Driving XenApp and XenDesktop Performance with Atlantis ILIO

Citrix Desktop Master Class Driving XenApp and XenDesktop storage performance with Atlantis ILIO

Andrew Wood @gilwood_csSolutions Architect

1

Atlantis Computing Overview

Software company delivering unique optimization through software defined

storage (SDS) for virtualized environments

HQ in Silicon Valley with offices in Europe and Asia

Partnerships with over 200 resellers, distributors, and integrators globally

550+ customers

Over 650,000 licenses sold

Some of the largest VDI and XenApp deployments in the world:

Strategic relationships with key industry vendors

Delivering Successful XenApp and XenDesktop Deployments

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Success Factors for Desktop Virtualization

IT Organization – wants less project risks!• Easy to deploy, operationalize, and manage at scale

• High Availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR)

Users• Provide fast, consistent user experience

Chief Financial Officer• Minimise CAPEX

• Tangible datacenter OPEX costs reduction

• Lower risk, avoid unexpected costs

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Storage for XenApp..is it that Important?

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What does my storage deliver?

Use Iometer to simulate the users ‘steady state’

In steady state, the IO profile will be approximately;

80/20 write/read

80/20 random/sequential

Block size of the reads and writes will be in 4KB blocks

Block size in a real windows workload varies between 512B and 1MB, but the

vast majority will be at 4KB

http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/158QzkS

How to use Iometer to Simulate a Desktop Workload

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..baseline…baseline…baseline…

• Starting “VSI Notepad”• Starting the “File Open” dialogue• Starting the “Print” dialogue• Compress the document into a zip file

with 7-zip command line (2x)• Starting Microsoft Word with a

document

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Smaller is better

‘Best’ XenApp user experience at

20 IOPS per session

ILIO User Experience

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Case Study – Kelway (Atlantis ILIO Partner and Customer)

Business Drivers

Absorb acquisition headcount – grow XenApp deployment by 20%

Lower helpdesk call volume

Sales team hindered by poor user experience

Challenges

Storage bottleneck with traditional SAN storage

Acceptable application performance

XenApp Deployment Metrics

1,000 XenApp users across 4 physical servers

Citrix XenApp with PVS Write cache on EMC CLARiiON CX4-480

Atlantis ILIO for XenApp In-Memory

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Kelway XenApp Storage Utilization Pre Atlantis ILIO

-

50

100

150

200

250

6 AM 10 AM 2 PM 6 PM

Number of SAN Disks Required

RAID-5 15k # Drives RAID-10 15k # Drives

-

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000


EMC IOPs

SP A SP B

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Kelway XenApp Storage Utilization Post Atlantis ILIO

-

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000


EMC IOPs

SP A SP B

-

50

100

150

200

250


Number of SAN Disks Required

RAID-5 15k # Drives RAID-10 15k # Drives

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SAN Storage Requirements after Atlantis ILIO

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Ok..so storage performance is important ..how do I manage the images?

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PVS vs MCS Decision Trees

@djfeller 2011: http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/1uA5uOh

@djfeller 2013: http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/1q7uwV9

@barryschiffer 2013: http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/1soKw9v

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Speed of RAM?

You have sufficient IOPs available on shared storage –

unlike PVS, which provides a ‘RAM cache’ of disk blocks,

MCS directs more read activity to the shared storage. “ “

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Write Cache Choices PVS 7.1

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PVS Cache in RAM with over flow to disk

PVS Write Cache File

Page File Space forCrash Dump

Anti-VirusDefinitions

Log Files

Hard Drive associated with target VM

In RAM On Disk

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Write Cache per XenApp server= 30GB

XenApp VMs per server= 6

Write Cache per Physical server= 180GB

Lifetime Writes Drive Writes / Day

for 5 years

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14038_div/14038_div.pdf

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IOPS per session = 8

XenApp sessions per server = 150

IOPS per server = 1200

Working seconds in a day = 43200

IO per day= 51840000

Average block size = 23KB

Data volume per day = 1.2 TB

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SSD lifetime = 145/1.2= 120 days

Lifetime of current SSD (5 Years) = 145

Drives needed over 5 years = 15

Drives needed in RAID 1 = 30

Lifetime Writes Drive Writes / Day

for 5 years

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Key Takeaway

Don’t use MLC SSD for XenApp

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Stateless vs Persistent (including XenApp)

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lack of storage for capacity and performance for Persistent VMs

Atlantis ILIO – How the magic happens

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Endpoints

Connection Broker

Hypervisor

StorageRAM/SAN/NAS/SSD/Local Disk

Atlantis ILIO

NFS, iSCSI

NFS, iSCSI, Fiber Channel

Thin Client/iPAD/Desktop

Atlantis ILIO overview

Software only Virtual Machine (VM)

No agents or changes to desktop images

Any hypervisor or broker

Citrix XenServer, MSFT Hyper-V 2008R2/2012R2

Citrix XenDesktop or Citrix XenApp

Any server or storage platform

RAM as primary storage

SAN or NAS shared storage: Tier 1, 2, or 3

Flash or SSD Arrays

Server-side inline deduplication

Reduce storage capacity and/or increase density

Reduce or remove storage traffic

Provide consistent high performance user experience

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How Atlantis ILIO works

ILIO DisklessILIO

Virtual Desktops

Atlantis ILIO Storage

Optimization

Physical Server

Virtualization Layer

Storage

Server Hardware

NFS or iSCSI

Application Analysis

Inline Deduplication

Compression

Coalescing (I/O Blender Fix)

Content-Aware I/O Processing

Hypervisor

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Atlantis ILIO Fast Clone

Atlantis Fast Clone Technology

Cold clone operation for full persistent VMs

Roll out large numbers of VMs without incurring a high I/O

penalty

VMs registered to vCenter/XenCenter

Images are customised after cloning operation using standard

tools such as Microsoft Sysprep

Benefits

Generates no network traffic

No increase in storage capacity required during cloning

Quick disaster recovery within or between sites

Fast Clone

Atlantis ILIO – Architectures

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Stateless Architecture – for XenApp and XenDesktop

ILIO deployed per physical host

ILIO uses RAM for VM storage –

including for MCS

Seamless Integration with existing

hypervisor and broker

No HA / DRS required for stateless

XenDesktop or XenApp

Same architecture for XenDesktop and

XenApp

Backing Store

RAM

Hypervisor

Hypervisor

Backing Store

RAM

SnapClone storedon local or

shared storage

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Persistent Architecture – Disk-backed


Any shared storage array; FC, iSCSI or

NFS or media; SSD, SAS, SATA

Minimal RAM required for ILIO



Increases performance and density of

any storage

Persistent desktops, Personal vDisks

continue to leverage full functionality of

the HypervisorShared Storage

HA / DRSBacking

Store

Hypervisor

Hypervisor

Backing Store

N

E

T

W

O

R

K

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Persistent Architecture – In-Memory


ILIO uses RAM for VM storage

ILIO Fast Replication will de-dupe and

replicate data to shared storage for

persistent and redundancy



Persistent desktops continue to

leverage full functionality of the

Hypervisor, e.g. HA / DRS / vMotion

Shared Storage

ILIO Fast Replication

Hypervisor

Hypervisor

BackingStore

BackingStore

BackingStore

Hypervisor

DRS /vMotion

Hypervisor

HA Standby Host

HA

Atlantis ILIO Driving XenApp and XenDesktop Performance

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Citrix PVS with Atlantis ILIO

Provisioning Services Infrastructure

PVS Gold Images

SAN

PVS Streamed Images via Network

Writecache On-Disk Instances

Host Server

ILIO

Write to ILIO Optimized Storage

Writecache On-Disk Instances

Host Server

Host Server

ILIO

Host Server

ILIO

Host Server

ILIO

Host Server

ILIO

Host Server

ILIO

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Atlantis ILIO Benefits for PVS deployments

ILIO stores Write Caches In-Memory

Very high optimization rates (90+%)

Greater RAM utilization through deduplication

compared with PVS RAM write cache option

Accommodates Write Cache growth

De-risks under sizing through optimization

Avoid costly storage reconfiguration and CAPEX

Eliminates external storage

Lower storage OPEX and CAPEX

Reduce network traffic

Make blade form-factor viable

Compliments RAM + HDD by allowing HDD in

RAM

Hypervisor

Atlantis ILIO VM

Hypervisor

VM

Master image WC

Storage

VM

WC

PVS

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Atlantis ILIO Best Practices PVS deployments

Review Citrix Best Practices

Best Practices for Configuring Provisioning Server

on a Network

PVS and the forgotten antivirus exclusions

Atlantis ILIO is not for PVS Server

Atlantis USX for server workloads

Atlantis ILIO to host HDD in RAM

Persistent ILIO can be utilised when persistent

logging is required

Hypervisor

Atlantis ILIO VM

Hypervisor

VM

Master image WC

Storage

VM

WC

PVS

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX117374

http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/11/04/pvs-and-the-forgotten-antivirus-exclusions/

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Atlantis ILIO Benefits for MCS deployments

Atlantis ILIO stores MCS VMs in RAM

Bring In-Memory storage performance to MCS

Benefits of Atlantis ILIO for MCS:

Provides up to 90% reduction in storage capacity

needed for differencing disks

Reduces storage required to support multiple

base images

Improves performance due to increased IOPS

Hypervisor

Atlantis ILIO VM

Hypervisor

Master VM VM

Master image

Storage

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Atlantis ILIO Best Practices for MCS deployments

Review Citrix Best Practice Guides

• XenDesktop Planning Guide Storage Best

Practices

• Machine Creation Services Primer – Part

1, 2 and 3

MCS has a storage location per host

create separate machine catalogues mapped to

storage resources

Use ILIO Persistent for PVD

Provides up to 80% reduction in storage capacity

needed for personal v disks

Hypervisor

Atlantis ILIO VM

Hypervisor

Master VM VM

Master image

Storage

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130632

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Atlantis ILIO Benefits for Persistent VMs

Seamless integration with existing


Increases performance and

density of any storage

Full Persistent desktops Personal

vDisks

Fast Clone for rapid provisioning

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Leverage Atlantis Fast Clone – CFD Provisioning Workflow

Register fora desktop

Analyze Current Utilization

Chose leastLoaded Server

ProcessRegistration

Ensure Template Avail

Fast CloneTemplate

PersonalizeDesktop

Create ADAccount

Add DesktopTo Broker

Ensure VMRegistered

e-mail logindetails to user

Target:10 – 15 Mins

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Use sdelete (et al)

Key for Gold Build Efficient Disk Use

• Ideal for Persistent

• Less req’d for Stateless

High CPU Resource Use

Scheduling is key

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Summary Read performance is important

Write Performance is key

MCS - I/O demand not 60% more than PVS

• PVS - RAM+HDD is key going forward

Atlantis ILIO

Consistently fast user experience

Provides storage at speed of RAM for MCS

Reduces Storage Capacity for Persistent VMs

Check with Iometer

Avoid MLC SSD for XenApp

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Call to Action – Information Resources

Atlantis Computing Resources

• Citrix Ready Page: http://www.citrix.com/ready/en/atlantis-computing

• Citrix Partner Page: http://www.atlantiscomputing.com/citrix

• ILIO for VDI Solution Brief: http://bit.ly/CitrixXDbrief

• ILIO for XenApp Solution Brief: bit.ly/citrixXAbrief

• Blog Posts: blog.atlantiscomputing.com/

• Free ILIO Appliance for ESX: http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/UMQ272

• NEW! Citrix Ready Certification:

https://www.citrix.com/ready/en/atlantis-computing/atlantis-ilio

http://www.citrix.com/ready/en/atlantis-computing

http://www.atlantiscomputing.com/citrix

http://bit.ly/CitrixXDbrief

http://bit.ly/citrixXAbrief

http://blog.atlantiscomputing.com/

http://lnk.glwdcs.tv/UMQ272

https://www.citrix.com/ready/en/atlantis-computing/atlantis-ilio