[THIN] Re: Virtualising W2K3 PS 4.0 Servers
- From: "Russell Robertson" <russell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:50:04 +0100
Hi Paul
Sounds like you have a plan. Would be good to let us know if you have
time to build a single Citrix physical machine and then multiple Citrix
VMs on one machine, which one gives better bang for your buck! (Assuming
you've got lots of memory on the boxes.)
I find that server virtualisation isn't just about raw performance
though - the advantages of a virtual environment with snapshotting,
cloning, vmotion and so on are a huge bonus for us admins. We've proven
to customers that the flexibility is worth as much as any perceived lack
of performance.
Cheers
Russell
Russell Robertson |Virtual Stream | Microsoft, Citrix and VMware
advisers |
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Burke, Paul
Sent: 20 August 2009 14:15
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [THIN] Re: Virtualising W2K3 PS 4.0 Servers
Hi Russell,
Cheers for the reply.
The customer is looking to add 60 users of a new published app into
their farm and are therefore looking to purchase 2 further HP DL360 G6
boxes to facilitate this (the results of testing showed that 1 server
would suffice, but they like to play safe). It was then suggested that
adding those same DLs into the XenServer farm and building multiple
(i.e. 4 or more) virtualised PS 4.0 servers would possibly make better
use of the hardware and give higher concurrent connection yields within
the farm. It would also aid provisioning the same app/servers within
their DR environment.
I have been tasked with proving or disproving this theory!
I'm not convinced, not just with regards to the number of connections,
but also whether PS 4.0 will actually work adequately in a live
environment, given that it has to monitor various metrics for load
balancing.
I know that PS 4.0 isn't on Citrix's patch list any longer and isn't
officially supported in a virtualised environment, but the customer will
be staying with this version for the foreseeable future. They are keen
on introducing virtualised servers, rather than physical, wherever
possible and probably see this as an opportunity to start phasing out
their current PS 4.0 hardware.
Regards,
Paul
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Russell Robertson
Sent: Thu 20/08/2009 13:30
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: Virtualising W2K3 PS 4.0 Servers
Hi Paul
We have a couple of clients running PS 4.0 on VMware without any
problems. I would imagine XenServer would be at least as good.
Bear in mind that you'll never get as many sessions on a virtual machine
though? Why does your customer want to virtualise?
Cheers
Russell
Russell Robertson |Virtual Stream | Microsoft, Citrix and VMware
advisers |
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Burke, Paul
Sent: 20 August 2009 13:10
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Virtualising W2K3 PS 4.0 Servers
Greetings,
I've got a customer with a pretty simple, 9-server Windows 2003 Citrix
PS 4.0 Advanced Edition farm (with latest patches). They now wish to add
a couple of new servers into the farm and have asked if it would be
possible to virtualise them on XenServer. They do not have Subscription
Advantage, so upgrading to the latest supported XenApp version is not
currently an option.
I know from their DR testing that PS 4.0 will *run* in a virtual
environment, but what I need to find out is does it *work* in a virtual
environment? Are there any gotchas, workarounds, patches, etc. that I
need to be aware of?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Paul
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