In this Citrix MasterClass learn how to drive XenApp and XenDesktop performance using Atlantis Computing's ILIO software storage appliance

1. Citrix Desktop Master Class
Driving XenApp and XenDesktop storage performance with
Atlantis ILIO
Andrew Wood @gilwood_cs
Solutions Architect

2. 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

3. Delivering Successful XenApp and XenDesktop Deployments

4. 3
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

5. 4
Storage for XenApp..is it that Important?

6. 5
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

7. 6
..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

8. 7
Smaller is better
‘Best’ XenApp user experience
at
20 IOPS per session
ILIO User Experience

9. 8
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

10. 9
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
6 AM 10 AM 2 PM 6 PM
EMC IOPs
SP A SP B

11. 10
Kelway XenApp Storage Utilization Post Atlantis ILIO
-
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
6 AM 10 AM 2 PM 6 PM
EMC IOPs
SP A SP B
-
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

12. 11
SAN Storage Requirements after Atlantis ILIO

13. 12
Ok..so storage performance is important
..how do I manage the images?

14. 13
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

15. 15
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.
“ “

16. 16
Write Cache Choices PVS 7.1

17. 17
PVS Cache in RAM with over flow to disk
PVS Write
Cache File
Page File Space for
Crash Dump
Anti-Virus
Definitions
Log Files
Hard Drive associated with target VM
In RAM On Disk

18. 18
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

19. 19
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

20. 20
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

21. 21
Key Takeaway
Don’t use MLC SSD for XenApp
21

22. 22
Stateless vs Persistent (including XenApp)

23. 23
lack of storage for capacity and performance for
Persistent VMs

24. Atlantis ILIO – How the magic happens

25. 25
Endpoints
Connection
Broker
Hypervisor
Storage
RAM/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

26. 26
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

27. 27
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

28. Atlantis ILIO – Architectures

29. 29
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 stored
on local or
shared storage

30. 30
Persistent Architecture – Disk-backed
 ILIO deployed per physical host
 Any shared storage array; FC, iSCSI or
NFS or media; SSD, SAS, SATA
 Minimal RAM required for ILIO
 Seamless Integration with existing
hypervisor and broker
 Increases performance and density of
any storage
 Persistent desktops, Personal vDisks
continue to leverage full functionality of
the Hypervisor
Shared Storage
HA / DRS
Backing
Store
Hypervisor
Hypervisor
Backing
Store
N
E
T
W
O
R
K

31. 31
Persistent Architecture – In-Memory
 ILIO deployed per physical host
 ILIO uses RAM for VM storage
 ILIO Fast Replication will de-dupe and
replicate data to shared storage for
persistent and redundancy
 Seamless Integration with existing
hypervisor and broker
 Persistent desktops continue to
leverage full functionality of the
Hypervisor, e.g. HA / DRS / vMotion
Shared Storage
ILIO Fast
Replication
Hypervisor
Hypervisor
Backing
Store
Backing
Store
Backing
Store
Hypervisor
DRS /
vMotion
Hypervisor
HA Standby Host
HA

32. Atlantis ILIO Driving XenApp and XenDesktop Performance

33. 33
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

34. 34
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

35. 35
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

36. 36
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

37. 37
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

38. 38
Atlantis ILIO Benefits for Persistent VMs
 Seamless integration with existing
hypervisor and broker
 Increases performance and
density of any storage
 Full Persistent desktops Personal
vDisks
 Fast Clone for rapid provisioning

39. 39
Leverage Atlantis Fast Clone – CFD Provisioning Workflow
Register for
a desktop
Analyze Current
Utilization
Chose least
Loaded Server
Process
Registration
Ensure
Template Avail
Fast Clone
Template
Personalize
Desktop
Create AD
Account
Add Desktop
To Broker
Ensure VM
Registered
e-mail login
details to user
Target:
10 – 15 Mins

40. 40
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

41. 41
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

42. 42
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