Reference Architecture

Omnissa Horizon 8 VDI on Dell PowerStore

October 17, 2025

This white paper discusses the deployment of Omnissa Horizon 8 on Dell PowerStore. The paper addresses the following topics:

Performance characterization and analysis of Horizon 8 using Login Enterprise Platform to run CPU & GPU intensiveworkloads
Best practices for deploying Omnissa Horizon 8
Optional integration of Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) using PowerStore file capabilities
Personalized end-user experience through Omnissa DEM integration

The performance characterization and analysis of Omnissa Horizon 8 hosted on PowerStore demonstrates the ability of the solution architecture to support large-scale VDI deployments that deliver good quality VDI sessions to users. When a node was added to the compute cluster, doubling the size of the Horizon desktop pool, the PowerStore Appliance 5200T handled the additional storage traffic without any diminution of the quality of VDI user sessions.

The analysis also showcases the benefits of using NVIDIA GPUs in a VDI environment. Compute intensive applications are offloaded to vGPUs, freeing up compute and memory for additional seats to be added to desktop pools while delivering a smoother experience to end users.

Advanced management features such as DEM Enterprise deployed using PowerStore File give users the ability to personalize their VDI sessions. Changes that users make persist across their VDI sessions.

The combination of Horizon 8 hosted on PowerStore block storage and DEM Enterprise hosted on PowerStore File provides users with a quality, personalized VDI experience, while providing IT teams with centralized storage management, scalability, and enterprise storage features for both block and file storage.