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

Hardware-assisted virtualization


Hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV) is only possible with hardware, hypervisors, and operating systems that support it. In the mid 2000s, both Intel and AMD came out with their hardware extensions to specifically support virtualization in the form of the AMD-V and Intel VT-x extensions. Most servers support these vendor extensions today, but they need to be enabled or turned on in the BIOS of the server.

As the hardware vendors AMD and Intel make more gains in developing their hardware to interoperate better with virtualization, the HAV model will continue to make gains in performance. One example of how this is done is by taking privileged CPU instructions to automatically trap the hypervisor and run them in what is called the root mode privilege level. Also, the virtual machine state can be stored within structures inside the Intel VT-X or AMD-V structures.

Advances in the form of hardware-assisted virtualization by vendors such as Intel and AMD are making...