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

Contact Us: webinar@eginnovations.com

Presenters
Elias Khnaser (Virtualization Review)
Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)

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

© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com

Virtualizing Citrix XenApp &
XenDesktop on VMware vSphere

Elias Khnaser
CTO, Sigma Solutions
vExpert, CTP
Elias@EliasKhnaser.com
@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 VMware
Edgesight vCenterOps
- Developed - Great for monitoring
pre-virtualization VMware
- A resource hog Infrastructure
- Difficult to extract - Is not optimized for
information Citrix applications
- Not very intuitive GUI (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
Bala@eginnovations.com


Citrix Performance Challenges
User Frustration

IT Talent
“Traditional management Shortage
tools fail to address
today’s Citrix
virtualization Performance High
performance challenges: Challenges downtime
too complex, too slow,
too costly, too
fragmented, too manual.” Complexity &
Fragmentation

Cost overrun

Where is the Root-Cause?

Active Directory
SQL
SAN
Switch

Enterprise
Client Apps
Network Web on XenApp on
ESX ZDC on VMware ESX
VMware ESX

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


What Citrix EdgeSight Shows
 EdgeSight is focused
on the Citrix tiers
Active Directory
 Limited visibility into SQL
Switch
SAN

other parts of the
infrastructure
 This makes it hard to ZDC
Client
XenApp
Enterprise
diagnose non-Citrix
XenServer ZDC on
VMware ESX
VMware ESX Apps

related issues that
impact desktop
Profile Server
service delivery – yet
License Server
Citrix gets blamed License Server
Oracle vCenter


Active Directory
SQL
SAN
Switch

Client Enterprise
ZDC on Apps
XenServer VMware ESX
VMware ESX

Profile Server

License Server

Oracle vCenter


eG Enterprise – How does it help?

Active Directory
SQL
SAN
Switch

Client Enterprise
ZDC on Apps
XenServer VMware ESX
VMware ESX

Profile Server

Complete visibility – every layer, every tier!
License Server

Oracle vCenter


Performance Assurance w/ eG Enterprise
End User Service Infrastructure
Experience Performance Performance

Trading
Connection
Brokers Storage
Accounting

Online
Banking Network
Applications
Patient
records

... Virtualization
Profile Servers

User
Experience Total
eG Enterprise Right-Sizing
& Capacity
Management Automated Planning
Performance
Pre-emptive Diagnosis
Visibility Alerting


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


Performance Assurance Benefits
User Satisfaction

IT Productivity

“Dramatically simplify and
accelerate virtualization Higher
performance management. Performance service
Deliver peak performance, Assurance uptime
user satisfaction and ROI.”

Simplicity

Cost control & ROI


Better Performance, Better ROI

20%
more
users
per
physical
server


About eG Innovations
 Deliver exceptional performance, user productivity, and ROI
 eG Innovations helps you to dramatically simplify, accelerate,
and optimize performance management across mission-critical
Performance Assurance virtual, cloud and physical IT environments
Made Easy
 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 New York, New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin,
Locations Singapore, London, Chennai
Customers Over 1,000 customers worldwide

Certifications &
Sample Awards


Customer Success


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
webinar@eginnovations.com

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