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

XenDesktop® nugget


I'm convinced XenDesktop is the most powerful VDI solution on the market. I am not completely convinced Citrix has the performance monitoring solution to match. If it was my deployment, I would deploy evaluation versions of most, if not all, of the monitoring tools, and pick and choose which one(s) would work best for the implementation. Some tools require purchasing, others are free and if you are a CLI jockey like me, the free CLI tools are undoubtedly the fastest and most useful.

A key metric that is often looked at in XenDesktop deployments is the ICA Session Round Trip Time (RTT) which is an indication of usability. ICA RTT is the time interval measured at the client between the first step (the user action) and the last step (the graphical response displayed). ICA RTT is a good measurement of the screen lag that a user experiences while interacting with the desktop or application. ICA RTT is different from, and always higher than network RTT, which is a measure of...