[THIN] Re: Citrix on VMWare

  • From: "Steve Greenberg" <steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 20:25:04 -0700

THose are good reasons for virtualization, but you may also want to to look
at something like First Defense ISR as well, it can provide instant roll
back with a running server without the cost of virtualization
www.leapfrogsoftware.com
 

Steve Greenberg
Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd. suite D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85262
(602) 432-8649
(602) 296-0411 fax
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



 

  _____  

From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Durf
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 8:18 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on VMWare


Soooo...you're saying that pig of a Visual FoxPro based app that  regularly
pegs the processor and that *mumble* client of mine runs isn't going to
benefit by virtualization? o_0

Actually, I jest, partially.  I am in the middle of deploying some Citrix
servers on Microsoft Virtual Server '05, but the major reason is business
continuity, not performance.  The client is willing to take a tradeoff on
hardware and performance vs. recoverability and management for the following
reasons:

- System updates for the app come out fairly often, and the system needs a
rapid rollback strategy
- Client is in the middle of an acquisition phase and needs to be able to
deploy more resources quickly
- Client loves having machines that can be clones, backed up, rolled back,
and versioned according to those needs
- Client is willing to oversubscribe on hardware in order to have
scalability, reliability and redundancy
- Client is planning on having a copy of their VM image taken to a remote
datacenter for disaster recovery purposes

The basic strategy and argument for having app servers on virtual machines
is to overspend on hardware capacity by 20-40% in order to have rapid
failover, fail-back and recovery.   We've demonstrated being able to roll
back to a previous version of the Virtual Hard Disk file via Volume Shadow
Copy in a case where the system becomes compromised by spyware or a bad
application update, and that has become a compelling business case for
virtualization.


On 5/9/05, Ron Oglesby <roglesby@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:roglesby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote: 

Well it depends.

I run a one-off server build on it with low utilization right now. I 
also run my prod WI/CSG on it.

Now I just did a presentation on this at Briforum and the real key is
what your bottleneck is on Phys machines. If you run into virtual
address space limitations on the OS but have very low Proc and mem 
utilization you probably have a real good fit.  Now if you run into
limitations of physical resources, those limitations will show up a
little earlier in a VM environment.

You have to remember the idea, the processor time is being scheduled, 
and while it is a very light overhead it is still an overhead.
Now the next thing I can say is people running into OS limits have great
success, People with crappy apps (Ie lots of ring 0 system calls,
context switches etc) can experience a performance reduction. I had one 
client that with everything set per VMware recommendations and pegging
VMs to single procs still lost 40% of their users per proc when compared
to physical machines. This was a result of the applications being run. 

If you have really well behaved/written apps you can have better
results.

Now, once you get beyond those initial performance things there are
other reasons for deploying Citrix (or any server) on VM architecture, 
but that's another thread.

Ron

Ron Oglesby
Director of Technical Architecture

RapidApp, Chicago
Office: 312 372 7188
Mobile: 815 325 7618
email: roglesby@xxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ] On
Behalf Of msemon@xxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 10:39 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Citrix on VMWare

I am not sure I would put this on your primary production farm. We saw
some
performance issues with a client who had installed on primary production
farm. You might look at secondary silo. Also, check out Ron's book on 
VMWare ESX server which should be in book stores any day.

Mike

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Bermuda Boy phits_right@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 10:52:21 -0300 
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Citrix on VMWare

Hi all,

I was wondering whether anybody had performed the "daunting?" task of
installing any of the Metaframe suite on VMWare? I was thinking of 
putting
CSG and/or the Web Interface server in a virtualized environment.

Your feed back is encouraged :-)

Bermuda Boy

Sean B. McLaughlin esq.

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