and update resources in a security zone, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure validates the operations against the policies in the security-zone recipe, and denies operations that violate any of the policies.
- Bastion node
Use the VM.Standard.2.8 Compute shape. Since the node is used as a bastion host and to schedule HPC jobs, it doesn’t require locally attached storage or GPU processing.
- VDI Server
Use the VM.GPU3.X Compute shape because this node is used for visualization and is likely installed with a graphic-intensive application.
- HPC Cluster node
Use the BM.HPC2.36 Compute shape. This shape has 36 cores from two 3.7GHz Intel Xeon Gold 6154 processors, 384-GB RAM, and 6.4-TB NVME local storage. By using powerful NVIDIA GPUs available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you can post-process results on the cloud through remote visualization.
Considerations
When deploying virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with high-performance computing (HPC) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, consider the following:
- Performance
To get the best performance, choose the correct compute shape with appropriate bandwidth.
- Security
Use policies to restrict who can access the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources that your company has, and how they can access them.
Encryption is enabled for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage by default and can’t be turned off.
- Availability
Consider using a high-availability option based on your deployment requirements and region. Options include using multiple availability domains in a region and using fault domains.
- Cost
A bare metal HPC instance provides the necessary CPU power for a higher cost. Evaluate your requirements to choose the appropriate compute shape.
Deploy
The Terraform code to deploy high-performance computing (HPC) for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is available as a stack in Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
A Terraform stack to deploy this reference architecture is available in Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
- Go to Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
- Click Get App.
- Follow the on-screen prompts.