Q&A

Total Performance Visibility

Top Eight Best Practices for Deploying Citrix

XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 Webinar
During the webinar last week The Top Eight Best Practices for Deploying Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6, we had several
questions asked by the audience.
Rob Beekmans, Senior Consultant of PQR, and Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO of eG Innovations, have taken the time to respond
to these questions. We hope the webinar last week and the responses below will provide you with the background you need to
implement best practices for getting the most out of your Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 deployments.
For any further questions or information, please email as at webinar@eginnovations.com or sign up for a live demo.

Questions and Answers regarding Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6

Answers provided by Rob Beekmans, Senior Consultant with PQR
1. Are XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6 different software modules, or am I installing the same software for both?
The software is the same and the components are the same. The software you install will install a Delivery Controller and offer you
the option to install the License server and StoreFront server. Whether you choose XenApp or XenDesktop during the setup, you
will end up with the same back end components.
2. The Local Host Cache was present in Citrix XenApp 6.5. In XenApp 7.6, there is no Local Host Cache or equivalent
functionality. Correct?
Thats correct, there is no real equivalent in 7.6. In 7.6 you have connection leasing which is a method to provide the user with a
two-week history of connections to resources. This would be used to connect the user to e.g. a desktop in case of a database
failure. It does not do any load balancing or check if the desktop is in maintenance mode.
3. Is it possible to extend connection leasing beyond 2 weeks?
To my knowledge, this leasing period is not extendable.
4. Will Connection Leasing work even for a XenDesktop environment or is it specific to XenApp?
It will work for both environments under specific conditions, but it wont work with pooled desktops and wont work with
anonymous users. XenDesktop will be setup most of the time with pooled desktops, I presume, and that wont work. Only if users
have an assigned desktop will it work.
5. How many days of data does Director store if I have a Platinum license?
With Platinum license, you can save up to one year of data instead of the one week with an alternate license.
6. Is Framehawk intended to replace branch repeater...or something like session reliability? How does that compare with
the technology in Horizon View?
FrameHawk is not intended to replace branch repeater. It was acquired by Citrix because it was offering Citrix administrators the
ability to offer a better user experience in more use cases whereas Branch Repeater is not used that much for this. Regarding
comparison with Vmware Horizon View, from a protocol point of view, it is comparable, both are UDP based. PCoIP however is
not designed to handle this kind of connections.
7. How is XenDesktop deployment different with a Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor than on VMware ESX? Any inputs on
performance differences between Nutanix and VMware?
From a component point of view, there is no difference, you still need your back-end environment to get Citrix up and running.
Nutanix is offering compute and performance in one.

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With a VMware hypervisor, you will be able to get the same performance, Nutanix is not something magical in theory. You need
to focus on computing power, storage performance and GPU. Personally, I think that the cost for Nutanix is pretty high and Im
not sure at this moment if that justifiable. Time will tell, PQR is a partner also, so we will see both worlds and what performs better
with customer deployments.
8. Am I correct that Framehawk works remotely with NetScaler 11?
Yes, it is supported.
9. Are there any viable alternatives for GPU technology other than NVIDIA?
There are many others but NVIDIA is one of the top players, AMD is pretty strong also in that field.
10. We are having trouble getting a XenApp 7.6 environment up and running. 6.x, 5.x, and 4.x were much easier to install
and run. What are we doing wrong?
With 7.6 make sure you have the controllers, storefront and licensing running fine.. if that runs without issues you just need to
add a virtual machine with e.g. 2012R2 or Win7 and install the VDA. From Studio you should be able to create a catalog at that
point. Start with MCS if you feel you need a bit more confidence. What it needs is a snapshot of a virtual machine with the agent
installed.
If you dont succeed write a blog about it and show us where you fail and/or what questions you have, people are out there to
help you.
11. We only want to verify that our products are compatible with XenApp7.6. Is there a free testing environment available?
There is no free testing environment available that I am aware of. You could easily set it up on one server or heavy laptop.
Controller, Storefront and licensing can be on one server, and you could even add the database there. Then all you need is one
extra server with the agent. I have an Intel NUC i5 running as my lab at home. Inexpensive to buy easy to manage and enough to
do some testing.
12. What are the requirements to build a test lab for Citrix XenDesktop 7.x ?
It depends on your testing requirements, but you need at least one vm as mentioned before to run the controller, storefront,
licensing and db. And one to run a VDI or SBC server.
13. Regarding migration to XenDesktop 7.x, what do I have to update first: the XenDesktop Controllers or the PVS?
I would go for PVS for that one thing you really want to get stable. Check the compatibility of the target device software, I think
its backwards compatible. Good thing is that PVS has always been separate from other Citrix products so it will work most of the
time. Its more dependent on operating system versions.
14. If updating the XenDesktop Controllers 7.5 to 7.6 or PVS 7.1 to 7.6, do we have to update the Agents (VDA) immediately
or we can continue to use the previous versions till the new golden image is ready?
I believe so as it contains performance optimization for video and chat. I havent seen much other things so far.
15. Is it possible to migrate from XenApp 5.0 to XenApp 7.6 on Windows server 2008 standard?
2008 or 2008R2. Its only supported on 2008R2. View some helpful edocs here.
16. If you had a choice of the hypervisor for hosting XenApp, which one would you choose and why?
Thats a tricky question. Id opt for VMware as they have the most experience in this field whereas others are relative new here. I
like a solid foundation to host my server that my users rely on. This doesnt mean that Hyper-v or XenServer are bad choices but
in my opinion, I would go for VMware.
17. I am sure youve gotten this question before where do you see VMware Horizon View in capabilities relating to
XenDesktop 7.6?
VMware has been working hard to get close to Citrix, and for a couple of years, Citrix seemed to be standing still. There were lots
of rumors inside and not much new stuff coming out. VMware Horizon View certainly is side by side with Citrix. VMware RDSH
is not that close yet. For me I dont care who is in the lead. I value each companys offerings on what they bring in terms of value
and if its rubbish I will say so.

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Next step in the race is the cloud solution with Citrix having workspace cloud on the market and VMware going to release Project
Enzo pretty soon.
18. Any recommendations for storage when deploying XenApp 7.6 or XenDesktop 7.6?
Make sure you have enough performance pain that you cant be confident with your 10K disks for another 5 years. Times have
changed, look towards PVS with cache to ram w/o to disk to speed up or go for a software defined solution.
19. My organization uses Microsoft SCOM as the enterprise management tool and I am trying to add Citrix monitoring to
SCOM. Can SCOM give me end-to-end visibility?
SCOM cant give you end to end, its not designed for that. SCOM with several expensive management packs will offer something
close but not as easy as other tools can.
20. Can I use the same hardware I am using for XenApp 6.5 for 7.5 or will I need more hardware?
You can, but think about GPU and look towards your storage. It all depends on your users and the applications they use. There is
no one answer to this, you need to test.

Questions and Answers regarding the eG Enterprise Citrix Performance Monitoring Solution
Answers provided by Srinivas Ramanathan, CEO of eG Innovations
1. Can we use eG Enterprise on-premise or is it a SaaS service?
eG Enterprise is available as software that you can own and operate on-premise.
2. Does eG Innovations support non-Windows operating systems?
Yes, eG Enterprise supports Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and other non-Windows operating systems.
3. Which eG Innovations product do we need for monitoring Citrix XenServer and IBM Storwize v7000?
You would need the eG Enterprise suite plus an eG manager and agentless monitors that can monitor Citrix XenServer and IBM
Storwize.
4. You showed monitoring of VMware ESX. What about support for Microsoft Hyper-V?
Yes Hyper-V monitoring is supported. In fact, most common x86 and Unix virtualization technologies are supported (including
VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, XenServer, RedHat virtualization, Linux KVM, Solaris Containers, AIX LPARs, etc.).
5. In your demo, you showed Citrix XenApp monitoring. Does eG Enterprise monitor Citrix XenDesktop 7.6? If so, do I need
agents on every virtual desktop?
Yes eG Enterprise does monitor Citrix XenDesktop 7.6. All the Citrix infrastructure the broker, PVS, license server, StoreFront
and NetScaler can be monitored. Further, the virtualization platform on which the desktops are hosted is also monitored (mainly
agentless). eG Enterprise also provides views inside each and every desktop. It does this in an agentless manner using WMI.
6. Does eG Enterprise require an agent to be installed on all servers?
No we support agent and agentless monitoring. Agentless monitoring is recommended for networks, new age virtualization
platforms (VMware and XenServer) and for storage devices. For Windows/Linux and other legacy operating systems and
applications running on them, agent-based monitoring is recommended.
7. Do you lose anything with the agentless monitoring option when compared with using the agent?
It depends on what is being monitored. For VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer, there is no difference. The same is true for
storage. For Windows-based server applications, agentless monitoring incurs additional overheads and provides a subset (about
70%) of the functionality and depth of monitoring that agent-based monitoring provides.
8. Does eG Enterprise require the platinum version of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop to function?
No, it does not.

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9. I have multiple Citrix farms some are 4.5, some 6.5 and my new farms are 7.6. Can you product support all of these?
Yes it can a single management server can support monitoring, diagnosis and reporting for all of these farms.
10. What about monitoring for Citrix XenMobile and ShareFile? Can your tool support this?
Yes it can. See http://www.eginnovations.com/solution-brief/Citrix-XenMobile.pdf
11. How much of history can I store with the tool?
The tool does not enforce any limit. Of course, the more history you want to store, the larger the database size will be.
12. Can this eG also be used to monitor other non-Citrix applications e.g. Web applications?
Yes Citrix is just one of the application stacks that eG Enterprise supports. eG Enterprise can be used to monitor web
applications, enterprise applications like SAP, messaging applications, etc. For a complete list of supported applications, please
see http://www.eginnovations.com/web/platforms.htm
13. Can I find more information on eG Enterprises integration with NetScaler HDX Insight?
This integration will be available in our upcoming new release. Your eG Innovations account manager can provide more details.
14. How is eG Enterprise licensed?
We offer different licensing models. We can support server-based licensing (count the number of XenApp instances and
purchase that number of licenses). We also offer named user and concurrent user based licensing. If you are getting high user
densities (many users per server), the server-based licensing model works out well. On the other hand, if your user density is low,
you should go for our user-based licensing.
15. How does your product compare with Citrix NetScaler Insight?
Citrix NetScaler Insight takes a network-oriented view of performance. By snooping on packets going between the servers and
clients, NetScaler Insight can report latencies seen by users. What it cannot provide is insights into why there is slowness is it
because your server is overloaded? Or you have a malfunctioning application? Or due to slow storage? NetScaler Insight will not
be able to explain the why. This is where eG Enterprise comes in.
16. What is the monitoring overhead of your tool? Ive used Citrix EdgeSight in the past and it used to be a resource hog.
Overall, the resource usage of the monitoring tool is very little. From a CPU perspective, the usage is 0.1 to 0.3% with the default
configurations. Network bandwidth usage is 0.5-2 Kbps. Citrix EdgeSight used to have a full blown database in every agent /
every server. This was the reason why it took up so much resources.
17. What are all the Citrix infrastructure components that I need to add to my monitoring e.g., PVS, VMware, SQL, AD, etc?
If you are looking for complete visibility, you will need to monitor all your Citrix components NetScalers, StoreFronts, XenApp
servers, connection brokers, SQL data store, XenDesktop VMs and the hypervisors they run on, plus the storage tier on which all
of these applications run.

About eG Innovations
eG Innovations is dedicated to helping businesses across the globe transform IT services delivery into
a competitive advantage and a center for productivity, growth and profit. Many of the worlds largest
businesses use eG Enterprise Universal Insight technology to enhance IT service performance, increase
operational efficiency and ensure IT effectiveness.

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