Thanks for the info Webster, this is exactly the kind of feedback I was after. It's funny you mention the WI vs. NetScaler argument because we've gone back and forth as well. We currently use an older pair of NetScalers to load balance client connections to our Web Interface servers. We started looking migrating WI to the NetScalers prior to XenApp 6.5 planning and the biggest complaint was the apparent removal of pass thru authentication support. In the end our management liked the idea of using the NetScalers to support the function and reducing our overall Windows Server count. During our High Level Design discussions for XenApp 6.5 we touched back on this topic and that's when discussions of deploying StoreFront started coming up but the engineer assisting with our design recommended either NetScaler or Web Interface. Since this project is not likely to ramp up until May/June, our Citrix Engineer is holding out for the possibility of deploying Cloud Gateway. I asked if Cloud Gateway was not an option which direction he would go and he's now leaning back towards deploying Web Interface servers.
In regards to all of your questions about PVS, we have not gone through the low-level design considerations yet, so I don't have all of the information. My only question is if any of these questions, outside of the obvious storage related questions, have a significant impact on underlying hardware design. Or, do you see any glaring problems with the hardware being proposed? **· **Will DHCP be used? Yes**** **· **Will PXE be used? **· **Will TFTP be used?**** **· **Will VLANs be needed? Yes**** **· **Will the PVS SQL database be created ahead of time? It is possible **· **Will an Active Directory (AD) service account be used for PVS? Preferably**** **· **How will all the necessary permissions be handled when using an AD service account? I don't have that level of detail **· **How many physical sites will need PVS servers? 2 physical sites. **· **How much bandwidth is available between sites? 300mb **· **How many PVS servers will be needed? Initial design called for 2 PVS server per site. We decided to deploy them as VMs and scale out to additional PVS servers if necessary. **· **How much and what type of disk storage space will be needed? Each host will have 1205GB FusionIO Cards. IO and capacity should not be an issue. **· **How will the virtual disks (vDisks) be replicated between the PVS servers? I do not have that detail at this time. We've discussed simple methods such as copying via script as well as leveraging DFS. I don't believe we had entertained multi-homing any of the servers but I definitely appreciate the word of caution. Glad to see Nick is doing well for himself. He was with Citrix Consulting Services when we migrated from Metaframe 3.0 to Presentation Server 4.5. He spent a lot of time onsite with us. I can't thank you enough for the feedback. I'll start pouring through information you linked and pass it along to my colleagues. - Sean On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Webster <webs...@carlwebster.com> wrote: > “Web Interface will be migrated to NetScaler Appliances” – I wouldn’t do > that if I were you. That is not as useful a feature as you might hope it > to be. I just asked 3 NetScaler gurus and they all said the same thing: > the only thing using WI on NS buys you is fewer Windows servers. Plus WI > is a dead product, though still extremely more useful than its replacement > whose name I can’t type out of shame for Citrix releasing such a pathetic > product on the market.**** > > ** ** > > You need to read all the Project Virtual Reality Check whitepapers.**** > > ** ** > > http://www.projectvrc.com/**** > > ** ** > > On the PVS side:**** > > ** ** > > **· **Will DHCP be used?**** > > **· **Will PXE be used?**** > > **· **Will TFTP be used?**** > > **· **Will VLANs be needed?**** > > **· **Will the PVS SQL database be created ahead of time?**** > > **· **Will an Active Directory (AD) service account be used for > PVS?**** > > **· **How will all the necessary permissions be handled when > using an AD service account?**** > > **· **How many physical sites will need PVS servers?**** > > **· **How much bandwidth is available between sites?**** > > **· **How many PVS servers will be needed?**** > > **· **How much and what type of disk storage space will be needed? > **** > > **· **How will the virtual disks (vDisks) be replicated between > the PVS servers?**** > > And finally, how do you make *everything* listed above Highly Available?** > ** > > ** ** > > In my personal opinion, and what many if not all my CTP friends do, local > storage for PVS is 1,000,000,000% better than using any type of non-local > storage. I do not know of one Citrix consultant who now recommends using > non-local storage for the vDisks for PVS. The first option should always > be local storage but that is not always viable.**** > > ** ** > > Other things:**** > > ** ** > > Do NOT multi-home any XenApp server**** > > Do NOT multi-home any PVS server (there is no longer ANY valid reason to > segregate management and streaming traffic on a PVS host to different > NICs. Doing so causes more problems than you can imagine.)**** > > ** ** > > Make sure you read all of Nick Rintalan’s articles he has on PVS (and any > other subject).**** > > ** ** > > > http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=nick%20rintalan%20citrix%20blog&oq=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43148975,d.aWc&fp=632744ecf4f1ca02&biw=1920&bih=1049&pf=p&pdl=300 > **** > > ** ** > > Thanks**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Webster**** > > ** ** > > *From:* Sean Martin [mailto:seanmarti...@gmail.com] > *Sent:* Thursday, February 28, 2013 10:58 AM > > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Vmware Design for XenApp 6.5 w/PVS**** > > ** ** > > Hello everyone, **** > > **** > > Let me start first by apologize for the length of this message. In my > pursuit of providing all of the relevant information I fully expect for > this to be a bit long winded. **** > > **** > > We're in the final planning stages of a migration from a purely physical > XenApp 5 on Windows 2003 environment to a virtualized XenApp 6.5 with > Provisioning Services environment on ESXi 5.0. I was hoping I could toss > out our initial design and gather some feedback. **** > > **** > > Our current environment consists of a single farm, two sites, and just > under 200 physical servers. That includes the SQL server, data collectors, > existing Web Interface servers, licensing server and all of the > presentation servers. We currently support 12 application silos. The > purpose of each silo varies from application compatibility issues, business > unit requirements, performance requirements, etc. At our peak, we support > approximately 1400 concurrent sessions. This is the number we've used to > design our future environment. **** > > **** > > The new environment will consist of a dedicated vSphere Cluster for the > XenApp servers (using provisioning services). Other supporting services > (SQL Server, zone data collectors, licensing server, etc.) will be > supported in a general vSphere cluster. Web Interface will be migrated to > NetScaler Appliances. We will also be deploying AppSense Environment > Manager and using AppDNA to validate application compatibility.**** > > **** > > Anyway, my specific responsibility is to forcast the infrastructure > requirements and work directly with our Citrix Admins. I used the following > article as the primary reference material for starting our design. We > decided to plan conservatively and base our consolidation ratios with a 20 > users per guest target. The host config I've decided on are Dell PowerEdge > R820s with Quad E5-4640 2.4GHz 8 core procs and 384GB RAM. Using the > recommendation of 4vCPUs per guest we can support 16VMs per host which > equates to 320 users per host. 5 hosts will allow us to support a peak of > 1600 concurrent user sessions. We will purchase 6 hosts to maintain our N+1 > cluster design standards. I dediced to bump the RAM per host considerably > to allow for increased guest allocation. We support over 200 published > applications in our environment, which are distributed amongst physical > server silos currently. One of our goals with PVS is to consolidate the > applications into as few images as possible si we want to certain we have > the hardware resources to support the guests. Each host will include a > FusionIO IO Drive to support maximum IO requirements and eliminate IO > contention on our SAN during large scale provisioning. All of our hosts > leverage infiniband with 80Gbps throughput for ethernet and native FC > connectivity.**** > > **** > > > http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/01/07/whats-the-optimal-xenapp-6-5-vm-configuration/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CitrixBlogs+%28Citrix+Blogs%29 > **** > > So after reading all of that I feel like I'm bragging. However, I have a > fundemental concern because even though we are being very conservative and > are likely procuring more resources than necessary, I have no reliable > means of validating the capabilities of this proposed environment vs. our > current workloads. My experience with Vmware tells me that even though the > aforementioned article suggests a 4 vCPU per guest configuration, we'll > likely start with a single vCPU configuration and do our best at initial > scalability testing while keeping an eye on CPU waits. Should we find > guests perform optimally with few vCPUs than that will just increase our > consolidation ratios.**** > > I'm hoping some of you out there with a lot of XenApp experience (Webster, > James, etc.:) ) can either point out any major gaps in the initial hardware > design or hopefully validate that we're more than likely over provisioning > hardware resources. **** > > - Sean**** > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin**** > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
