ict-r
ICT-Research (ICT-R) is an independent community initiative, focused on researching areas in the End-User Computing (EUC) space. These researches vary from hands-on experiences, implementation best practices to performance impacts and so on.
Browser Performance Impact
If you search for browser performance comparisons on the web, their main focus are usually the available features and performance from a physical dedicated machine. But what if the desktop is a virtual one? Is it then worth changing a browser? A browser can make the internet easier,
The performance benefit using BIS-F
In a centralized VDI environment, it is important to ensure the golden image is optimized and in a clean state before distributing to the desktop pool or catalog. One of the tools to clean the golden images is BIS-F which stands for Base Image Scripting Framework.
Impact of sizing RDSH VMs
It’s been more than 10 years since we started to virtualize RDSH-based workloads and over the years the most discussed topic is how to size the RDSH VMs. In an RDSH environment, the CPU will most likely be your first bottleneck. To get the highest user density
Should you use an ad blocker in a VDI context?
Nowadays most websites use all kind of advertisements on their pages. A lot of consumers use plugins to block these advertisements but this not very common in enterprise environments. Should enterprise organizations use an ad blocker in a VDI environment? This research will cover the true performance benefit using an ad blocker in a VDI environment.
Browser Performance Impact
For most companies, advertisements shown on their website are one of the income sources. Those companies reserve space on their website to show ads where the most times from external advertising company. The advertisements are often shown based on your browsing history and geolocation. In most cases, the companies are paid based on the number of views and refers. There are different kinds of ads like banners, pictures, animations, popups and sometimes videos.
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Nutanix hardware setup
The infrastructure in the Nutanix-lab is divided in two 4-node clusters. One cluster is used for the infrastructure and the other cluster is used to run the workloads for testing. On the target cluster, only one host is used to perform tests (the target host), while the other three nodes are used for storage only.
As the name implies, the infrastructure cluster hosts all the infrastructure components such as the AD, databases and Citrix components as well as the Login VSI launcher VMs (to initiate the sessions to the target VMs). The infrastructure cluster consists of NX-3050 nodes with dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 @ 2.60GHz CPUs and 256GB memory. Somewhat older CPUs but good enough to host the infrastructure.
The target cluster is a NX-3060-G5 cluster with nodes that consists two Intel® Xeon® E5-2680 v4 processors with 14 cores each, totaling to 56 hyperthreading cores. The nodes are equipped with 512 Gigabytes of internal memory.
In a Nutanix Hyperconverged infrastructure there will be a Controller VM running on each node in the cluster. The Nutanix Controller VM enables the pooling of local storage from all nodes in the cluster. When the hypervisor running on the nodes is VMware vSphere, this pool of storage is presented by NFS to the hosts. As mentioned, when testing for ICT-R, the Nutanix controller VM is turned off on the target-host. When the Nutanix CVM is powered off, the storage path will be redirected to one of the other CVMs over the 10 Gbe network over NFS.
Citrix Optimizer version 2 – Breakdown
Last year we covered the performance results of the Citrix Optimizer (CTXO) version 2 Beta on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. The final version of Citrix Optimizer (CTXO) version 2 was released on December 17th 2018. In this post we’ll present a more in-depth analysis of this version of CTXO
Impact of MSIX packaged applications in a virtual desktop
When delivering a virtual desktop environment, it’s not about the desktop itself, it is all about the applications. There are different packaging and distribution solutions to ensure the applications are delivered to the users. Microsoft is investing in a new packaging format called MSIX
Citrix Optimizer version 2 – Windows 10 1809
Recently, there has been considerable interest in the field of image optimization. One of the most commonly used tools is the Citrix Optimizer (CTXO). CTXO is a free to use image optimization tool from Citrix for VDI and SBC environment. CTXO uses various templates for instructions of what to do
Office 2019 Performance Impact
Microsoft Office is by far the most used productivity suite used by enterprises around the world. According to the latest #VDILIKEAPRO State of the Union survey, enterprises are using Office 2016 with an adoption of 30%. Office 2013 is not far behind with 25% and Office 2010
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Citrix VDA versions breakdown, a giant leap forward
With each iteration of the Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) software Citrix always treats us to new features and functionalities. For the Current Releases (CR) Citrix is constantly adding new features and functionalities while also improving the performance of the HDX protocol itself. This should, in theory, result in a better user experience, coupled with a higher user density and less strain on the system.
The Long Term Service Release (LTSR) program provides stability and long-term support for XenApp and XenDesktop releases. XenApp and XenDesktop LTSRs are currently available for Versions 7.6 and 7.15. Cumulative Update 3 (CU3) is the most recent update to the 7.15 LTSR.
Version 7 1808.2 is the first version to use not only the new product naming but also the new version naming scheme. For the sake of clarity, we will refer to Virtual Apps and Desktops for all product versions in this post.
In this research we will focus on the lasted latest three CRs from that list and compare them to the lasted latest two cumulative updates for 7.15 LTSR which at the time of writing are CU2 and CU3.
Configuration and infrastructure
As always, the tests were conducted by the standard testing methodology, an in-depth look into the methodology can be found here.
The tests were configured to use non-persistent desktops delivered using Citrix Virtual Desktops (MCS) running Microsoft Windows 10 build 1809 and are configured with 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM. Both Windows and Office are fully patched. Windows Defender was disabled, as this may influence the metrics and result in unreliable data. The image was fully optimized with Citrix Optimizer version 2 with the Citrix supplied ‘Windows 10 1809’ template.
All Current Release VDA versions show an overall improvement in scalability of the environment to both of the LTSR versions, but from 1808.2 onward the improvement is massive. An improvement of over 30% is really exceptional and our interpretation is that Citrix worked very hard to minimize the footprint of the VDA’s in the latest versions.
Because with most workloads the CPU usage is the main bottleneck, the CPU usage results are in line with the previously listed VSImax results
To get an idea of the user experience from a users perspective we use the tool Remote Display Analyzer to collect data from the protocol. This data is captured for each individual user but it’s important to take into account that different users cannot be compared because the duration of the Login VSI workload is different for each user. Therefore the results published are from a single user, being the first user that is active..
Within the HDX protocol, the metric framerate is reported and collected. The metric framerate is called FPS or Frames per second. In general the greater the FPS value is, the smoother the user experience will appear.
Normally we would rate a low FPS count as disadvantageous because a higher FPS count would result in a better and smoother user experience. In the multimedia section of the workload, the FPS count increases in order to deal effectively with the increased screen output. Here we can see that in the 44, 46 and 48-minute marks during the workload we can see a bump in the FPS for version 1808.2.
At this section of the workload is where the multimedia content is played, that is where the newer VDA versions really start to shine and show the benefit of all the improvements into the protocol that Citrix has created.
The newer caching algorithms for the newer VDA’s result in a lower FPS and have a huge impact on text-based workloads like in the first part of the Login VSI workload. By caching the screen updates this enables the reuse of frequently-used images. Because these screen updates are cached locally by the VDA they don’t need to be transmitted and will result in a lower FPS.
In order to render the frames sent to the endpoint, the VDA’s will require computing power. We can measure the impact of the computing power required with the ‘Average CPU for Encoding’ metric from Remote Display Analyzer.
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