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1 Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center April 11 th , 2012 Shawn Bass Citrix CTP & Microsoft MVP Independent Consultant www.shawnbass.com @ShawnBass Jim Moyle Citrix CTP Lead European Solutions Consultant Atlantis Computing www.atlantiscomputing.com @JimMoyle

Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

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Page 1: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

1

Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center

April 11th, 2012

Shawn Bass

Citrix CTP & Microsoft MVP

Independent Consultant

www.shawnbass.com

@ShawnBass

Jim Moyle

Citrix CTP

Lead European Solutions Consultant

Atlantis Computing

www.atlantiscomputing.com

@JimMoyle

Page 2: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Citrix XenApp/RDS History

Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization

Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s

Server virtualization has only taken hold in the mid 2000’s

Many existing deployments are on physical server using local disk

Single XenApp instance with access to dedicated low latency disks

Windows Server 2003

Very stable environment without storage issues

2

Page 3: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Virtualization Drivers for Citrix XenApp

Why change from physical to virtual XenApp?

1. Increase server utilization and density to lower cost

2. Improve manageability (vMotion, DRS)

3. Smaller failure domain and easier maintenance

4. Simplify disaster recovery

5. Faster migration to Server 2008 R2 and XenApp 6.5

3

In many datacenters,

virtualizing servers is the rule

& physical is the exception!

Page 4: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Windows Server 2008 R2 Migration

Why migrate to Server 2008 R2?

1. Give users a consistent Windows 7

look and feel

2. Citrix XenApp End of Life requires

upgrade to XenApp 6.5 by July 2013

3. XenApp 6.5 only supports Server

2008 R2

4

Citrix

Product

Supported

OS

End of Life

Presentation

Server 4.5

2003 March 2013

XenApp 5.0 2003 March 2013

XenApp 6.0 2008 R2 July 2013

XenApp 6.5 2008 R2 July 2015

By July 2013, XenApp customers

must migrate to XenApp 6.5!

Page 5: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

5

Virtualization XenApp and Storage Survey

What are you plans for virtualizing XenApp?

What storage do you use for your virtualized XenApp deployment?

Source: registration survey

Sample Size: 293

58%

10%

7%

25%

Completely Virtualized

Plan to Virtualize by2013

Don't Plan to Virtualize

Currently Migrating toVirtualized

27%

17%

18%

38%

Other SharedNAS/SAN

EMC SAN

NetApp NAS

Local Disk

Source: registration survey

Sample Size: 71

Page 6: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Virtualizing Citrix XenApp with Server 2008 R2

Virtualizing XenApp → Storage Challenges

Requires SAN/NAS for certain features

Performance - Provisioning, Boot/Logon time and IO intensive application

Shared storage lowers density and impacts performance

Server 2008 R2 doubles IOPS required per VM

Office 2010

Internet Explorer 8/9

Improper sizing impacts density and performance

Introduces latency that affects user experience

6

Page 7: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

7

Bursty Nature of Desktop IO

Read

Write

Boot

SCCM Update

Steady State

Windows Characteristics: Average I/O hides a multitude of sins

Small Blocks

Steady State IOPs profile 80% Write, 20% Read

Highly Random I/O

Storage Considerations: Aggregate and Peak I/O

Boot and Logon Storms

RAID Level = PENALTY!

Disk Latency / Contention

A/V Scan

Page 8: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

A closer look at Windows desktop I/O

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75

IOPS

Seconds

Cached Roaming 1GB

read writ

Read 332 Write 314

Page 9: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

A closer look at Windows desktop I/O

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

1 4 7

10

13

16

19

22

25

28

31

34

37

40

43

46

49

52

55

58

61

64

67

70

73

76

79

82

85

88

91

94

97

10

0

10

3

10

6

10

9

11

2

11

5

11

8

12

1

12

4

12

7

13

0

13

3

13

6

13

9

14

2

14

5

14

8

IOPS

Seconds

First Roaming 1GB

read writ

221 Read 4218 Write

Page 10: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Atlantis ILIO Introduction

10

Hypervisor

MS Office

AnyConnect

Virtualized

Collaborative Workspace

Cisco VXC 6215

Thin Client

Cisco Virtualization Experience Clients

Cisco VXC 4000

PC Client

AnyConnect

WAAS

Virtualization-Aware

Borderless Network

Cisco®

Identity

Services

Engine

Tablet

Thin Client

PC

Storage IO traffic reduction with Software Processing Windows NTFS IO traffic processed locally to greatly reduce storage traffic and provide local IOPS

Inline Deduplication for VDI Workloads Deduplicates Windows Image components before reaching storage

Page 11: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Virtualized XenApp with Atlantis ILIO

Hypervisor

Atlantis ILIO for XenApp

SAN/NAS

Storage

ILIO Software in a VM

Any server

Any storage

No changes to XenApp

R2 R2 R2 R2

Page 12: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Atlantis ILIO Optimizes Virtualized XenApp Storage

12

Performance – Faster than Physical XenApp

Provisioning – 53% faster provisioning

Boot Time – 4X faster boot time

IO Intensive Applications – accelerate application

performance

Density

16% server density improvement

10x more users on the same storage

Storage Savings

92% reduction in storage capacity

Source: Independent Testing by Shawn Bass, CTP

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Provisioning Time (Hours) Boot Time (Minutes)

Atlantis ILIO for XenApp Performance (6 XenApp Instances)

Before Atlantis ILIO After Atlantis ILIO

Page 13: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

92% storage savings

53% faster provisioning

16% more scalability

77% faster boot time

Citrix XenApp & RDS Workload

Improvements with Atlantis ILIO By Shawn Bass, CTP and Microsoft MVP

bit.ly/xenapp

Page 14: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Atlantis ILIO for XenApp Testing Objectives

Background

Storage impact of virtualizing XenApp overlooked

Performance, scalability and density

Scope

Determine the impact of Atlantis ILIO on virtualized XenApp deployments:

Storage Consumption

Provisioning Time

Boot Time

Session scalability

Session responsiveness

Page 15: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Test Environment, Configuration and Process

15

Test Configuration

Dual 6-core Xeon X5650@ 2.67Ghz (12 cores + hyperthreading = 24 cores), 96GB RAM

IOMega ix4-200d 4x7200 RPM SATA

Atlantis ILIO 2.2, XenApp 6.5, ESXi 5.0

12 x Win 2008 Server VMs, 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 16GB Page file

Testing Process

Response time & Density: Load Test with LoginVSI 3.5 Medium and VSiMax

Scalability: ioMeter IO generator with 80% write, 20% read workload

Sizing

Page 16: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Provisioning and Boot Time

16

Test Configuration

Windows Server 2008 R2

Standard LoginVSI applications (MS Office, Adobe…)

40GB Hard Disk thin provisioned to 19GB

Atlantis ILIO performing inline block-level deduplication

Provisioning Results

12 XenApp instances took 4:41:00 to clone

12 XenApp instances took 2:12:00 to clone with ILIO

Boot Time Results

12 XenApp instances took 0:8:25 to boot

12 XenApp instances took 0:1:58 to boot with ILIO

Page 17: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Storage Consolidation

17

Test Configuration

40GB Hard Disk thin provisioned to 19GB

Storage Consolidation Results

12 XenApp instances took 228GB of storage capacity

(19GB per instance)

12 XenApp instances took 18GB of storage capacity

(1.5 GB per instance)

92% reduction in storage capacity required

This means that you could put 12.5 times more XenApp

instances on the same storage array

Page 18: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Response Time & Density

18

Test Configuration

LoginVSI Medium Workload

VSIMax occurs at 4,000 ms

Response Time results

Consistently faster response times with Atlantis

ILIO (over 1000ms at times)

Density Results

LoginVSI reached VSIMax at 83

LoginVSI reached VSIMax at 96 with Atlantis ILIO

That is a 16% density increase

XenApp

XenApp with ILIO

Page 19: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Scale Testing of Atlantis ILIO for XenApp

19

Scaling XenApp Workloads

80-90% write IO during stead state

Write IOPS critical to scaling XenApp

Latency is important to maintain user experience

Atlantis ILIO Scale Test Results (ioMeter)

Write IOPS - 60-100x increase

Throughput – 75x increase

Latency – 75x faster response time

Page 20: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Summary of Findings

20

There are many reasons to virtualize XenApp and many

deployments that are migrating to Server 2008 R2 will virtualize by

2013

Virtualizing XenApp introduces I/O constraints and potential

performance and scale issues related to storage

Deploying Citrix XenApp & RDS workload behind Atlantis ILIO can

reduce storage requirements, improve provisioning and boot

time when I/O is a limiting factor for scale.

Page 21: Optimizing XenApp for the Virtual Data Center · Citrix XenApp/RDS History Citrix XenApp/RDS pre-dates virtualization Presentation Server has been around since the 1990’s Server

Resources & Questions

21

XenApp Resources

Citrix XenApp & RDS Workload Improvements with Atlantis ILIO bit.ly/xenapp

Shawn Bass Blog on XenApp End of Life bit.ly/xenappeol

Jim Moyle blog on Virtualizing XenApp blog.atlantiscomputing.com

VDI Resources

Atlantis ILIO for VDI Solutions Brief bit.ly/ILIOVDI

Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI bit.ly/disklessvdi

Windows 7 IOPS Deep Dive Whitepaper by Jim Moyle www.atlantiscomputing.com/win7iops

Twitter @ShawnBass

@JimMoyle

@AtlantisILIO