Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Introduction
Desktop virtualization architectures enable enterprises to host their applications and data
centrally and to access them remotely using thin clients. This centralization of both data
and applications affords better security and better manageability of resources.

Citrix, with its XenApp server (previously known as Presentation Server), is a market
leader in thin client solutions. With Citrix, all of the user's data and applications execute
centrally on a XenApp server. Users connect to their desktops and applications using a
thin client which communicates with the server using a custom-built and proprietary
protocol known as ICA (Independent Computing Architecture)

Such centralization of applications and access using thin clients enhances manageability
and security. However, while desktop virtualization usually has little or no impact on the
end-user experience when the thin client and server communicate over a LAN, it can
come at the cost of reduced user experience when running over the wide area network
(WAN), in particular in high-latency environments. ICA has some optimizations that
attempt to mitigate the effects of latency, such as compression and SpeedScreen
Latency Reduction (local echo of keystrokes and mouse click feedback). However,
these optimizations alone are usually not sufficient to solve the problem.

This document is targeted at technical users responsible for managing Riverbed®

Steelhead® appliances and Citrix infrastructure. It describes some of the additional
benefits provided by Steelhead appliances beyond the ICA native optimizations, and
provides detailed instructions on how to configure Steelhead appliances and Citrix
XenApp clients in order to realize these benefits.

Results from this analysis show that Steelhead appliances improve Citrix ICA bandwidth
utilization by 50% in most cases and up to 90% in some cases.

Testing Results
The tests described below were done to simulate a T1 link (1.55 Mbps) with 100 ms
round trip latency. A desktop was published from a XenApp server version 4.5 and Citrix
Program Neighborhood client version 11.0.0.5357 was used to connect to the published
desktop. A sequence of operations was recorded and played back which included
access and editing of MS Office applications, directory browsing and access of other
Windows applications and dialogs. The files accessed were stored centrally on the
server. The results from the tests are shown below.

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Required Bandwidth per Test Session (in kbps)

Native ICA

Cold

Warm

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Cold performance numbers indicate the first pass when the Steelhead appliances see
the data for the first time. Warm performance numbers indicate performance on
subsequent runs of the same data.

As seen above, the amount of bandwidth consumed per session is halved with the use of
Steelhead appliances. Prior to the use of Steelhead appliances, each session requires
about 17kbps with the XenApp default setup (with encryption and compression switched
on). With Riverbed, it is possible to double the number of users supported on a WAN
link.

The response time benefits with Steelhead appliances are most apparent in this test
comparing login times with and without Steelhead appliances on a fully utilized T1 line
(1.55 Mbps) at 100 ms round trip latency. With Steelhead appliances, the response time
for login is improved by 5x.

Login Time with Saturated T1 Line (seconds)

Native ICA

With Steelhead

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

These tests require tuning of the Citrix environment as well as of the deployed Steelhead
appliances.

Tuning Citrix
This section describes how to switch off native compression and encryption for ICA so
that Steelhead appliances can compress ICA. These settings are for XenApp version
4.5, Program Neighborhood v11.0.0.5357 and XenApp Web Plugin v11.000. Specifics
could vary for other versions.

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Perform the following on each client:

1. Start  Run and enter “regedit”

2. In regedit, open
My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\ICA
Client\Engine\Configuration\Advanced\Modules\TCP/IP

3. Change the value of “Compress” and “Encrypt” from “On” to “Off”

4. If using Program Neighborhood:

a. Open Program Neighborhood (Start  Programs  Citrix  Program
Neighborhood)
b. Right click on the connection under test and click “Properties”
c. Open the “Options” tab and uncheck “Use data compression”, and “Use
disk cache for bitmaps”. Ensure that “Encryption Level” is set to “Basic”.

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Perform the following on the XenApp server:

1. Start  Run and enter “regedit”

2. In regedit, open
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal
Server\WinStations\ICA-Tcp

3. Change the value of “MinEncryptionLevel” from “1” to “0”

4. If using XenApp Web Plugin

a. Open the Citrix Access Management Console
b. Right click on the application under test and click “Properties”

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

c. Go to “Advanced  Client options” in the left pane

d. Ensure that “Encryption” is set to “Basic”

Note that it is also possible to apply the client settings via Active Directory using GPO;
the full details for doing so are beyond the scope of this document.

Tuning Steelhead Appliances

These settings are specific to RiOS 5.5

1. Change the datastore SDR policy to in memory SDR (aka SDR-M) for both
Steelhead appliances in the Web UI
On both the client side Steelhead (CSH) and the server side Steelhead (SSH), go
to Configure  Optimization  Performance
a. Change “Adaptive Data Streamlining Modes” to “SDR-M”.
b. Click “Apply”

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

2. On both Steelhead appliances create a port label for ICA in the Web UI
Under Configure  Networking  Port Labels
a. Click on “Add a New Port Label”
b. For Name, use “ICA”
c. For Ports, use “2598, 1494”
d. Click “Add”

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

3. Create an in-path rule for the newly created ICA port

On the CSH Web UI go to Configure  Optimization  In-Path Rules.
a. Click “Add a New In-Path Rule”
b. Set “Position” to “Start”
c. Set “Port” to “ICA”
d. Set “Neural Framing Mode” to “Never”
e. Click Add.

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

4. On both Steelhead appliances, enable QoS and MX-TCP which will guarantee
bandwidth, low latency and per-flow-bandwidth-fairness.
Under Configure  Networking  QoS Classification
a. Check “Enable QoS Classification and Enforcement”
b. Check “Enable QoS on wan0_0 with WAN throughput (kbps)”
c. Enter the value to the size of the WAN pipe.

5. On both Steelhead appliances, under Configure  Networking  QoS

Classification
a. Click on “Add a New QoS class”
b. Set Class Name: ICA
c. Set Latency Priority: Real-Time
d. Set Guaranteed Bandwidth to the value you would like reserved for ICA.
For these tests, it was set at 60%.
e. Set Queue: mxtcp
f. Click “Add”

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

6. On the client-side steelhead appliance, create a QoS rule under Configure 

Networking  QoS Classification. Click on “Add a New QoS Rule”.
a. Insert Rule At: Start
b. Class Name: ICA
c. Destination Port: ICA
d. Traffic Type: Optimized
e. Click “Add”

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

7. On the server-side steelhead appliance, create a QoS rule under Configure 

Networking  QoS Classification. Click on “Add a New QoS Rule”. Make the
following modifications:
a. Insert Rule At: Start
b. Class Name: ICA
c. Source Port: ICA
d. Traffic Type: Optimized
e. Click “Add”

And that’s it. Your Citrix environments and the Steelhead appliances are set up to
optimize ICA traffic.

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Optimization of Citrix ICA with Steelhead Appliances

Summary
Enterprises that have deployed Citrix XenApp Server will see added benefit by using
Steelhead appliances to support more users on their WAN links. This document details
the performance benefits they can expect and the configuration settings needed on both
the Citrix XenApp server and on Steelhead appliances.

About Riverbed
Riverbed Technology is the IT infrastructure performance company. The Riverbed family
of wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions liberates businesses from common IT
constraints by increasing application performance, enabling consolidation, and providing
enterprise-wide network and application visibility – all while eliminating the need to
increase bandwidth, storage or servers. Thousands of companies with distributed
operations use Riverbed to make their IT infrastructure faster, less expensive and more
responsive. Additional information about Riverbed (NASDAQ: RVBD) is available at
www.riverbed.com

Riverbed Technology, Inc. Riverbed Technology Ltd. Riverbed Technology Pte. Ltd. Riverbed Technology K.K.
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www.riverbed.com Tel: +44 1344 354910 Tel: +65 6508-7400 Tel: +81 3 5419 1990

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