Citrix XenApp on VMware ESX: 1 or 2 vCPU part 2
One month ago I wrote a blogpost about using 1 or 2 vCPUs on Citrix XenApp VMs. My conclusions in that blogpost were:
- 2 vCPU terminal server (or XenApp) VMs allows more users and gives a more consistent user experience
- Use dedicated hardware (ESX cluster) for the TS/XenApp VMs
- Don’t overcommit total amount of vCPUs
I stated this conclusion to get some reactions and it worked. Because as Jason Boche commented on the article: It depends! … Continue Reading
VirtualCenter on Linux
I was interested about the beta vCenter based on Linux. After i did read the documentation, I downloaded the Virtual Appliance.
The VirtualCenter on Linux appliance uses Red Hat Community Enterprise Operating System (CentOS), version 5, as the base operating system. VirtualCenter on Linux is based on VMware VirtualCenter server, version 3.5. VirtualCenter has been modified to operate on a Linux operating system.
Since I was recently involved with some RedHat Enterprise Linux implementations, I would give it a try. … Continue Reading
SAP adopting Citrix XenServer next to VMware ESX: weird or smart ?
My first reaction was a pretty big laughter when I read the article that stated that SAP is going to use XenServer to virtualize about 500 servers. The laughter is, as Alessandro states, because of the fact that during Paul Maritz’ keynote at VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes 2 weeks ago, SAP got over 30 minutes of (my valuable !!!) time for a (pretty boring) presentation about what amazing stuff they were doing with VMware.
Citrix XenApp on VMware ESX: 1 or 2 vCPU?
In the past I’ve published two articles (here and here) about best practices on running Citrix XenApp (presentation server) on VMware ESX. It were all best practices gathered by other people, but I agreed with a lot of the recommendations. Until recently, I did also agree on using 1 vCPU XenApp virtual machines (with less users per VM) rather than 2 vCPU XenApp virtual machines (with more users per VM). From my own experience and what I got from the community, the performance will be degraded if you use 2 vCPUs. As a mather of fact, during a session on this subject at VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas, this was what stated:
- Always set up your Citrix VMs with 1 vCPU
- Due to the scheduling done by VMware at the hypervisor layer you will degrade performance if you use 2 vCPUs
So having experienced it myself and read about it on the internet, there was no reason for me to try it differently on newer version of ESX. But after reading “VMware Platform Performance Index”, a benchmark performed by the guys over at Virtual Reality Check (Ruben Spruijt and Jeroen van de Kamp), I got confused. … Continue Reading
ResourcePool Reservation Script updated
The following script is based on Eric Sloof‘s Resourcepool calculator.
I modified it quit a bit. It now has, logging, can be run as a scheduled task, % of resource reservation for memory and cpu that can be set on a resourcepool. The script respects the reservertion set on a particular vm.
You need to adjust the following variables: … Continue Reading
