So what exactly can you do in 16 minutes? Well, you can:

• Download and install your preferred tax prep software, because (if you're in the US or Canada) April is coming
• Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame, then reminisce and/or lament about it for exactly 1 minute.
• Save 15% on your car insurance (you can supposedly get this done in 15 vs. 16 min.)
• Do some reallyunsavorythings not suitable for mentioning on a nice blog post like this one.

Don't care about any of those things? Neither do I. Let me come back to this in a moment...

If you're familiar with our architecture portfolio for desktop virtualization, you may be aware that we're continuing to invest in VSPEX-based reference architectures for Cisco Desktop Virtualization. This week, we just announced the latest addition to the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) portfolio -our solution forVMware Horizon View 5.3 with Cisco UCS and EMC VSPEXavailablehere.

If you're not already familiar with them, CVD's provide prescriptive design guidance around how to build solutions with specific outcomes (performance) as documented through a testing/documentation discipline that Cisco's been doing for years. You'll find our repository of desktop virtualization CVD'shere.

So now let's talk about the CVD itself. Our principal author is Ramesh Guduru -he's a Virtualization Systems Engineer in Cisco's Data Center Business Group and has extensive experience in Horizon View, virtualization infrastructure and management, Cisco UCS and storage. Ramesh assembled a test platform based on the setup shown inFigure 1. 

As you can see the core pillars of the solution are:

• VMware Horizon View 5.3
• VMware vSphere 5.5 
• Cisco Unified Computing System and UCS Manager 2.2
• EMC VNX5600

Key things we wanted to expose/profile in this effort included:

• More with less -more powerful processors and faster memory
• System footprint for delivering 2,000 Horizon View desktops, while still retaining room to expand as demand increases
• Leverage more economical processors -ex: a 57% lower list price for the Intel E5-2680 v2 10-core processors vs. top bin processors tested in the past = lower server cost = lower per desktop CAPEX
• Hosting density leadership (#desktops per compute blade)
• End user experience as exercised using LoginVSI with medium workload with Flash
• Boot-up and login performance (simulating the Monday-morning boot storm dilemma all VDI implementations face and daily login storms)