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

Storage types


As operating systems and methods to store data have evolved over the years, so have the different protocols, filesystems and methods for storing data. There is no one best method, but there are some to avoid when it comes to performance.

Block versus file

File storage has been around for a long time and is what is traditionally found in local hard disk storage systems. File storage is synonymous with Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems. In file storage the disk is configured with a protocol such as NFS or CIFS and files are read/written to disk using that protocol.

File storage types

File storage is synonymous with file level storage formats such as NFS (*nix) and CIFS (Windows) on locally attached media.

NFS (Network File System) is found on Unix and Linux systems. NFS was originally developed by SUN Microsystems and it allowed a client to access files on a server over a network. NFS is an open standard based on several RFCs. NFSv4 is the latest that you will find most commonly...