The pilot infrastructure should be designed on the same hardware platforms that the production solution is going to be deployed on. For example, the same servers and storage should be used. This takes into account any anomalies between platforms and configuration differences that could affect things such as scalability, or more importantly, performance.
Even at the pilot stage, design is key, and you should make sure that you consider production design, even at this stage. Why? Basically, we do this because many pilot solutions end up going straight into production and more and more users get added above and beyond those that have been scoped for the pilot. It's great going live with the solution and not having to go back and rebuild it, but when you start to scale by adding more users and applications, you might have some issues due to the initial sizing, given that it was meant to be a pilot. It may sound obvious, but often with a successful pilot you just keep going, with end users continuing to work and IT adding more and more users. Well, until it breaks! If it's only ever going to be a pilot, that's fine, but keep this in mind and bear this in mind—if you are planning on taking the pilot straight into production, design it for production right at the very start.
It is always useful to work from a prerequisite document to understand the different elements that need to be taken into consideration in the design. Design elements include the following:
- Hardware sizing (servers—CPU, memory, and consolidation ratios)
- Pool design (based on user segmentation)
- Storage design (local SSD, SAN, and acceleration technologies)
- Image creation (rebuild from scratch and optimize for VDI)
- Network design (load balancing and external access)
- Antivirus considerations
- Application delivery (delivering virtually and/or layering versus installing in the base image)
- User profile management
- Persistent or non-persistent desktop user assignments
- Linked Clone, Full Clone, or Instant Clone desktop builds
Once you have all of this information, you can start to deploy the pilot environment.