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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
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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
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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
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In many datacenters,
virtualizing servers is the rule
& physical is the exception!
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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
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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A closer look at Windows desktop I/O
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IOPS
Seconds
Cached Roaming 1GB
read writ
Read 332 Write 314
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A closer look at Windows desktop I/O
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IOPS
Seconds
First Roaming 1GB
read writ
221 Read 4218 Write
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Atlantis ILIO Introduction
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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
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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
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Atlantis ILIO Optimizes Virtualized XenApp Storage
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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
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Provisioning Time (Hours) Boot Time (Minutes)
Atlantis ILIO for XenApp Performance (6 XenApp Instances)
Before Atlantis ILIO After Atlantis ILIO
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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
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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
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Test Environment, Configuration and Process
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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
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Provisioning and Boot Time
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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
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Storage Consolidation
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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
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Response Time & Density
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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
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Scale Testing of Atlantis ILIO for XenApp
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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
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Summary of Findings
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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.
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Resources & Questions
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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