citrix xenapp 6.5 performance - how to ensure a great end user experience before, during and after...
TRANSCRIPT
PresentersVal King (WhiteHat Virtual Technologies)Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)
Citrix XenApp 6.5 Performance How To Ensure a Great End User Experience Before, During and After Your Upgrade
Poll: What Are Your Biggest Performance Management Challenges?
User experience issues Lack of visibility across silos Complex and/or slow issue identification Proactive problem solving Chasing issues that originate in other IT domains
Top 10 Migration Considerations
1. The End User Experience
2. Physical Virtual3. 32 Bit 64 Bit & App
Compatibility4. Database Upgrades5. App Delivery6. User Profiles
7. Environmental Sizing; Capacity Planning
8. Citrix Access Gateway Goes NetScaler
9. Provisioning Server10.Test Environment
Network Web Servers onESX
Active DirectorySQL/Oracle
XenApp on HypervisorZDC onVMware ESX
License Server
Profile Server
EnterpriseApps
vCenter
Client
SANSwitch
What Impacts The End User Experience?
Why Care About The End User Experience?
50% of businesses are losing revenue due to poorly performing applications1
Application performance issues can impact corporate revenues by as much as 9%2
Business performance starts to decline when mission-critical applications reach the baseline of 5.1 seconds of response time delay1
32% of surveyed businesses experienced damage to their brand reputation because of poor application performance1
(1) Aberdeen Group “Application Performance Management: Getting IT on the C-Level’s Agenda”(2) Aberdeen Group “The Performance of Web Applications: Customers are Won or Lost in One Second”
What Does Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 And XenApp 5.0 End-of-Life Mean For You?
There is no real recommended inplace upgrade from Presentation Server 4.5/XenApp 5.0 to
XenApp 6.5 or XenDesktop 5.6.
Plan on a parallel build of a new farm.
What About The XenApp Migration Center?Settings Transferred Settings Not Transferred
Applications ZonesApplication and server folders Printer management, such as driver
mappings and auto-replicationLoad evaluators Configuration Logging settingsPolicies Health Monitoring and Recovery
executablesServer configuration Server registry settingsFarm configuration Deprecated settings, such as Application
Isolation EnvironmentsAdministrator accounts Health Monitoring and Recovery Tests Worker Groups (XenApp 6.x only) Load Balancing Policies (XenApp 6.x only) Pre-launched applications (XenApp 6.5 only)
2: Physical Servers To Virtual Servers
Primary Hypervisor
VmwareXen (Citrix & Oracle)KVM (Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora)Microsoft Hyper-VRed Hat (RHEL, RHEV)Other
Virtual Server Visibility Gap
3: 32-bit To A 64-bit Server Platform
Citrix XenApp 6.5 and XenDesktop 5.6 both require
a 64 bit server platform… Windows 2008 r2.
3: App Compatibility With Windows 2008 r2
Validate applications support of Windows Server 2008 r2 and choice of hypervisor
Inventory legacy applications– May require both a Presentation
Server 4.5 and XenApp/XenDesktop
Determine application usage before migration– Are your end users actually using
all of the applications?
4: Data Store Database Upgrade
Windows Server 2008 may require a data store database upgrade…
Databases supported for the XenApp data store:– Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express R2– Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express SP3– Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2– Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP2– Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP4– Oracle 11g R2 32-bit Enterprise Edition
ADD GRAPHIC
5: Application Delivery Method Selection
It is a “best practice” to do a complete
assessment of your end users and how they
work to determine the optimal way to deliver
applications.
Delivery methods available via Citrix FlexCast for XenApp 6.5 and
XenDesktop 5.6:
• Local VM• Streamed Virtual Hosted Desktops• Hosted VDI • Hosted Shared• On-Demand Applications
6: Managing User Profiles
Migrate user profile data Consider Citrix Profile
Management, or a more all-encompassing tool by third party vendors.
7: Environmental Sizing; Capacity Planning
How many servers are you going to need? How many users will you get per VM? How many VM’s will you get per host server?
8: Citrix Access Gateway Goes NetScaler
Citrix Web Interface server is going away
Best practice:
Deploy Web Interface Server with Citrix StoreFront near term
9: Plan For And Utilize Provisioning Server
Citrix has changed how the server image gets created, patched and delivered to the XenApp servers (and potentially your edge devices if
you are planning on using XenDesktop VDI).
Step 10. Build A Test Environment
Create a standalone test environment, or sandbox, to test your 6.5 environment in parallel to your 4.5 environment.
Top 10 Migration Considerations
1. The End User Experience
2. Physical Virtual3. 32 Bit 64 Bit & App
Compatibility4. Database Upgrades5. App Delivery6. User Profiles
7. Environmental Sizing; Capacity Planning
8. Citrix Access Gateway Goes NetScaler
9. Provisioning Server10.Test Environment
Upgrade Options
Extended warranty Manage your own servers/upgrade Leverage managed services provider Hosted service provider
Proactive System Management
Healthier systems
Greater IT efficiency
Increased productivity
Better IT coverage
Monitoring and management tools are entering a new
generation where everything can be monitored with one system and correlation can be used to
automatically identify, and many times rectify, problems
automatically.
Poll: What Performance Management Solutions Do You Currently Use? Citrix Resource Manager or Citrix EdgeSight VMware vCenter Ops Microsoft Perfmon, NS Lookup, PING, etc Other 3rd party tools None
Ensuring Peak Performance Before, during and After Migration
Bala VaidhinathanCTOeG [email protected]
Client Web
Active Directory SQL
CitrixXenApp
CitrixZDC
License Server Profile Server
EnterpriseApps
Network
User
XenApp On Physical Servers = Complex
• Inter-application dependencies causes ripple effects• Administrators don’t have control outside of XenApp• Baselining
NetworkWeb onVMware ESX
Active Directory SQL
XenApp onVMware ESXZDC on
VMware ESX
License Server
Profile Server
EnterpriseApps
vCenterOracle
Client
SANSwitch
• Virtualization adds additional infrastructure tiers, possible failure points!• Most of the infrastructure is not visible anymore
User
Virtualized XenApp = More Complex
Disk reads
Database QueriesSlow Citrix Access
Excessive disk reads by the Oracle Database slows down Citrix accesses
Citrix XenApp slowness can be caused by other VMs or the virtualization platform itself.
Virtualized XenApp = More Complex
A Familiar Scenario
Who Gets The Blame?
Fragmented Silo Tools Are the Problem
Cloud Private, Hybrid,Public
VirtualVMware, Citrix,Microsoft, IBM,Red Hat, Solaris
PhysicalX86, SPARC, PARISC, RS6000
Desktop Apps Storage Network Compute
? ?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Traditional tools don’t deliver actionable performance insight -slow, fragmented, confusing.
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
The Result? Finger Pointing While User Experience Suffers
End UserLAN
Admin
Firewall admin
Server admin
Virtualization admin
Domain admin
ERP Admin Sys admin ApplicationAdmin
The serveris working
OK
No othercomplaints
All lights Are green
We don’t see anything
wrong
Database Admin
“My application is
slow!”
VMs are lightly loaded
EverythingIs OK
Not ourproblem
Looks fine Not mine
either
Talk tothe other
guys
XenApp Admin
The Troubleshooting Conference Call
© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com
Where Time And Money Is Being Spent
© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com
How to avoid these pitfalls and ensure optimal user experience
before, during and after your XenApp Migration ?
Performance Assurance During Migration
Network Web onXenServer
Active DirectorySQL
ZDC onVMware ESX
License Server
Profile Server
EnterpriseApps
vCenterOracle
Client
SANSwitch
Complete visibility – every layer, every tier!
“My application is slow!”
Root
cause
XenApp onVMware ESX
eG Enterprise – How Does It help?
Automated
Diagnosis
User Experienc
e Manageme
nt
Right-Sizing & Capacity PlanningPre-
emptive Alerting
TotalPerforman
ce Visibility
End UserExperience
StorageConnection
Brokers
Profile Servers
Network
Applications
Virtualization
InfrastructurePerformance
ServicePerformance
Online Banking
Accounting
Trading
Patient records
. . .
eG Enterprise
Performance Assurance With eG Enterprise
eG Enterprise – Live Demo
Unmatched Performance Visibility
Cloud Private, Hybrid,Public
VirtualVMware, Citrix,Microsoft, IBM,Red Hat, Solaris
PhysicalX86, SPARC, PARISC, RS6000
Desktop Apps Storage Network Compute
!
Complete, correlated visibility beyond basic health. Actionable insight into service performance & dependencies.
Root
cause
Reduce downtime (MTTR)
Boost User Satisfaction And Productivity During And After Migration
• Identify & prevent performance issues faster BEFORE end users are affected and business is impacted
• Diagnose & fix issues faster with intelligent, automatic cross-silo correlation & diagnosis delivering actionable insight on root causes and bottlenecks
Reduce performance incidents
30%
35%
Reduce IT Support Cost And ComplexityDuring And After Migration
• Dramatically simplify troubleshooting in complex, virtualized environments • Reduce escalations to 2nd
and 3rd level support experts
• Free up expert resources to focus on strategic IT initiatives
Reduce support cost
15%
Reduce IT Infrastructure Cost Of Migration
• Get intelligent capacity & performance analytics to identify bottlenecks, better utilize HW and optimize your IT environment• Get unprecedented performance
visibility of all IT domains impacting user experience – from desktop to application, virtualization and infrastructure components• Easily integrate into your complex
environment, retire legacy monitoring tools
Reduce hardware & software cost
20%
Q&A
Visit eG InnovationsBooth 417
Become a
Citrix Performance
Hero
Visit eG Innovations
Booth 417
PerformanceHero
Next StepsMore Details www.whitehatvirtual.comwww.eginnovations.com
Contact UsWhiteHat Virtual Technologies+1.888.406.8719 [email protected]
eG Innovations (US)[email protected]