the top-5 challenges and best practices for virtualizing citrix xenapp & xendesktop on vsphere

The Top-5 Challenges & Best Practices for Virtualizing Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop on VMware vSphere

Presenters Elias Khnaser (Virtualization Review)

Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)

Contact Us: [email protected]

© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com

Audience Poll

What is your biggest challenge with virtualizing Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop on VMware vSphere?

User experience

Performance & scalability

Offline access & distributed computing

Cost & ROI

Security


Virtualizing Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop on VMware vSphere

Elias Khnaser CTO, Sigma Solutions vExpert, CTP [email protected] @ekhnaser


#1 Don’t Discard Compute

CPU with HWmmu – Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT) – Nehalem+ – AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI) – Shanghai+

BIOS Settings – NUMA: ON – Hyper-threading: ON – Turbo: ON – Power Management: OFF – Processor C-states including CIE: OFF

Physical Server Platforms – 8 vCPUS = Quad socket or higher


#2 Memory Matters

5 Memory Management Technologies

– TPS – Balloon – Compression – Host Cache – Swap

Swap to host cache Memory speed is relatively insignificant Balance physical memory on NUMA nodes Full memory reservations Verify monitor mode

– vmware.log for: virtual mmu = ‘hardware’


#3 Tweak the Network

vSwitch Uplink Teaming Policy

– Load Balancing policy efficient

– IP Hash complex and no significant performance

Use NetIOC

Separate IP storage networks

Disable interrupt coalescing (pNIC)

– Lower latency, higher bandwidth demands

– esxcli system module parameters set –m <driver> -p

“InterruptThrottleRate=0”


#4 Storage is critical

Virtual Machines – Alignment – Snapshot – No noticeable performance difference between RDM vs

VMDK

ESXi Host – Multi-pathing – RR SIOC

Storage Array – VAAI (FC, iSCSI & NFS)

RAID Configuration Spindle Count


#5 Your VM hardware matters

Paravirtualized drivers – vmxnet3 – checksum, TSO, JF, LRO, RSS – pvscsi – lowers cost per IO

Disable ISO CD-ROMs Set NIC as first boot device in VM BIOS Multiple virtual SCSI controllers vNUMA sizing

– Size large VM (>8 vCPU) in multiples of NUMA node)

Is the application tuned correctly? Disable Interrupt Coalescing for VMXNET3

– ethernetX.coalescingScheme=disbled (VSPH 5.x) – CoalesceDefaultOn=0 (VSPH 4.x)


XenDesktop Infrastructure

Dedicated vCenter server(s) for large deployments

vCenter self-signed or commercial server certificate

XD infrastructure services on general vSphere clusters

VM-Affinity and Host-Affinity rules

DRS

High Availability


XenDesktop Controller

Multiple XDCs for redundancy and LB

Configure all VDAs with address of all XDC

Database HA

Power operations can overwhelm vCenter

Adjust concurrent power operations

appropriately


Provisioning Services / XenApp

You can use LACP (EtherChannel)

Disable DRS for PVS

Use VMXNET3

Intel E1000 not supported in VSPH 5

Use multiple virtual SCSI controllers

Enable interrupt safe mode

Use LB for TFTP

Make sure you have enough UDP ports and threads per Port


Misc. Considerations

MCS is best used with NFS

Remember to install VDA tools after you install

VMware Tools

Install VDA tools in Private Image Mode after you

have created your vDisk

SvM / SDRS with MCS will require pool recreation


Anti-virus = Angry VMs

Up to 100 IOPS per VM

Randomized scans & scheduled updates will

not scale

Leverage vShield Endpoint

AV appliances

Cloud based AV agents


What to monitor?

Kernel Latency Average (KAVG)

– This counter tracks the latencies of IO passing thru the Kernel

– Investigation Threshold: 1ms

Device Latency Average (DAVG)

– This is the latency seen at the device driver level. It includes the

roundtrip time between the HBA and the storage.

– Investigation Threshold: 15-20ms, lower is better, some spikes okay

Network Latency

– Anything over 200ms is going to yield a bad user experience


What to monitor?

Dropped Packets

Re-transmits

Bandwidth

Concurrent vCenter operations

Individual VM I/O

Context Switches


Mind the Gap: EdgeSight & vCenterOps

Citrix Edgesight

VMware vCenterOps

- Developed

pre-virtualization

- A resource hog

- Difficult to extract

information

- Not very intuitive GUI

- Great for monitoring

VMware

Infrastructure

- Is not optimized for

Citrix applications

(no HDX)


Close the Gap

Metrics are important but how about …

Complete visibility and insight into dependencies with auto-correlation so you can tell root cause from effect and diagnose with speed and accuracy

Pre-emptive performance alerts so you can act before users complain

Automated performance diagnosis so you don’t need a staff with PhD’s in performance management


Performance Assurance for Virtualized XenApp & XenDesktop

Bala Vaidhinathan CTO eG Innovations [email protected]


“Traditional management tools fail to address

today’s Citrix virtualization

performance challenges: too complex, too slow,

too costly, too fragmented, too manual.”

Citrix Performance Challenges

Performance Challenges

IT Talent Shortage

High downtime

Complexity & Fragmentation

User Frustration

Cost overrun


Network Web on

ESX

Active Directory SQL

XenApp on

VMware ESX

License Server

Profile Server

Enterprise

Apps

vCenter Oracle

Client

Where is the Root-Cause?

SAN Switch

What is the root cause of the service problem? Network? VMware? Citrix? AD? SQL? Storage? Profile Server?

ZDC on

VMware ESX


Network Web on

XenServer


XenApp on

VMware ESX ZDC on

VMware ESX

License Server

Profile Server

Enterprise

Apps

vCenter Oracle

Client

SAN Switch

EdgeSight is focused on the Citrix tiers

Limited visibility into other parts of the infrastructure

This makes it hard to diagnose non-Citrix related issues that impact desktop service delivery – yet Citrix gets blamed

ZDC XenApp

License Server

What Citrix EdgeSight Shows


Network Web on

XenServer


XenApp on

VMware ESX ZDC on

VMware ESX

License Server

Profile Server

Enterprise

Apps

vCenter Oracle

Client

SAN Switch


Network Web on

XenServer


XenApp on

VMware ESX ZDC on

VMware ESX

License Server

Profile Server

Enterprise

Apps

vCenter Oracle

Client

eG Enterprise – How does it help?

SAN Switch

Complete visibility – every layer, every tier!


Performance Assurance w/ eG Enterprise

Automated Diagnosis

User Experience Management

Right-Sizing & Capacity Planning

Pre-emptive Alerting

Total Performance

Visibility

End User Experience

Storage

Connection Brokers

Profile Servers

Network

Applications

Virtualization

Infrastructure Performance

Service Performance

Online Banking

Accounting

Trading

Patient records

. . .

eG Enterprise


eG Enterprise Delivers

Complete 360o Performance Visibility Get total performance visibility and auto-correlation of all components and dependencies that impact user experience across XenApp, User Sessions, VMware, Network, AD, SQL, EMC, Applications, etc.

Automatic Root-Cause Diagnosis Automate and accelerate discovery, diagnosis and resolution of performance issues – so your highly skilled staff can be more productive.

Pre-Emptive Problem Detection & Alerting Pre-emptively monitor, detect and resolve performance issues – before users notice. Prevent downtime, ensure exceptional performance and enhance user satisfaction.

Rapid ROI and Service Assurance Right-size your virtualized IT infrastructure, maximize resource utilization and reduce hardware/software cost.


Citrix Performance Assurance


“Dramatically simplify and accelerate virtualization

performance management. Deliver peak performance, user satisfaction and ROI.”

Performance Assurance Benefits

Performance Assurance

IT Productivity

Higher service uptime

Simplicity

User Satisfaction

Cost control & ROI


Better Performance, Better ROI

20% more users per

physical server


About eG Innovations

Performance Assurance

Made Easy

Deliver exceptional performance, user productivity, and ROI

eG Innovations helps you to dramatically simplify, accelerate, and optimize performance management across mission-critical virtual, cloud and physical IT environments

Only eG Innovations award-winning root-cause diagnosis technology can automatically pinpoint performance issues by auto-correlating the user’s service experience with the underlying infrastructure and application components

Worldwide Locations

New York, New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Singapore, London, Chennai

Customers Over 1,000 customers worldwide

Certifications &

Sample Awards

http://www.t-mobile.com/


Customer Success

http://www.chase.com/


Audience Poll

How are you addressing virtualized XenApp and XenDesktop issues today?

VMware vCenterOps or Citrix EdgeSight

Looking for a better performance management solution

Third-party monitoring tools

Manually diagnose and resolve performance issues

Flip a coin and pray


Next Steps

More details www.eginnovations.com/citrix

Send an Email [email protected]

Call Us

+1 732-794-1259


Visit eG Innovations @ vmworld 2012

the top-5 challenges and best practices for virtualizing citrix xenapp & xendesktop on vsphere

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