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

Hypervisor Tools


So, why are we even discussing all this? We are discussing this because all the XenDesktop servers, desktops, and applications run inside virtual machines on the hypervisor host. How those virtual machines cooperate with the hypervisor affects performance. The hypervisor you choose, whether it be VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, or Microsoft Hyper-V, will affect the performance of your XenDesktop site. As it turns out, paravirtualization techniques provide the best performance to date. In order to take advantage of the high performance features, hypervisors need to install drivers into the virtual machine. These come in the form of "tools" specific to the hypervisor itself. Along with performance features, these tools also provide enhanced manageability.

VMware Tools

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machine's operating system and improves the manageability of the virtual machine. Without it installed, the virtual machine will...