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
More XenApp 4.5 on VMware recommendations
Now that the sessions from VMWorld 2008 are available online (for registered attendees), I thought I could share some of the good stuff with you. Here are some recommendations for implementing XenApp 4.5 on VMware. I’ve posted recommendations before, so there could be some overlap. Of course, not all recommendations may apply to your situation, but I find some of them very useful. These come from session VD2591: Lessons Learned While Deploying Citrix Presentation Server (XenApp) 4.5 in a Virtual Datacenter. … Continue Reading
XenApp 5.0 – First Impression
Last week I’ve been testing with the new version of XenApp (Formerly known as Presentation Server). First thing that different from the Technical Preview was the ease of installation on a Windows Server 2008. All components (except for Sun Java) install automatically. Next thing that’s a big difference is the occurance of the Web Interface, Black, very Black and very good looking.
I’ve created a dual mode streaming site to be able to test the new Isolation 3.0 features. Best improvement is … Continue Reading
XENServer 5.0 Released!
Citrix has released the new edition of XENServer. This version mainly focusses on High Availabilty and takes this to a new level! As told before in earlier posts Citrix has partnered up with Marathon and created a super High Available infrastructure. This infrastructure is able to create a XenApp environment that is so high available that when a physical server which hosts a virtual XenApp server dies, another server takes over the virtual machine without users losing sessions and even worse their work. There’s a very cool interview with the “Hypervisor Guru” Simon Crosby on the citrix website in which he explains the new features and high availabilty options.
With the realease of the XENServer 5.0 a new version of XENCenter is released aswell. In the first version of XENcenter a lot of small issues made the management a lot more complicated than for example in Virtual Center. With the new release of XENcenter a big step forward is made. Later on this month I’ll publish a review of XENCenter 5.0 on this Blog.
Updated application virtualization comparison chart!
We (Matthijs Haverink and I) have updated our application virtualization chart with the latest release of Citrix XenApp 5.0, Microsoft App-V and Xenocode 2008 SP1. We also changed Symantec Appstream in the chart by combining it with SVS pro, a more commonly used combination. … Continue Reading
