XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 On VSAN 6.5 All-Flash

XenApp and XenDesktop 7.
12 on
vSAN 6.5 All-Flash
Primera Publicación: 01-25-2017
Última Actualización: 03-26-2018
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XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 on vSAN 6.5 All-Flash
Índice
1. Executive Summary
1.1.Business Case
1.2.Key Results
2. Introduction
2.1.Scope
2.2.Audience
3. Technology Overview
3.1.VMware vSphere 6.5
3.2.VMware vSAN 6.5
3.3.Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12
3.4.Citrix Provisioning Services
3.5.Citrix Machine Creation Services
3.6.VMware App Volumes 2.11
4. Solution Configuration
4.1.Architecture Diagram
4.2.Hardware Resources
4.3.Software Resources
4.4.Virtual Machine Test Image Build
4.5.Network Configuration
4.6.vSAN Configuration
4.7.VMware Cluster Configuration
4.8.VMware ESXi Server: Storage Controller Mode
4.9.Desktop Provisioning Mechanism
5. Solution Validation
5.1.Testing Overview
5.2.Testing Tools
5.3.PVS XenDesktop with Natively Installed Application
5.4.MCS XenDesktop with AppStack
5.5.PVS XenApp with Windows Server
5.6.MCS XenApp with Windows Server
6. Best Practices
6.1.AppStack Storage Policy
6.2.vSAN Sizing
7. Recommendation
7.1.Recommendation
8. Conclusion
8.1.Conclusion
9. Reference
9.1.Reference
10. About the Author
10.1.Author
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1. Executive Summary
This is the executive summary of the solution RA.
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1.1 Business Case
Business Case
Customers today wanting to deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure on all-flash require a cost-
effective, highly scalable, and an easy-to-manage solution. Applications need to be refreshed and
published at will and should not require multiple levels of IT administration. Most importantly, the
infrastructure itself must be able to scale with minimal cost impact yet still provide enterprise-class
performance.
All-flash storage products have traditionally been regarded as too expensive. VMware vSAN™ changes
this by supporting all-flash configurations with extreme performance and radically simple
management at a cost that is lower than many competing solutions.
This solution demonstrates the performance of virtual desktops enabled by vSAN 6.5 all-flash with
Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12, and VMware vSphere® 6.5.
Through extensive tests, we provide an optimal configuration for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
deployments including various provisioning methods. Using Login VSI, we validate the performance to
ensure the optimal configuration.
1.2 Key Results
Key Results
Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI)

VSImax v4.1:
Knowledge Worker workload
Not reached
1,000* PVS XenDesktops, 100 percent
concurrency

VSImax v4.1:
Not reached
1,000* MCS Desktops with VMware App
Volumes™, 100 percent concurrency

VSImax v4.1:
Not reached
1,000* sessions PVS XenApp, 100 percent
concurrency
VSImax v4.1: Login VSI Knowledge Worker workload

Not reached 1,000* sessions MCS XenApp, 100 percent
concurrency
Outstanding Performance with Substantial Space Saving
• Up to 80 percent space saving by vSAN deduplication and compression, erasure coding.

• Excellent user experience characteristics, even with diverse use cases and burst-heavy
workloads
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Real-time Application Delivery and Management
• Provision, deliver, update, and retire applications in real time at scale

• Dynamically attach applications to users, groups, or devices
Ease of VDI management
• Simplified storage configuration and provisioning

• Tight integration with other vSphere features (high availability, VMware vSphere Distributed
Resource Scheduler™, and others)
* Workloads push the limits of cost-effective hardware, particularly CPUs
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2. Introduction
This document is the reference architecture of VDI deployments, which is enabled by vSAN 6.5 all-
flash, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12, and VMware vSphere 6.5.
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2.1 Scope
Scope
This reference architecture:
• Demonstrates the storage performance of VDI deployments using vSAN 6.5 all-flash with Citrix
XenApp and XenDesktop.
• Proves that vSAN with space efficiency features enabled can easily support sustainable
workloads with minimal resource overhead and impact on desktop application performance.
• Validates that Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 with App Volumes 2.11 works well with vSAN
to manage desktops and applications.
2.2 Audience
Audience
This reference architecture is intended for customers—IT architects, consultants, and administrators—
involved in the early phases of planning, design, and deployment of VDI solutions running on all-flash
vSAN. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the concepts and operations of Citrix XenApp and
XenDesktop technologies and VMware vSphere products.
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3. Technology Overview
This section provides an overview of the technologies that are used in this solution.
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3.1 VMware vSphere 6.5
VMware vSphere 6.5

VMware vSphere is the industry-leading virtualization platform for building cloud infrastructures. It
enables users to run business-critical applications with confidence and respond quickly to business
needs. vSphere accelerates the shift to cloud computing for existing data centers and underpins
compatible public cloud offerings, forming the foundation for the industry’s best cloud model.
VMware vSphere 6.5 accelerates customer transition to digital transformation and cloud computing by
addressing key challenges:
• Environments growing increasingly complex

• Growing IT security threads
• The need to support both existing and new applications and services
3.2 VMware vSAN 6.5
VMware vSAN 6.5

VMware vSAN is VMware’s software-defined storage solution for hyperconverged infrastructure, a
software-driven architecture that delivers tightly integrated compute, networking, and shared storage
from virtualized x86 servers.
• vSAN 6.5 delivers new capabilities that further help customers respond faster to dynamic
business needs across a broader set of workloads while lowering total cost of ownership of your
IT infrastructure. The most significant new capabilities and updates include:
• License required: support all-flash in all vSAN editions providing greater choice and flexibility to
deploy all-flash solutions for any workload.
• 2-node direct connect: minimize the upfront cost of deployment in remote sites by directly
connecting two vSphere servers together using simple crossover cables.
• Full-featured PowerCLI: improve automation with a complete set of PowerCLI cmdlets.
All-Flash Architecture
All-flash vSAN aims at delivering extremely high IOPS with predictable low latencies. In an all-flash
architecture, two different grades of flash devices are commonly used: lower capacity and higher
endurance devices for the cache layer; more cost-effective, higher capacity, and lower endurance
devices for the capacity layer. Writes are performed at the cache layer and then destaged to the
capacity layer, only as needed. This helps extend the usable life of lower endurance flash devices in the
capacity layer and lower the overall cost of the solution.
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Figure 1. vSAN All-Flash Datastore
Deduplication and Compression

Near-line deduplication and compression happens during destaging from the caching tier to the
capacity tier. Deduplication and compression is a cluster-wide setting that is disabled by default and
can be enabled using a simple drop-down menu. The deduplication algorithm utilizes a 4K-fixed block
size and is performed within each disk group. In other words, redundant copies of a block within the
same disk group are reduced to one copy, but redundant blocks across multiple disk groups are not
deduplicated. Bigger disk groups might result in a higher deduplication ratio. The blocks are
compressed after they are deduplicated.
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Figure 2. Deduplication for Space Efficiency
Erasure Coding
Erasure coding provides the same levels of redundancy as mirroring, but with a reduced capacity
requirement. In general, erasure coding is a method of taking data, breaking it into multiple pieces and
spreading it across multiple devices, while adding parity data so it may be recreated in the event that
one or more pieces are corrupted or lost.
In vSAN, two modes of erasure coding are supported:
• RAID 5 in 3+1 configuration, which means 3 data blocks and 1 parity block per stripe.
• RAID 6 in 4+2 configuration, which means 4 data blocks and 2 parity blocks per stripe.
RAID 5
In this case, RAID 5 requires four hosts at a minimum because it uses a 3+1 logic. With four hosts, one
can fail without data loss. This results in a significant reduction of required disk capacity. Normally, a
20GB disk would require 40GB of disk capacity in a mirrored protection, but in the case of RAID 5, the
requirement is only around 27GB.
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Figure 3. RAID 5 Data and Parity Placement
RAID 6
With RAID 6, two host failures can be tolerated the same as RAID 1 protection. In the RAID 1 scenario
for a 20GB disk, the required disk capacity would be 60GB. However, the required disk capacity is 30
GB with RAID 6. Note that the parity is distributed across all hosts and there is no dedicated parity
host. A 4+2 configuration is used in RAID 6, which means that at least six hosts are required in this
configuration.
Figure 4. RAID 6 Data and Parity Placement
Space efficiency features (including deduplication, compression, and erasure coding) work together to
provide up to 10x reduction in dataset size.
Client Cache
vSAN has a small in-memory read cache. Small in this case means 0.4 percent of a host’s memory
capacity up to a max of 1GB. Note that this in-memory cache is a client side cache, meaning that the
blocks of a VM are cached on the host where the VM is located. This feature is enabled by default.
3.3 Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12
Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12

Citrix provides a complete virtual app and desktop solution to meet customers’ needs from a single,
easy-to-deploy platform. Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 integrates Citrix XenApp application
delivery technologies and XenDesktop desktop virtualization technologies into a single architecture
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and management experience. This new architecture unifies both management and delivery
components to enable a scalable, simple, efficient, and manageable solution for delivering Windows
applications and desktops as secure mobile services to users anywhere on any device.
Figure 5. XenDesktop 7.12 Architecture Components
The XenDesktop 7.12 architecture includes the following components:
• Citrix Director—Director is a web-based tool that enables IT support and helps desk teams to
monitor an environment, troubleshoot issues before they become system-critical, and performs
support tasks for end users.
• Citrix Receiver—Installed on user devices, Citrix Receiver provides users with quick, secure, self-
service access to documents, applications, and desktops from any of the user’s devices
including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Receiver provides on-demand access to Windows,
web, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
• Citrix StoreFront—StoreFront provides authentication and resource delivery services for Citrix
Receiver. It enables centralized control of resources and provides users with on-demand, self-
service access to their desktops and applications.
• Citrix Studio—Studio is the management console that enables you to configure and manage
your deployment, eliminating the need for separate consoles for managing delivery of
applications and desktops. Studio provides various wizards to guide you through the process of
setting up your environment, creating your workloads to host applications and desktops, and
assigning applications and desktops to users.
• Delivery Controller—Installed on servers in the data center, Delivery Controller consists of
services that communicate with the hypervisor to distribute applications and desktops,
authenticate and manage user access, and broker connections between users and their virtual
desktops and applications. Delivery Controller manages the state of the desktops, starting and
stopping them based on demand and administrative configuration. In some editions, the
controller enables you to install profile management to manage user personalization settings in
virtualized or physical Windows environments.
• License Server—License server assigns a user or device license to the XenDesktop environment.
Install License Server along with other Citrix XenDesktop components or on a separate virtual
or physical machine.
• Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA)—Installed on server or workstation operating systems, VDA
enables connections for desktops and applications. For remote PC access, install the VDA on
the office PC.
• Database—Database stores all the XenDesktop site configuration and session information.
Microsoft SQL server is required as a database server.
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• Server OS machines—Virtual machines or physical machines, based on the Windows Server

operating system, used for delivering applications or hosted shared desktops (HSDs) to users.
• Desktop OS machines—Virtual or physical machines, based on the Windows Desktop operating
system, deliver personalized desktops to users or applications from desktop operating systems.
3.4 Citrix Provisioning Services
Citrix Provisioning Services

Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) takes a different approach from traditional desktop imaging
solutions by fundamentally changing the relationship between hardware and software that runs on it.
By streaming a single shared disk image (vDisk) instead of copying images to individual machines, PVS
lets organizations reduce the number of disk images that they manage. Because the number of
machines continues to grow, PVS provides the efficiency of centralized management with the benefits
of distributed processing.
Because machines stream disk data dynamically in real time from a single shared image, machine
image consistency is ensured. In addition, large pools of machines can completely change their
configuration, applications, and even the operating system during a reboot operation.
3.5 Citrix Machine Creation Services
Citrix Machine Creation Services

Machine Creation Services (MCS) is a provisioning mechanism that is integrated with the XenDesktop
management interface, Citrix Studio, to provision, manage, and decommission desktops throughout
the desktop lifecycle from a centralized point of management.
MCS enables the management of several types of machines within a catalog in Citrix Studio. Desktop
customization is persistent for machines that use the Personal vDisk (PvDisk or PvD) feature, while
non-Personal vDisk machines are appropriate if desktop changes are discarded when the user logs off.
Desktops provisioned using MCS share a common base image within a catalog. Because of this, the
base image is typically accessed with sufficient frequency to naturally use the VMware vSAN cache,
where frequently accessed data is promoted to flash drives to provide optimal I/O response time with
fewer physical disks.
3.6 VMware App Volumes 2.11
VMware App Volumes 2.11

VMware App Volumes 2.11 is an integrated and unified application delivery and end-user
management system for VDI and virtual environments:
• Quickly provision applications at scale.

• Dynamically attach applications to users, groups, or devices, even when users are logged into
their desktop.
• Provision, deliver, update, and retire applications in real time.
• Provide a user-writable volume allowing users to install applications that follow them across
desktops.
App Volumes makes it easy to deliver, update, manage, and monitor applications and users across VDI
and published application environments. It uniquely provides applications and user environment
settings to desktop and published application environments and reduces management costs by
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efficiently delivering applications from one virtual disk to many desktops or published application
servers. Provisioning applications requires no packaging, no modification, and no streaming.
• App Volumes works by binding applications and data into specialized virtual containers called
AppStacks, which are attached to each Windows user session at login or reboot, ensuring the
most current applications and data are delivered to the user.
• App Volumes integrates a simple agent-server-database architecture into an existing VDI
deployment. Centralized management servers are configured to connect to deploy virtual
desktops that run an App Volumes Agent. An administrator can grant application access to
shared storage volumes for users or virtual machines or both.
Figure 6. App Volumes High-Level Architecture
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4. Solution Configuration
This section introduces the resources and configurations for the solution including.
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4.1 Architecture Diagram
Architecture Diagram
Figure 7 shows the solution architectural design.
Figure 7. vSphere Cluster Design
4.2 Hardware Resources
Hardware Resources
Table 2 shows two vSAN Clusters used in the environment.
• One 8-node all-flash vSAN Cluster was deployed to support 1,000 virtual desktops.
• One 4-node hybrid vSAN Management Cluster was deployed to support infrastructure,
management, and Login VSI launcher virtual machines used for the scalability testing.
Table 2. Server Profile
Property Specification
Server 8 x rack server
2 sockets, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU of 3 GHz 10-

CPU
core
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Property Specification
RAM 512GB
Network adapter 2 x Intel 10 Gigabit SFI/SFP
Storage adapter 2 x 12Gbps SAS PCI-Express
SSD: 2 x 800GB class-D 6Gbps SAS drive as

cache SSD
Disks
SSD: 8 x 400GB class-D 6Gbps SAS drive as
capacity SSD
Note: The recommendation cache value is updated on Designing vSAN Disk Groups—All-flash Cache
Ratio Update and you can adjust it based on your real environment requirements. The high cache
setting in this solution is unnecessary in your environment.
4.3 Software Resources
Software Resources
Table 3 shows software resources used in this solution and Table 4 lists the system configurations for
different server roles.
Table 3. Software Resources
Software Version Purpose
ESXi Cluster to host virtual

machines and provide vSAN
Cluster. VMware vCenter
VMware vCenter and ESXi 6.5 Server provides a centralized
platform for managing
VMware vSphere
environments.
Software-defined storage
VMware vSAN 6.5 solution for a hyperconverged
infrastructure.
Provides a complete virtual

app and desktop solution to
meet customers’ needs from a
single, easy-to-deploy
Citrix XenApp and
7.12 platform. The Citrix Hotfix for
XenDesktop
XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12
MCS is valid for all vSAN 6.x
releases.
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Software Version Purpose
Allows customers to have a

single instance image
Citrix Provisioning Service 7.12
management of XenApp and
XenDesktop VMs.
An integrated and unified

application delivery and end-
VMware App Volumes 2.11
user management system for
VDI and virtual environments.
Table 4. System Configuration
Infrastructure
vCPU RAM (GB) Storage (GB) OS
VM Role
Domain
Windows Server
Controller and 2 8 100
2012 R2 64-bit
DNS)
Table 5 lists the configuration details of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop.
Table 5. Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Configuration
Infrastructure
Quantity vCPU RAM (GB) Storage (GB) OS
VM Role
Windows
XenDesktop
2 4 8 100 Server 2012
Controllers
R2 64-bit
Windows
StoreFront
2 4 4 100 Server 2012
Servers
R2 64-bit
Windows
License
1 4 4 100 Server 2012
Server
R2 64-bit
Windows
100 (OS) 250
PVS Servers 2 4 16 Server 2012
(Store)
R2 64-bit
4.4 Virtual Machine Test Image Build
Virtual Machine Test Image Build

Two different virtual machine images were used to provision desktop sessions in the Citrix
environment, one for desktop image and one for Server OS image. Table 6 lists the virtual machine test
images. We used optimization tools according to VMware OS Optimization Tool and the Citrix
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XenDesktop Windows 7 Optimization Guide. The test image configurations were the same for MCS
and PVS except that the PVS template installed a PVS target device to create the vDisk image.
Table 6. Virtual Machine Test Images
Attribute login vsi XenDesktop Image Login VSI XenAPP IMAGE
Windows 7 Enterprise SP1

Desktop OS Windows 2012 R2 (64-bit)
(32-bit)
VMware Virtual Hardware VMware Virtual Hardware

Hardware
version 11 version 11
CPU 2 8
Memory 2,048MB 24,576MB
Memory reserved 0MB 0MB
Video RAM 35MB 35MB
3D graphics off off
NICs 1 1
Virtual network adapter 1 VMXNet3 Adapter VMXNet3 Adapter
Virtual SCSI controller 0 VMware Paravirtual VMware Paravirtual
Virtual disk—VMDK 1 30GB 100GB
Virtual disk—VMDK 2 10GB 40GB
Adobe Acrobat 11 Adobe Acrobat 11

Adobe Flash Player 16 Adobe Flash Player 16
Doro PDF 1.82 Doro PDF 1.82
Applications
FreeMind FreeMind
Internet Explorer 11 Internet Explorer 11
Microsoft Office 2010 Microsoft Office 2010
VMware Tools™ 10.0.6.3560309 10.0.6.3560309
Citrix VDA 7.12 7.12
4.5 Network Configuration
Network Configuration
A VMware vSphere Distributed Switch™ (VDS) acts as a single virtual switch across all associated hosts
in the data cluster. This setup allows virtual machines to maintain a consistent network configuration
as they migrate across multiple hosts.
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Figure 8. vSphere Distributed Switch
Network I/O control was enabled for the distributed switch. The following settings and share values
were applied on the resource allocation as shown in Table 7.
Table 7. Resource Allocations for Network Resources in vSphere Distributed Switch
Network Resource
Host Limit (Mbps) Shares
Pool
vSphere vMotion 8000Mbit/s Low 25
Management Unlimited Normal 50
Virtual machines Unlimited High 100
vSAN traffic Unlimited Normal 50
4.6 vSAN Configuration
vSAN Configuration
Each ESXi server had the same configuration of two disk groups, each consisting of one 800GB cache-
tier SSD and four 400GB capacity-tier SSDs.
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vSAN Storage Policy

vSAN can set availability, capacity, and performance policies per virtual machine if the virtual
machines are deployed on the vSAN datastore. Citrix uses the default storage policy. We need to
modify the default storage policy to enable or disable certain vSAN features. Table 8 shows the
storage policy setting of RAID 5.
Table 8. vSAN Storage Settings with RAID 5
Storage Capability Setting
Number of FTT 1
Number of disk stripes per object 1
Flash read cache reservation 0%
Object space reservation 0%
Failure tolerance method RAID 5 (erasure coding)—capacity
Several vSAN features were used in this solution including deduplication and compression, software
checksum, and Erasure Coding (RAID 5).
App Volumes Setting

We tested all the applications in a single AppStack except that IE was installed on the OS by default on
MCS XenDesktop.
Table 9. App Volumes-AppStack Configuration
ATTRIBUTE SPECIFICATION
[vsanDatastore] cloudvolumes/apps/
Location
newapp.vmdk (6,536 MB)
[vsanDatastore] cloudvolumes/
Template
apps_templates/template.vmdk (2.11.0)
Assignments 1,000
Attachments 1,000
Adobe_Flash_Player_16_ActiveX,
Adobe_Reader_XI_-11.0.10, Doro_1.82,
Applications
FreeMind,
Microsoft_Office_Professional_Plus_2010)
4.7 VMware Cluster Configuration
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VMware Cluster Configuration

Table 10 lists the VMware Cluster configuration. We should enable VMware vSphere High Availability
(vSphere HA) and DRS features in VMware Cluster.
Table 10. ESXi Cluster Configuration
Property Setting Default Revised
vSphere HA – Enabled
Cluster features
DRS – Enabled
4.8 VMware ESXi Server: Storage Controller Mode
VMware ESXi Server: Storage Controller Mode

The storage controller supports both pass-through and RAID mode. It is recommended to use
controllers that support the pass-through mode with vSAN to lower complexity and ensure
performance.
4.9 Desktop Provisioning Mechanism
Desktop Provisioning Mechanism

Overview
This solution was validated using PVS and MCS virtual desktops, both random and static (with PvD), to
observe any performance and scaling differences between various provisioning methods.
PVS Desktops
Provisioning Services streaming technology allows computers to be provisioned and re-provisioned in
real-time from a single shared-disk image.
vDisks can exist on a Provisioning Server, file share, or in larger deployments, on a storage system that
the Provisioning Server can communicate with (iSCSI, SAN, NAS, and CIFS). vDisks can be assigned to
a single target device as Private Image Mode, or to multiple target devices as Standard Image Mode.
When a target device is turned on, it is set to boot from the network and to communicate with a
Provisioning Server:
1. Unlike the thin-client technology, processing takes place on the target device.
2. The target device downloads the boot file from a Provisioning Server, and then the target
device boots.
3. Based on the device boot configuration settings, the appropriate vDisk is located and mounted
on the Provisioning Server.
The software on that vDisk is streamed to the target device as needed. To the target device, it appears
like a regular hard drive to the system. Figure 9 shows the process of booting a target device.
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Figure 9. Boot Process of a PVS Target Device
MCS Desktops
Citrix XenDesktop 7.12 with MCS supports the use of linked clones to quickly provision virtual
desktops.
In a linked clone desktop, the operating system reads all the common data from the read-only base
disk, and creates the unique data on the linked clone. Figure 10 shows a logical representation of this
relationship.
Figure 10. Logical Representation of an MCS-base Disk and Linked Clone
Note: The Citrix Hotfix for XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 MCS must be applied on MCS desktops. See
Binary fix for Catalog Deletion Error on vSAN 6.2 for detailed information.
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5. Solution Validation
The solution validates the VDI performance with vSAN 6.5 all-flash, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp
7.12, and VMware vSphere 6.5.
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5.1 Testing Overview
Testing Overview
The solution validates the VDI performance with vSAN 6.5 all-flash, Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp
7.12, and VMware vSphere 6.5.
We deployed Windows 7 virtual desktops for both PVS and MCS, and recorded the performance and
resource utilization differences for these two provisioning methods:
• For PVS mode, we used native applications installed on the OS image.

• For MCS mode, we used VMware AppStack to provision and assign the applications.
For XenApp, we used Windows 2012 R2 as the Server OS and validated the performance and resource
utilization for PVS and MCS provisioning methods.
We used Login VSI to load the target environment with simulated user workloads and activities.
Common applications such as Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and Adobe PDF Reader were
utilized during the testing.
Login VSI 4.1 has several different workload templates depending on the type of user to be simulated.
Each workload differs in application operations executed and also in the number of operations
executed simultaneously. The medium-level Knowledge Worker workload was selected for this test
because it was the closest analog to the average desktop user in our customer deployments.
The testing was based on the Login VSI in the benchmark mode, which was a locked-down workload
test based on the Knowledge Worker template. In benchmark mode, if you select one workload, all the
parameters are fixed (read only). This is an accurate way of performing a side-by-side comparison
between VSIMax results in different configurations and platforms.
Note: You might notice the wording of “VSImax was not reached” in some of the test results. This is
because we have more server capacity available for Login VSI. We have previously determined the
number of sessions to run concurrently to achieve optimal results.
5.2 Testing Tools
Testing Tools
We used the following monitoring and benchmark tools in the solution:
• Monitoring tools
◦ vSAN Performance Service
The performance service collects and analyzes performance statistics and displays the data in a
graphical format. vSAN administrators can use the performance charts to manage the workload
and determine the root cause of problems. When the vSAN Performance Service is turned on,
the cluster summary displays an overview of vSAN performance statistics, including IOPS,
throughput, and latency. vSAN administrators can view detailed performance statistics for the
cluster, for each host, disk group, and disk in the vSAN Cluster.
• esxtop
esxtop is a command line tool that can be used to collect data and provide real-time
information about the resource usage of a vSphere environment such as CPU, disk, memory,
and network usage. We measure the ESXi Server performance by this tool.
• Workload testing tool

◦ Login VSI 4.1.5
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Use the Login VSI in Benchmark mode with 20 sessions to measure VDI performance in terms
of Login VSI baseline performance score (also called VSIbase or Login VSI index average score).
The Login VSI baseline performance score is based on the response time reacting to the Login
VSI workloads. A lower Login VSI score is better because it reflects that the desktops can
respond in less time. In the tests, the workload type is ‘Knowledge Worker * 2vCPU’. For various
Login VSI notations, see VSImax.
Monitoring Parameters
We took the following parameters into consideration to measure the testing performance:
• Benchmark VSImax
• CPU memory usage
• vSAN IO latency and IOPS
• Capacity and deduplication ratio
5.3 PVS XenDesktop with Natively Installed Application
PVS XenDesktop with Natively Installed

Applications
Testing Scenarios
In this test, PVS Imaging Wizard was used to create a vDisk image from the master target device, then
a collection of 1,000 streamed Windows 7 VM desktops was provisioned on the vSAN datastore from
the PVS server Console and was added to the machine catalogue from the Delivery Controller. The
applications were installed with OS disk and a deliver group was created for Login VSI benchmark
testing.
The standard vDisk image was configured with cache in device RAM with overflow on the hard disk.
The maximum RAM size was 512 MB.
Testing Results
As shown in Figure 11, there were 1,012GB used space and 1.23TB deduplication and compression
overhead, which was 5 percent of the vSAN datastore capacity. Deduplication and compression ratio
was 4.35x, which was original used space/space used after deduplication and compression. The total
capacity used was 23.29-21.07=2.22TB.
Figure 11. Capacity Information about 1,000 PVS Windows 7 Desktops
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Login VSI Knowlege Worker Results

As shown in Figure 12, the 1,000 Windows 7 PVS desktops passed the Knowledge Worker workload
easily without reaching VSIMax v4.1 at the baseline of 671. This was a stress testing so the peaks were
acceptable while running 1,000 PVS desktops.
Figure 12. VSImax on Login VSI Knowlege Worker Workload, PVS XenDesktop
From the average ESXi CPU usage in Figure 13, the CPU usage increased steadily because the number
of active session increased. The peak average CPU usage was 71 percent.
Figure 13. CPU Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenDesktop
Figure 14 illustrates the average peak memory consumed was 249,814MB (around 244GB). ESXi
memory was 512GB, which was about 48 percent usage. The average kernel memory usage was
29,718MB (around 29GB).
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Figure 14. Memory Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenDesktop
From vSAN Performance Service as shown in Figure 14, peak write IOPS was 5,770 and peak read
IOPS was 6,068. IOPS increased as the number of active sessions increased. vSAN IOPS was low
because Login VSI testing was CPU bound.
Figure 15. vSAN IOPS during Login VSI Knowledge Workload, PVS XenDesktop
As shown in Figure 16, vSAN peak write latency was 0.960ms and peak read latency was 0.491ms.
There was a sharp increase in latency when sessions became active.
Figure 16. vSAN Latency during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenDesktop
5.4 MCS XenDesktop with AppStack
29
MCS XenDesktop with Appstack

Testing Scenarios
In this test, 1,000 MCS random Windows 7 virtual desktops were deployed from the Delivery
Controller in the machine catalog and a delivery group was created. The AppStack was assigned to
those 1,000 desktops.
Testing Results
There were 1.21TB used space for 1,000 desktops with AppStack on vSAN datastore as shown in
Figure 17 and 1.23TB deduplication and compression overhead, which was 5 percent of the vSAN
datastore capacity. Deduplication and compression ratio was 2.43x. The total capacity used was
2.44TB.
Figure 17. Capacity Information about 1,000 MCS XenDesktops with AppStack

As shown in Figure 18, the MCS Windows 7 desktops with AppStack passed the Knowledge Worker
workload without reaching VSIMax v4.1 at the baseline of 1,206 and average of 1,482.
Figure 18. VSImax on Login VSI Knowlege Worker Workload, MCS XenDesktop with
AppStack
30
From the average ESXi CPU usage in Figure 19, the peak average CPU usage was 80 percent during
the Login VSI testing.
Figure 19. CPU Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenDesktop
Figure 20. Memory Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenDesktop
From vSAN Performance Service, IOPS increased nearly steadily as the number of active sessions
increased. Peak read IOPS was 9,540 and peak write IOPS was 6,896 during the Login VSI test.
31
Figure 21. vSAN IOPS during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenDesktop
Figure 22. vSAN Latency during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenDesktop
5.5 PVS XenApp with Windows Server
PVS XenApp with Windows Server

Testing Scenarios
PVS Imaging Wizard was used to create a vDisk image from the master target device Windows 2012
R2 Server, then a collection of 25 streamed Windows 2012 R2 VMs was provisioned on the vSAN
datastore from the PVS server Console and was added to the machine catalog from the Delivery
Controller. The applications were installed with the OS disk and a deliver group was created for Login
VSI benchmark testing.
Testing Results
As shown in Figure 23, there were 895.15GB used space and 1.23TB deduplication and compression
was 2.23x. The ratio was relatively low because only 25 Windows 2012 VMs were deployed for 1,000
sessions. The total capacity used was 2.11TB.
Figure 23. Capacity Information about 25 PVS Windows 2012 VMs

During the testing with 1,000 sessions, VSImax 4.1 was not reached with a baseline score of 566 and
an average of 995. This was a stress testing so the peaks were acceptable while running the 1,000
sessions.
32
Figure 24. VSImax on Login VSI Knowlege Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
During the Login VSI test, CPU usage was high and peak average CPU usage was 90 percent as shown
in Figure 25.
Figure 25. CPU Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
The memory usage increased less than 1 percent during Login VSI tests as shown in Figure 26. Peak
average memory consumed was 75,200MB (around 73GB). The ESXi memory was 512GB, which was
about 14 percent usage. The average kernel memory usage was 29,005MB (around 28GB).
33
Figure 26. Memory Usage during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
From vSAN Performance Service as shown in Figure 27, IOPS increased steadily as the number of
active session increased. Peak write IOPS was 8,896.
Figure 27. vSAN IOPS during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
Figure 28. vSAN Latency during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
5.6 MCS XenApp with Windows Server
34
MCS XenApp with Windows Server

Testing Scenarios
In this test, 25 MCS random Windows 2012 R2 virtual machines were deployed from the Delivery
Controller using the machine catalog wizard and a delivery group was created for the applications.
These virtual machines are server OS that allows multiple users to log on.
Testing Results
Capacity
As shown in Figure 29, there were 1.01TB used space and 1.23TB deduplication and compression
was 1.68x. The ratio was relatively low because only 25 Windows 2012 VMs were deployed for 1,000
sessions. The total capacity used was 2.24TB.
Figure 29. Capacity Information about 25 MCS Windows 2012 R2 VMs

Figure 30 shows that 986 sessions ran successfully. VSImax V4.1 was not reached with the baseline
score of 570 and average of 1,112 for 1,000 sessions.
Note: VSImax is measured by the average VSI response time. When the threshold is not exceeded by
the average VSI response time during the test, VSImax is considered as the maximum amount of users
that have launched. See VSImax for detailed information.
35
Figure 30. VSImax on Login VSI Knowlege Worker Workload, MCS XenApp
From the average ESXi CPU usage as shown in Figure 31, CPU usage increased because the number of
active sessions increased. Peak CPU usage was high, which was about 84 percent. The CPU usage
went down when the sessions logged off.
Figure 31. CPU Usage on Login VSI Knowlege Worker Workload, MCS XenApp
Memory usage increased at the first half hour during Login VSI tests as shown in Figure 32. Peak
average memory consumed was 75,683MB (around 75GB). ESXi total memory was 512GB. The
average kernel memory usage was 28,408MB (around 28GB).
36
Figure 32. Memory Usage on Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenApp
From the backend view of vSAN Performance Service as shown in Figure 33, peak write IOPS was
21,216 and peak read IOPS was 27,540. The IOPS was high from the vSAN backend because vSAN
split the client IOs to several disk IOs.
Figure 33. vSAN IOPS during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, MCS XenApp
Figure 34. vSAN Latency during Login VSI Knowledge Worker Workload, PVS XenApp
37
6. Best Practices
We provided the best practices based on our solution validation.
38
6.1 AppStack Storage Policy
AppStack Storage Policy

When we place AppStack on vSAN datastore, make sure FTT is not less than the FTT value of the
desktop policy because AppStack is shared by users and desktops. Do not set it to be the availability
bottleneck.
6.2 vSAN Sizing
vSAN Sizing
Acceptable performance of a virtual desktop is the ability to complete any desktop operation in a
reasonable amount of time from a user’s perspective. This means the backend storage that supports
the virtual desktop must be able to deliver the data (read or write operation) quickly. Therefore, sizing
storage configuration should meet the IOPS requirements in a reasonable response time. With various
space efficiency features, the required capacity differs. Refer to the vSAN TCO and Sizing Calculator
for the virtual desktop sizing on vSAN.
39
7. Recommendation
We provided the solution recommendation in this section.
40
7.1 Recommendation
Recommendation
For both PVS and MCS, if the user to core ratio (user number/core number per host) value equals or is
less than 6.25, it is recommended to enable deduplication and compression, RAID 5, and software
checksum features to achieve a good balance of performance and cost.
41
8. Conclusion
Check out the solution conclusion in this section.
42
8.1 Conclusion
Conclusion
VMware vSAN is a low-cost and high-performance storage platform for a virtual desktop infrastructure
that is rapidly deployed and easy to manage. Moreover, it is fully integrated into the industry-leading
VMware vSphere Cloud Suite. Using SSDs in all-flash vSAN with space efficiency features offers the
enterprise performance while reducing capacity cost substantially and other Operating Expense
(OPEX) costs such as maintenance by IT as well as power consumption and cooling costs.
Extensive workload and operation tests show that Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop with App Volumes
2.11 on an all-flash vSAN delivers exceptional performance, a consistent end-user experience, and a
resilient architecture, all with a relative low price.
All-flash vSAN provides an easily scalable Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 environment in both
PVS and MCS provisioning methods together with App Volumes 2.11, which provides superior
performance and manageability.
43
9. Reference
Check out the references for additional resources.
44
9.1 Reference
Reference
White Paper
For additional information, see the following white papers:
• VMware vSAN 6.2 Space Efficiency Technologies
Product Documentation
For additional information, see the following product documents:
• vSAN Management
• VMware APP Volumes 2.10
• Citrix XenApp 7.6 Feature Pack 2 Blueprint
• Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop
Other Documentation
For additional information, see the following documents:
• VMware OS Optimization Tool

• Citrix PVS RAM Cache Overflow Sizing
• Citrix XenDesktop Windows 7 Optimization Guide
45
10. About the Author

This section contains the author information.
46
10.1 Author
Author
Sophie Yin, solution architect in the Product Enablement team of the Storage and Availability Business
Unit wrote the original version of this paper. Catherine Xu, technical writer in the Product Enablement
team of the Storage and Availability Business Unit edited this paper to ensure that the contents
conform to the VMware writing style.
47

XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12 On VSAN 6.5 All-Flash

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XenApp and XenDesktop 7.

1.1 Business Case

1.2 Key Results

Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI)

Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI)

Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI)

VSImax v4.1: Login VSI Knowledge Worker workload

Outstanding Performance with Substantial Space Saving

• Up to 80 percent space saving by vSAN deduplication and compression, erasure coding.

Real-time Application Delivery and Management

• Provision, deliver, update, and retire applications in real time at scale

Ease of VDI management

• Simpliﬁed storage conﬁguration and provisioning

* Workloads push the limits of cost-eﬀective hardware, particularly CPUs

3.1 VMware vSphere 6.5

VMware vSphere 6.5

• Environments growing increasingly complex

3.2 VMware vSAN 6.5

VMware vSAN 6.5

Figure 1. vSAN All-Flash Datastore

Deduplication and Compression

Figure 2. Deduplication for Space Eﬃciency

In vSAN, two modes of erasure coding are supported:

Figure 3. RAID 5 Data and Parity Placement

Figure 4. RAID 6 Data and Parity Placement

3.3 Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12

Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12

Figure 5. XenDesktop 7.12 Architecture Components

The XenDesktop 7.12 architecture includes the following components:

• Server OS machines—Virtual machines or physical machines, based on the Windows Server

3.4 Citrix Provisioning Services

Citrix Provisioning Services

3.5 Citrix Machine Creation Services

Citrix Machine Creation Services

3.6 VMware App Volumes 2.11

VMware App Volumes 2.11

• Quickly provision applications at scale.

Figure 6. App Volumes High-Level Architecture

4.1 Architecture Diagram

Figure 7. vSphere Cluster Design

4.2 Hardware Resources

Table 2. Server Proﬁle

Server 8 x rack server

2 sockets, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU of 3 GHz 10-

Network adapter 2 x Intel 10 Gigabit SFI/SFP

Storage adapter 2 x 12Gbps SAS PCI-Express

SSD: 2 x 800GB class-D 6Gbps SAS drive as

4.3 Software Resources

Table 3. Software Resources

Software Version Purpose

ESXi Cluster to host virtual

Provides a complete virtual

Software Version Purpose

Allows customers to have a

An integrated and uniﬁed

Table 4. System Conﬁguration

Table 5 lists the conﬁguration details of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop.

Table 5. Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Conﬁguration

4.4 Virtual Machine Test Image Build

Virtual Machine Test Image Build

Table 6. Virtual Machine Test Images

Attribute login vsi XenDesktop Image Login VSI XenAPP IMAGE

Windows 7 Enterprise SP1