Book Reviews - Optimizing Citrix XenDesktop for High Performance

Successfully deploy XenDesktop sites for a high performance Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

About This Book

• Size the VDI environment so the administrator has breathing room to design and build their XenDesktop systems efficiently
• Use desktop virtualization tools to provide users fast, convenient access to their Windows Desktops
• Understand the key pinch points in the resource layers such as; the Client layer, Network Layers, Access Layer, Control Layer, Services Layer and Resources Layer

Who This Book Is For

Citrix XenDesktop High Performance is written for administrators who would like to deploy Citrix XenDesktop in their enterprises with the aim of providing high efficiency. Basic familiarity with Citrix XenDesktop is assumed.

What You Will Learn

• Understand key concepts, terminology, and system requirements
• Discover how components work in regards to virtualization and performance
• Identify architectural resource layers and components
• Explore the hypervisor virtualization software that runs on top of the hardware and learn how to tune it for maximum performance
• Analyze client hardware and software, including thin clients and mobile devices

In Detail

Citrix XenDesktop is a suite of desktop virtualization tools designed to provide users with fast and convenient access to their Windows desktops and applications through any device. Virtual desktops mean that rather than setting up hundreds or thousands of individual computers in an enterprise, companies can instead opt to create servers with large amounts of memory, disk, and processing resources, and use virtualization to offer these resources to end users. The result of this is that users are provided with an experience that appears to be identical to having an individual desktop PC. Each user has some disk space, processor time, and memory allocated to them, as though it is present on their own physical machine, when in reality, the resources are physically present on a centralized server.
This book starts by answering the basic questions you need to ask when considering XenDesktop, followed by methods of how you can properly size your server infrastructure for XenDesktop. You'll discover how to optimize the virtual machines used in XenDesktop, how to optimize your network for XenDesktop, and how to optimize the hypervisor and the cloud. You'll also learn how to monitor XenDesktop to maximize performance.
By the end of the book, you will be able to plan, design, build, and deploy high performance XenDesktop Virtualization systems in enterprises. You will also know how to monitor and maintain your systems to ensure smooth operation.

Style and approach

This book is an all-inclusive guide that uncovers hidden and previously unpublished performance improvement areas for any XenDesktop site.

1. XenDesktop® Architecture
Introduction
Getting started with hypervisors
Architecture
The Clients layer
The Network layer
The Access layer
The Control layer
The Services layer
The Resources layer
The Storage System layer
The Hypervisors layer
Terminology and concepts
Hyperthreading
The server side
The client side
Virtual machine
Server virtual machines
Desktop virtual machines
XenApp®
EdgeSight®
FlexCast®
Components
Citrix Receiver™
Hypervisor
NetScaler®
StoreFront™
Delivery Controller
Studio
Director
The License Server
Database
Active Directory
DHCP
DNS
Desktop
Server
Storage
vDisk
Personal vDisk
Virtual Desktop Agent
2. Sizing
System requirements
Citrix Receiver™
StoreFront 3.x
Database–Microsoft SQL Server
Studio
The Delivery Controller
Director
License Server 11.x
NetScaler VPX™
CloudBridge VPX™ (WAN Optimization)
Virtual Delivery Agent
Microsoft Active Directory
Microsoft DHCP Server
Microsoft DNS Server
Hypervisor host
XenDesktop® site sizing calculations
Storage calculation
vMem–memory calculation
vCPU–CPU calculation
vNIC–network bandwidth
User type
Small XenDesktop® site
Medium XenDesktop® site
Large XenDesktop® site
Enterprise XenDesktop® site
3. Hypervisors
Tools
XenServer® Tools
Hyper-V Tools
4. Memory Optimization
XenDesktop® nugget
Hypervisor memory optimization
Memory
VMware
Memory overhead
Transparent page sharing
Ballooning
Hypervisor swapping
Compression
How memory reclamation works
Virtual machine memory allocation
XenServer®
Memory overhead
Memory overhead calculation
Dynamic Memory Control
Dynamic memory mode
Target memory mode
Static Memory Maximum
Hyper-V
Memory overhead
Static memory
Dynamic memory
5. Network Optimization
XenDesktop® nugget
Network virtualization
Traffic separation
QoS
ICA/HDX virtual channels
Multi-stream and multi-port
Multi-stream policy settings
Multi-stream registry settings
Streams
Virtual Channels
Virtual networking
Virtual Ethernet adapters
Virtual Switches
VMware virtual networking
VM DirectPath I/O
Network I/O Control
VMXNET 3
Large Receive Offload
Port Groups
Virtual Switch VLAN
Virtual Guest VLAN Tagging
External Switch Tagging
NIC Teaming
Load balancing
Link aggregation
Failover protection VMware networking maximums
VMware networking tweaks
XenServer® networking
XenServer® networking maximums
XenServer® networking tweaks Hyper-V networking
Hyper-V networking maximums
Hyper-V networking tweaks
6. Storage Optimization
XenDesktop® nugget
Input/output operations per second
Data de-duplication
Personal vDisk
Storage types
Block versus file
File storage types
Block storage types
Local versus network
Local storage
Network storage
Hyper converged storage
Redundant array of inexpensive disks
Cloud storage technologies
Storage virtualization
VMware virtual storage
Datastores
Virtual machine filesystem
Virtual machine storage
vMotion
VMware storage limits
Virtual machine limits
VMware ESXi host limits
VMware storage tweaks
VSAN
vFRC
CBRC
Storage I/O Control
I/O Analyzer
SCSI Controller
XenServer® virtual storage
Repositories
Blkfront, blkback, blktap, and tapdisk
Tapdisk3
Storage resource pools
IntelliCache
XenMotion®
XenServer® storage limits
Virtual machine limits
XenServer® host limits
XenServer® pool limits
XenMotion® limits
XenServer® storage tweaks
Sanbolic Melio
Workload balancer
Storage buffer
Blkback page pool size
Blktap page pool size
Communication rings
I/O scheduler
Hyper-V virtual storage
Cluster Shared Volumes
Resilient filesystem
Live migration
Storage spaces
Tiered spaces
Disk storage types
Hyper-V storage limits
Hyper-V storage tweaks
SMB Direct
Storage drivers
Unnecessary protocols
Default disk path
Storage controller
Disk storage type
Storage QoS
7. CPU Optimization
XenDesktop® nugget
Virtual CPUs
Hyperthreading
Non-uniform memory access
Intel VT
AMD-V
CPU virtualization
VMware virtual CPUs
Shares, reservations, and limits
VMware virtual CPU limits
Virtual machine limits
VMware ESXi host limits
VMware vCPU tweaks
Power management
NUMA in VMware
Latency sensitivity
XenServer® virtual CPUs
XenServer® virtual CPU limits
Virtual machine limits
Host limits
XenServer® vCPU tweaks
Disable power management
Caps, pins, and weights
CPU tools
irqbalance
numad
The number of Dom0 vCPUs
Netback threads
Hyper-V virtual CPUs
Hyper-V vCPU limits
Virtual machine limits
Host limits
Hyper-V vCPU tweaks
Integration services and Enlightened I/O
Roles
64 versus 32
1:12 overcommit ratio
8. Performance Monitoring
XenDesktop® nugget
The ICA protocol
XenDesktop® Director and EdgeSight®
Using HDX Insight™
Third-party tools
eG Innovations
Lakeside software
XenDesktop® performance metrics
VMware monitoring tools
GUI tools
CLI tools
vCLI
PowerCLI
esxtop
Memory
CPU
Network
Storage
XenServer® monitoring tools
GUI tools
CLI tools
Round Robin Databases
xentop
Memory
CPU
Network
Storage
xenmon
xm
Hyper-V monitoring tools
GUI tools
Hyper-V Manager
CLI tools
PowerShell library
Resource metering
Memory
CPU
Network
Storage
Load testing
9. Acceleration
XenDesktop® nugget
Application Delivery Controllers
Load balancer
Secure ticket authority
ADC caching
ADC compression
WAN Optimization Controllers
WAN caching
WAN compression
WAN de-duplication
WAN latency reduction
WAN quality of service
WAN protocol optimization
Content Delivery Networks
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Content Delivery Network
Three dimensional graphics and high definition
HDX™
HDX™ 3D
Thin clients
10. XenDesktop® Component Tweaks
Citrix Receiver™ tweaks
Caching
Compression
Keyboard and mouse
Citrix® Virtual Desktop tweaks
Citrix® StoreFront™ tweaks
HTML5
CRL checking
Disable NetBIOS
Socket pooling
Application Initialization
Citrix® Studio tweaks
Database split
Citrix® Director tweaks
Pre-populate domain
Session timeout
Citrix® Delivery Controller tweaks
SQL mirroring
Connection Leasing
Separate roles
Citrix® License Server tweaks
Active Directory tweaks
Disable forest searching
DHCP and DNS
SQL databases
Citrix Provisioning Services™
Spanning Tree
Large Send Offload
Auto negotiation
Stream service isolation

Book Reviews - Optimizing Citrix XenDesktop for High Performance