[THIN] Re: Video Performance
- From: Chris Grecsek <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:49:32 -0700
Excellent feedback - thanks Steve! When you say VMware is bad with I/O do you
mean disk or NIC or both? The perfmon counters we're running on the VMs show
very little utilization of disk or NIC so I guess we'll just see how it goes.
We do have the WI and CSG on two separate VMs. We have about 400 concurrent
connections on this WI/CSG set.
You also mentioned the Netscaler Access Gateway as a possible upgrade path from
the WI/CSG. I'm doing some research but I must say, Citrix's product naming
bonanza makes me not 100% sure I'm looking at the correct product. I found
information on the Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE) but is that a
different product than the Netscaler Access Gateway? Was there a specific
feature of the product that you think would be making the difference or is it
just the fact that the device is designed to handle/manage that specific type
of traffic/load?
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chris grecsek | centered networks | t:415-294-7776 | f:415-294-7772 |
chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Steve Greenberg
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 1:07 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Video Performance
Now that we know it is running on VMWare that could be the bottleneck right
there- CSG is I/O intensive because of the nature of what it is doing as a
proxy, this is the one area that hypervisor virtualization is still very weak
at....
Steve Greenberg
[cid:image002.jpg@01C8E8DC.CA77FF10]Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85266
(602) 432-8649
www.thinclient.net
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Chris Grecsek
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 11:21 AM
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Re: Video Performance
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the speedy response!
We're not using any LBs - there are no network devices other than a standard
PIX.
The WI and CSGs are both VMs on ESX 3.5. Based on your question I think we'll
setup a WI/CSG on a standalone server "just to see" even though we're not
seeing high utilization.
At this point we have not isolated the WI or CSG. We're going to setup an
additional site on the WI that will not use the CSG so that should achieve the
isolation.
We've done quite a bit of testing with the speedscreen/multimedia stuff - I
think we've tried every conceivable combination in the policies and farm
settings . I believe the policies should apply the same whether we come in via
the CSG/WI or the PN.
Image acceleration using lossy compression: enabled; compression
level: do not use lossy compression; speedscreen progressive display:disabled
Speedscreen browser acceleration: off; speedscreen flash: enabled -
all connections; speedscreen multimedia: enabled - buffer = 10.
Thanks again,
Chris
-----------------------------
chris grecsek | centered networks | t:415-294-7776 | f:415-294-7772 |
chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Joe Shonk
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 10:35 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Video Performance
It could be a couple of things.... Have you tried removing CSG from the
equation and isolate if its WI or CSG? Is your CSG box running in a Virtual
Machine? Do you have a LB in front of your WI and/or CSG box? How are you
Applying the Ctx Policies for the SpeedScreen/multimedia.
Joe
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Chris Grecsek
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 10:24 AM
To: 'thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: [THIN] Video Performance
We provide published desktops via Citrix/terminal services delivered via the
internet. All users come in through the web interface/CSG via high speed,
burstable (up to 100mb) connections. Most of the branch offices are <50 users
so connectivity/maxxing out the pipe is not an issue. We don't use any
bandwidth restriction policies - users can use as much bandwidth as they'd
like. We have bandwidth monitoring to look at all traffic and have our
firewalls setup so that only Citrix traffic is using the burstable connection.
Latency is sub 20ms and we have no packet loss.
Like everyone else using Citrix we've had challenges with video performance on
the published desktop (Windows media player works great - Flash/other codecs,
not so much). We had an interesting discovery today and I was curious if anyone
could answer why/how this happens...when we connect to a published desktop via
the WI/CSG (from one of our branch offices) video performance is bad. We ran a
test today from within the datacenter where we connected to a published
desktop, locally (from a laptop at the DC), using the Program Neighborhood as
opposed to coming in over the WI/CSG and low and behold, video performance was
excellent.
When we look at the amount of session bandwidth being used it's nearly the same
when coming in via the WI/CSG as it is when testing at the datacenter. So I
guess the question is, is there something with the way the WI/CSG works that
would be restricting/degrading the video performance (we ran performance
counters on the WI/CSG and it doesn't seem to be working very hard), is there a
difference between using the Program Neighborhood verses the web client, etc.?
We're on Citrix 4.5, latest rollups, latest version of the client, etc.
If anyone has any ideas, it would be much appreciated.
Thank you!
Chris
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chris grecsek | centered networks | t:415-294-7776 | f:415-294-7772 |
chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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