Book Image

Optimizing Citrix?? XenDesktop?? for High Performance

By : Craig Thomas Ellrod
Book Image

Optimizing Citrix?? XenDesktop?? for High Performance

By: Craig Thomas Ellrod

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Optimizing Citrix XenDesktop for High Performance
Notice
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Active Directory tweaks


For best performance, you should run Microsoft Active Directory on a dedicated virtual machine. Tribal Knowledge says that it wouldn't hurt to keep the domain controller on a physical server to remove dependency on the hypervisor in case it fails.

Disable forest searching

By default, Director performs a forest-wide search of the logged in admin and Director machine's domain. As you start to scale up your XenDesktop site, Active Directory might slow you down, because, by default, all of the global catalogs for the Active Directory forest are searched with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). It is best to turn this off.

To disable AD Forest Searching, perform the following steps:

  1. Log in as administrator.

  2. Open IIS Manager.

  3. Browse to \Sites\Default Web Site\Director in the left hand navigation frame.

  4. Select Application Settings.

  5. Add a new value called ActiveDirectory.ForestSearch. Select Value as false.

  6. Click Apply in Actions.

  7. Run IISRESET to apply the changes.