[THIN] Re: Hardware for Citrix Servers

  • From: "TSguy92 Lan" <tsguy92@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:48:33 -0800

"I have one 4GB page file, which is the limit on Windows 2003 Standard.
Is the page file being used before the 4 GB of RAM?
Should I add another 4GB page file?  Will it help?"

One question, your first post mentioned that your current 2850's were Quads,
but this last post you mentioned Duals, which are they?

Windows 2003 standard's "limit" so to speak, is only being able to support
4gb of physical RAM. (32bit windows ensures that only 2gb of those 4gb are
available by default for user processes)

The windows GUI actually prevents setting a page file larger than 4096 under
all of the MS 32bit OS versions (except for win2k3 - sp1), but the page file
can actually be set to any size regardless of the OS version using a
registry modification:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/237740  - How to overcome the 4095 mb paging
file size limit in windows.

As others have already suggested though, increasing your pagefile likely
won't do you any good in this case. You generally want to use the above
trick to increase your page file size on servers running "windows
enterprise" with over 4gb of ram (think of beefy sql servers etc..).

A TS server's page file getting up to 3.x gb is not surprising at all
really, even with only 25 active user sessions. On one of our servers here
I've got 33 users active on a server, which currently shows a
3.5gbpagefile. In testing that that system scaled up to just about 46
user connections before session performance started to be affected. For my
case, we're hitting those numbers because this server is supporting some
apps with memory footprints @ 80mb+ (core app starts around 40mb and scales
up), this is a Win2k3 sp2 server, MF 4.0 (3gb Ram, 4gb pagefile) running on
VMware ESX 3.5.

Some suggestions to consider that may help with your performance at a server
by server level:

 - Tscale / Appsense / etc.. - software level boosting of memory session
management, can increase the number of active user sessions per server.
(several vendor solutions claim to do this, I'm not a sales guy, but tscale
and appsense have been around long enough to be solid solutions in this
area)
 - Solid state disks for pagefiles - putting your pagefile on solid state
disks with their fast response times can greatly improve system performance,
it's certainly not without cost, however. SS disks can be spendy, but
supposedly they are coming down in price these days.

All the same, it's all well and good to hope to reach a set number of user
connections per server. But many many many variables can affect the outcome
of what your servers will eventually be able handle under load. Sufficient
testing with your new hardware should at least get you a baseline of the
average user's memory footprint, which can help you determine your user load
per server, at which point you start defining your N+1. I always try and
find a "power user" / "abuser user" to have them put a new system through
it's paces during testing if possible.

HTH

Lan








On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 8:01 AM, Minero, Hector B CIV NSWCDD, K55 <
hector.minero@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Thanks for the replies.
> On my current servers, Dell PowerEdge 2850 Duals, 4 GB RAM, at 25 users
> I can see the page file usage at 3.14 GB.
> I have one 4GB page file, which is the limit on Windows 2003 Standard.
> Is the page file being used before the 4 GB of RAM?
> Should I add another 4GB page file?  Will it help?
>
> _________________________
> Hector Minero
> NSWCDD Code K55
> Ph: 540.653.8859
> Email: hector.minero@xxxxxxxx
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Jez
> Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 3:28 AM
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: Hardware for Citrix Servers
>
>
>  Don't speculate - test it and see what works for your users. You may get
> 75/box, you may only get 30 - it depends on how they use the apps and on
> what their expectations are as much as anything else.
>
> On Feb 15, 2008 9:44 PM, Chad Schneider (IT)
> <Chad.M.Schneider@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I would hope to get 50 users, but with this set of apps., depending on
>
> > usage, I would not COUNT on 50.
> >
> >
> > IE, MS Office 2003, Adobe Acrobat Professional, MS Project.
> >
> > IE is @ 50MB/user, Word is @ 50MB/user, Acrobat READER is @ 25MB.
> > That is per user, not including TS/Citrix/OS overhead per user, simply
>
> > opening the application, not working in it.
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