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

Virtual networking


In virtual networking, virtual machines have virtual Ethernet adapters that connect to Virtual Switches. Everything found in a physical Ethernet adapter can be found in a virtual Ethernet adapter, and everything found in a physical Ethernet switch can be found in a virtual Ethernet switch.

Virtual Ethernet adapters

Essentially, a virtual Ethernet adapter is an emulation of the physical Ethernet adapter. Emulation is slow, so it is better to use an optimized paravirtualized Ethernet adapter. To take advantage of the performance gains in the paravirtualized adapter, you need to install the tools that are provided by the hypervisor manufacturer. Virtual network adapters have their own MAC addresses and unicast/multicast/broadcast filters and are strictly Layer 2 devices.

Note

Both the Speed and Duplex settings on virtual Ethernet adapters are irrelevant because the entire data transfer takes place in the host system's RAM instantaneously, without the pesky collisions and signaling...