XenServer, Hyper-V, and ESXi - Architecture, API, and Coding_Humair_Ahmed_
XenServer, Hyper-V, and ESXi hypervisor comparison in regards to market share, architecture/installation, and APIs/coding. Technical details, demos, and code provided. Visit my blog at http://humairahmed.com/blog/.
xen server 5.6, provisioning server 5.6 — технические детали и планы на будущееDenis Gundarev
The document discusses new features and enhancements in XenServer 5.6 and Provisioning Server 5.6, including increased scalability, dynamic memory control, live memory snapshots, role-based administration, and self-service portal capabilities. It also provides details on the different edition offerings.
- vSphere 5.0 introduces new features for platforms, networking, availability, vMotion, DRS/DPM, vCenter Server, storage, and Site Recovery Manager.
- Key enhancements include support for larger VMs, 3D graphics, more devices, an ESXi firewall, image builder tool, and auto deploy for faster host provisioning using host profiles.
- Auto deploy allows rapid initial deployment and patching of ESXi hosts using a "on the fly" model coordinated with vSphere Host Profiles.
Overview of my VMware vSphere 5.1 with ESXi and vCenter class. Get an overview of the most powerful, enterprise class private cloud platform available.
Top Troubleshooting Tips and Techniques for Citrix XenServer DeploymentsDavid McGeough
This session will provide an expert insight into the most common issues encountered by Customers, Partners and Support engineers.
It’s a feature packed agenda which gets to the point quickly and concentrates on the issues we encounter continuously with XenServer deployments.
This document provides an overview of vMotion capabilities in VMware vSphere, including:
- Types of virtual machine migrations like vMotion, Storage vMotion, and shared-nothing vMotion.
- Requirements for vMotion like compatible CPUs and network connectivity.
- Enhanced features in vSphere 6 like separate vMotion networking stacks and long distance vMotion.
- Best practices for vMotion planning, limitations, and troubleshooting migration errors.
Mythbusting goes virtual What's new in vSphere 5.1Eric Sloof
The document summarizes new features in vSphere 5.1 that address common myths about virtualization limitations. It discusses that vMotion can now occur without shared storage using enhanced vMotion, vSphere management no longer requires Windows with the new web client, vSphere Replication provides site disaster recovery without SRM, the VMFS host limit for linked clones increased from 8 to 32, and distributed switch configurations can now be backed up and restored.
Hyper-V vs. vSphere: Understanding the DifferencesSolarWinds
For more information on Virtualization Manager visit: http://www.solarwinds.com/virtualization-manager.aspx
Watch this webcast: http://www.solarwinds.com/resources/webcasts/hyper-v-vs-vsphere-understanding-the-differences.html
Watch this webinar with Scott Lowe, Founder and Managing Consultant at The 1610 Group, and SolarWinds virtualization expert Jonathan Reeve where they discuss “Hyper-V vs. vSphere: Understanding the differences.”
The virtualization market is abuzz with talk of different hypervisors – most prominently VMware ESX® versus Microsoft Hyper-V®, who together own over 90% of the market. Small and medium businesses are already moving quickly toward Hyper-V, and a growing number of larger organizations are beginning to put plans in place to transition some portion of their environment from ESX to Hyper-V.
In this webcast we explore the reasons for these changes and the ecosystems for these two platforms both now and in the future. We also take a look ahead to what is known about Hyper-V 3.0 and why it warrants an even deeper look when evaluating hypervisors for your future virtualization deployments.
VMware vCloud® Director™ (vCloud Director) orchestrates the provisioning of software-defned datacenter
services, to deliver complete virtual datacenters for easy consumption in minutes. Software-defned datacenter
services and virtual datacenters fundamentally simplify infrastructure provisioning and enable IT to move at the
speed of business.
Numerous enhancements are included within vCloud Director 5.1, making it the best infrastructure-as-a-service
(IaaS) solution in the marketplace today. This document highlights some of these key enhancements and is
targeted toward users who are familiar with previous vCloud Director releases.
This document provides an overview of virtualization using KVM and Xen hypervisors. It defines full and para virtualization approaches and type 1 and type 2 hypervisors. It describes the X86 architecture model and how virtualization abstracts privileged instructions. It then discusses parameters for evaluating hypervisor efficiency and provides descriptions of the open source KVM and Xen hypervisors, comparing their architectures, supported features, and operating systems. Key differences between KVM and Xen are outlined related to hardware support, complexity, paravirtualization, and memory management.
Xen server 6.1 technical sales presentationsolarisyougood
The document provides an overview of XenServer 6.1. It describes key features of XenServer including that it is a robust, widely deployed, advanced, and trusted hypervisor. It also summarizes features such as high availability, live migration, resource pooling, management tools, and support for virtual desktop, enterprise, and cloud workloads. Finally, it discusses XenServer editions, licensing, support options, and compares XenServer to vSphere.
Hyper-V Best Practices & Tips and TricksAmit Gatenyo
This document discusses best practices for configuring Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines. It recommends:
- Using Server Core installation and dedicating hosts to the Hyper-V role for improved security and reliability.
- Properly sizing host CPUs, memory, and storage and separating networks for management, storage, and VMs.
- Configuring virtual machines with fixed VHDs, proper RAM and network settings, and latest integration components.
- Implementing security practices like regular patching of VMs and limiting processor usage to prevent overcommitment.
- Using VSS-aware backups and excluding unnecessary files/folders from antivirus scans to optimize performance.
The document provides an introduction to VMware vSphere distributed switches. It lists the benefits of distributed switches over standard switches, describes the distributed switch architecture, and discusses how to create, manage, and configure distributed switches and their properties. It also covers topics like distributed port groups, VMkernel networking, NetFlow, private VLANs, and troubleshooting distributed switch issues.
Presentation by Michael Van Horenbeeck: http://twitter.com/mvanhorenbeeck. Video recording available here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/windows-server-2012-improvements-in-failover-clustering.
Selecting the correct hypervisor for CloudStack 4.5Tim Mackey
Apache CloudStack supports multiple hypervisors out of the box, and the obvious question is which hypervisor is best for CloudStack. In this session we cover core CloudStack components such as networking, storage and virtualization functions to present which hypervisor is able to meet a given requirement. The core take-away is that with an understanding of the services to be delivered the correct hypervisor, or hypervisors, can be selected with relative ease. This deck is as delivered at CloudStack Days 2015 in Seattle.
How to Optimize Microsoft Hyper-V Failover Cluster and Double PerformanceStarWind Software
High availability in a virtualized workload may require to sacrifice failover cluster performance. Using an optimized for virtualization approach on data storage and virtual machines placement and protection will give you desired boost of performance.
The presentation shows how to:
- Achieve true Hyper-V cluster high availability with just 2 Hyper-V hosts and zero storage hardware
- Boost Hyper-V cluster performance by configuring automatic dynamic optimization
- Effectively track VMs resources usage
- Save an extra 30% of Hyper-V cluster resources by utilizing agentless antivirus
Hypervisors and Virtualization - VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, and KVMvwchu
With co-presenter Maninder Singh, delivered a presentation about hypervisors and virtualization technology for an independent topic study project for the Operating System Design (EECS 4221) course at York University, Canada in October 2014.
Virtualization, briefly, is the separation of resources or requests for a service from the underlying physical delivery of that service. It is a concept in which access to a single underlying piece of hardware is coordinated so that multiple guest operating systems can share a single piece of hardware, with no guest operating system being aware that it is actually sharing anything at all.
This document provides an overview of virtualization concepts and VMware vSphere features. It begins with defining key virtualization building blocks like hypervisors, virtual machines, and virtual switches. It then covers ESXi architecture, vCenter functionality, and advanced features like vMotion, HA, and vNetworking. The document aims to give attendees a deep understanding of virtualization and how vSphere addresses various virtualization challenges.
1. A distributed switch functions as a single virtual switch across all associated hosts and is configured in vCenter Server at the data center level. It consists of a control plane in vCenter Server and I/O planes in the VMkernel of each ESXi host.
2. Key components of a distributed switch include distributed ports, uplinks, and port groups. Distributed ports can connect VMs or VMkernel interfaces. Uplinks associate physical NICs across hosts. Port groups define connection configurations.
3. Configuring a distributed switch involves adding the switch in vCenter Server, creating distributed port groups, and defining properties like uplink ports and multicast filtering mode. This provides a consistent network configuration template across
Citrix XenServer 6.1 is a virtualization platform optimized for enterprise, desktop, and cloud workloads. The key highlights include:
- Citrix being placed in the leaders quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrant report for x86 server virtualization.
- 1&1 Internet choosing XenServer for their public cloud offering due to its product maturity, open source code base, flexible pricing, and Citrix support.
- New features in 6.1 including updated guest support, Dom-0 vCPU enhancements, performance monitoring improvements, and an automated hardware test kit.
XenServer 6.1 introduces Storage XenMotion, which allows live migration of virtual machines between storage domains and across XenServer pools. This enables use cases such as upgrading storage arrays, providing tiered storage, and load balancing virtual machines. Storage XenMotion works by taking snapshots of each virtual disk and synchronously mirroring writes to the destination storage before migrating the memory of the running virtual machine. Administrators can monitor and troubleshoot Storage XenMotion using the xensource.log, SMlog, tap-ctl and xn diagnostic tools.
XenServer 5.5 - Czy można zaoszczędzić na wirtualizacji serwerów? Darmowy Xen...Peter Ocasek
The document discusses server virtualization using XenServer. It summarizes XenServer features like the Xen hypervisor, support for Intel and AMD processors, storage integration using StorageLink, high availability, workload balancing, and lab/stage management. It also describes the Citrix Essentials product which provides additional features like snapshots, backup support, and Active Directory integration for XenServer.
This 4-day VMware Advanced Administration course focuses on using vSphere tools to improve deployment, performance, monitoring, backup, recovery and best practices. Attendees will learn how to automate tasks using command line and scripting, and cover high availability clusters, fault tolerance, backup and recovery. The course also addresses patching, host profiles, security, and monitoring and tuning ESX and VM performance.
XenServer 6.0 provides improved performance, scalability, and ease of use. Key enhancements include support for 16 vCPUs and 128GB RAM per VM, 1TB physical RAM, rolling pool upgrades, and simplified installation. It also features high availability, live migration, disaster recovery with storage replication, and support for SCVMM and SCOM management. XenServer is optimized for XenDesktop deployments with features like IntelliCache for storage optimization and GPU pass-through for 3D graphics.
The document summarizes a 5-day VMware vSphere Boot Camp that covers all key aspects of VMware vSphere including installation, configuration, management, monitoring and troubleshooting. By the end of the course, attendees will be able to design, implement, deploy, configure, monitor, manage and troubleshoot VMware vSphere 4. Topics include virtualization infrastructure, ESX installation, virtual networking, shared storage, virtual machines, vCenter, resource management, high availability, backup and recovery.
This document summarizes the key announcements and new features being unveiled at VMworld 2011. It highlights how VMware's vSphere 5 and vCloud Suite help drive business transformation by enabling a flexible hybrid cloud model. The updates provide improved infrastructure scalability, availability, security and management capabilities to reduce IT complexity and costs. Specifically, vSphere 5 features like ESXi convergence, auto deploy, storage DRS, and increased VM sizing allow for more efficient provisioning and resource optimization.
How Can Hypervisors Leverage Advanced Storage Features ? - VMFS(x) on the storage attached to the ESX/ESXi hosts works perfectly fine, but the network usage(IP/FC/etc) goes up significantly when the storage is coming from NAS or SAN.The goal is to offload the file operations to the NAS/SAN based Arrays and leverage maximum benefits to increase I/O performance,storage utilization and reduced network usage.
XenServer 6.0 includes enhancements to simplify management, improve performance and scale, and integrate additional high availability and disaster recovery capabilities. Key features include integrated StorageLink for storage management, workload balancing via a virtual appliance, vApps for controlling VM startup order in HA and DR scenarios, and support for Microsoft SCVMM and SCOM. GPU pass-through and IntelliCache are optimized for XenDesktop deployments.
XenServer Virtualization In Cloud EnvironmentsTim Mackey
= As presented at the CloudStack Silicon Valley Meetup in September 2015. =
XenServer is a virtualization platform which has been deployed in a variety of industries and to support a multitude of workloads. In this session we discuss some of the components which make it valuable not just for traditional server and desktop virtualization, but also within "the cloud". This includes discussion of VM density, network scalability, containers (such as Docker) and GPU virtualization. We end with coverage of how XenServer templates are represented within Apache CloudStack.
Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) is an open-source virtualization platform based on Citrix's XenServer. It provides a complete virtualization stack including automation, resource pooling, and event management. XenServer has had significant adoption with over 1 million downloads and is used by over 50% of Fortune 500 companies. While many organizations use VMware for critical workloads, Citrix and Microsoft are often used alongside for non-critical systems and cost savings due to their lower prices.
The document summarizes CloudStack architecture plans for the future. It discusses moving to management server clusters per availability zone rather than per region. It also discusses using an object storage system for templates and snapshots rather than a separate NFS server. Finally, it discusses a possible future model where CloudStack manages existing virtualization clusters rather than deploying and managing its own system VMs.
IT Camp - Vision Solutions PresentationHarold Wong
The document discusses topics around datacenter management including virtualization, migrations, disaster recovery, and System Center integration. It provides an agenda for a Microsoft IT Camp covering these topics. It then discusses challenges of managing multiple datacenters with different hardware, SLAs, and acquiring new sites and technologies. Virtualization can help with server provisioning, resource allocation, reducing hardware complexity, and lowering costs. The document also covers choosing and using hypervisors, migrating physical and virtual servers between hypervisors and to the cloud, and technologies for migration and disaster recovery including replication and system state technologies. It highlights Double-Take software for migration and availability which uses real-time replication and supports physical to virtual, virtual to virtual, and storage migrations along
VM6 VMex is a software solution that consolidates virtualization management components like virtual shared storage, advanced clustering for high availability, virtual desktop infrastructure, and virtualization management/monitoring into a single product. It addresses challenges like limited capacity, downtime, and high costs by extending virtualization benefits without complexity. VM6 VMex uses existing servers and storage to automatically add workload, network, storage, management and monitoring capabilities without requiring expensive hardware or SANs.
CloudStack is an open source cloud computing platform that allows users to manage their infrastructure as an automated system. It provides self-service access to computing resources like servers, storage, and networking via a web interface. CloudStack supports multiple hypervisors and public/private cloud deployment strategies. The core components include hosts, primary storage, clusters, pods, networks, secondary storage, and zones which are managed by CloudStack servers.
The document discusses System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012. It provides an introduction to new features in SCVMM 2012 including highly available VMM servers, upgrade capabilities, custom properties, expanded PowerShell support, bare metal provisioning, hypervisor support, network and storage management, update management, dynamic optimization, power management, and more. It also includes an agenda for a presentation on SCVMM 2012 that will demonstrate some of these new capabilities.
The document summarizes virtual private servers (VPS) and their advantages over shared and dedicated server hosting. A VPS provides dedicated server resources through server virtualization without the high costs of dedicated hosting. It offers full control and customization abilities with performance and security guarantees isolated from other users on the shared server. Attendees of the MIVA Small Business Conference 2006 were offered a free month trial of VPS hosting.
This document summarizes a presentation on virtualization solutions from Microsoft and VMware. It provides an overview of key virtualization concepts and the benefits of virtualization. It then covers considerations for capacity planning and highlights features of virtualization management, high availability, live migration, monitoring and guest support in both Microsoft and VMware solutions. Maximum supported virtual machines, CPUs, RAM and versions are listed. The presentation concludes with emphasizing the importance of proper planning and analysis to determine the best virtualization platform and realize ROI/TCO benefits.
Similar to Xen server 6.1 technical sales presentation (20)
The document discusses eG Innovations' performance management monitoring solution. It provides an overview of eG and how it can monitor virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. eG offers deep visibility into all layers of VDI, including the virtualization platform, connection broker, profile server, and individual user sessions. It monitors over 150 applications and infrastructure components to provide comprehensive performance monitoring of complex VDI environments.
Good news from the Worldwide Consulting Desktop & Apps (DnA) team! We’ve just finished updating theVirtual Desktop Handbook for XenDesktop 7, StoreFront 2.0 and XenServer 6.2.
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is an architect’s guide to desktop virtualization. It provides you with the methodology, experience and best practices you need to successfully design your own desktop virtualization solution.
Updates in this release include:
Resource requirements for Windows 8 and Server 2012
XD controller sizing
XenDesktop 7 policy guidelines
Database sizing for XenDesktop 7
SQL 2012 chapter
StoreFront 2.0 chapter
32-bit or 64-bit desktop OS guidance
Desktop group & StoreFront integration
In addition, we’ve also included a Citrix policy quick reference spreadsheet so that you can quickly identify default, baseline and template settings from XenDesktop 5 / XenApp 6 all the way up to XenDesktop 7. Thanks go out to Michael Havens, Maria Chang and Uzair Ali for creating this great reference spreadsheet.
I hope you find this handbook useful during your next desktop virtualization project.
And we’re not done yet, future updates will include:
Bandwidth
Hyper-V 2012
PVS 7
User data
And more …
The Virtual Desktop Handbook is not the only resource to guide you through your desktop virtualization journey. Citrix also provides Project Accelerator; an interactive online tool creating customized sizing and design recommendations based on the methodology, best practices and expert advice identified within this handbook.
You can still reach the XenDesktop 5 handbook using the old URL – CTX136546
Andy Baker – Architect
Worldwide Consulting
Desktop & Apps Team
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/10/10/new-xendesktop-7-handbook-published/
This document provides guidance on designing network configurations for Citrix XenServer. It discusses basic XenServer networking concepts, such as connecting virtual machines to networks. It then presents several sample networking scenarios and considerations for specifying networking requirements. The document also offers recommendations for designing XenServer networks, including using the distributed virtual switch, network redundancy, and bonding. Additionally, it covers designing storage networks and verifying XenServer networking configurations.
1. XenMobile allows you to manage mobile devices, apps, and data through its main components: NetScaler Gateway, XenMobile Device Manager, XenMobile App Edition, MDX Toolkit, and Worx apps.
2. You can deploy the XenMobile components in various configurations depending on your needs, such as deploying only NetScaler Gateway and App Controller to enable remote access to apps, or deploying all components for comprehensive device, app, and data management.
3. A common deployment involves NetScaler Gateway for secure remote access, Device Manager for mobile device management, and App Controller for mobile app and data access, with optional integrations with StoreFront and ShareFile.
This document discusses how Citrix CloudBridge can optimize video delivery in XenApp and XenDesktop environments through features like video caching, disk-based compression, and Quality of Service (QoS). Video caching improves performance by serving cached video over LAN speeds. Disk-based compression reduces bandwidth usage by eliminating duplicate video content. QoS allows administrators to classify and prioritize different types of video traffic to control bandwidth utilization. Together these features enhance the user experience and reduce WAN bandwidth consumption of video streams in virtual desktop and application environments.
The document contains event log entries from Citrix services and applications. It includes information, warning, and error log entries related to services starting and stopping, license checks, configuration changes, virtual memory optimization, and HDX MediaStream for Flash. Issues include services not starting, database errors, license failures, and client incompatibility.
Citrix CloudPlatform is a turn-key cloud solution that provides fast time to value through a simple one-package installation. It is proven to scale beyond 40,000 hosts per region and multiple regions, providing users virtually unlimited computing resources on demand. It offers granular tracking and metering of resource usage for showback/chargeback. The solution is hypervisor and storage agnostic, and supports enterprise-grade networking and security for multi-tenant environments through logical and physical isolation.
Cloud portal business manager product overviewNuno Alves
CloudPortal Business Manager is a cloud services delivery platform that allows organizations to aggregate, simplify the delivery of, and provide self-service access to internal, external, and third party cloud and IT services through a centralized catalog. It automates and streamlines provisioning, billing, user management and other operational aspects of managing cloud services. Key benefits include empowering users with self-service access, delivering any type of cloud service, and helping organizations and service providers transition to and manage an IT-as-a-Service model.
Reference architecture dir and es - finalNuno Alves
Citrix Director with EdgeSight provides a complete troubleshooting window to quickly resolve issues around desktops or applications. Previous versions of XenApp leveraged EdgeSight, while XenDesktop deployments looked to Director for assistance. Starting in XenDesktop 7, these two great technologies have been merged into one central point for troubleshooting.
The purpose of this document will be to provide you an overviewof all the necessary parts required to give your company a holistic view. With this being a new product with new features, this document will provide administrators the tools to feel comfortable moving forward with monitoring of a XenDesktop 7 deployment.
This document will cover the configuration of the Director server, as well as how to interface with the Insight Center provided from our NetScaler product line. For more of an overview of the EdgeSight product, please reference the whitepapersfound at www.citrix.com/xendesktop.
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX139051
Provisioning server high_availability_considerations2Nuno Alves
The purpose of this document is to give the target audience an overview about the critical components of a Citrix
Provisioning Server infrastructure with regards to a high availability implementation. These considerations focus on the
following areas:
• Virtual Disk (vDisk) Storage
• Write Cache Placement
• SQL Database
• TFTP Service
• DHCP Service
Xd planning guide - storage best practicesNuno Alves
This document provides guidelines for planning storage infrastructure for Citrix XenDesktop environments. It discusses organizational requirements like alignment with IT strategy and high availability needs. Technical requirements covered include performance needs like typical I/O rates and functional requirements like supported protocols. The document recommends avoiding bottlenecks, choosing appropriate RAID levels based on read/write ratios, validating storage performance, and involving storage vendors in planning.
This document is an introduction to Disk Storage technologies and its terminology. Within this
document basic disk and storage architectures as well as storage protocols and common fault
tolerance technologies will be discussed. It is not intended as a comprehensive guide for planning
and configuring storage infrastructures, nor as a storage training handbook.
Due to scope, this guide provides some device-specific information. For additional device- specific
configuration, Citrix suggests reviewing the storage vendor‘s documentation, the storage vendor‘s
hardware compatibility list, and contacting the vendor‘s technical support if necessary.
For design best practices and planning guidance, Citrix recommends reviewing the Storage Best
Practices and Planning Guide (http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130632)
This document provides an overview of how XenServer manages storage supplied to virtual machines. It describes how Linux views physical disks and partitions, as well as logical volume management and network file systems. The key concepts covered include storage repositories, virtual disk images, storage attributes, and different storage types like local, NFS, Fibre Channel, and appliance-based storage. The target audience is IT specialists who need to understand XenServer's storage concepts and terminology for planning virtualized infrastructures.
Citrix XenDesktop 7 provides a unified framework for virtual desktop and application solutions based on a 5-layer model. The blueprint details architectures for standardized desktops, customizable desktops, and applications. It recommends Machine Creation Services for image delivery and defines policies, personalization settings, and control components to meet requirements for different user groups accessing resources from various locations.
XenDesktop relies on the hypervisor for many core functions, including VM creation, power operations, performance and redundancy. Therefore, it is important that you take the time to design an appropriate hypervisor infrastructure (XenServer, Hyper-V or vSphere). Otherwise, you may experience performance, functionality or even reliability issues.
Most information required to design a XenDesktop deployment on your chosen hypervisor platform is available publicly, but it can be hard to find since it’s spread across a multitude of knowledge base articles or white papers. In order to simplify and speed-up the design process, we’re in the process of consolidating the information that you need into a single document and augmenting it with recommendations and best practices. We’ve just finished incorporating the Hyper-V 2008 R2 and SCVMM 2012 planning section into the latest release of the Citrix Virtual Desktop Handbook, which includes important design decisions relating to this hypervisor, for example:
Selecting and sizing the right physical hardware for virtual machines
Knowing what storage options available for Hyper-V 2008 R2
What type of networks to build on the Hyper-V host
How to size the SCVMM servers
Designing a highly available SCVMM solution
Planning an effective failover cluster
The products covered in this current release of the handbook include XenDesktop 5.6, XenApp 6.5, Provisioning Services 6.x and XenClient Enterprise 4.5. A version of the Virtual Desktop Handbook covering XenDesktop 7.x, Provisioning Services 7, Hyper V 2012 R2 and SCVMM 2012 R2 is in the works with an initial release scheduled later in Q4. As always your feedback is welcomed.
http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/09/05/citrix-virtual-desktop-handbook-hyper-v-update/
New eBook! Citrix howto build an all star app desktop virtualization teamNuno Alves
This document discusses how to build an effective team for an app and desktop virtualization project. It outlines four key competencies (prepare, assess and design, deploy, support) and the skills needed for each. It also provides principles for building a successful team, such as finding people with the right attitude, creating a learning culture, getting executive buy-in, and leveraging free resources. The overall message is that the people on the team and the skills they have are critical to the success of an app and desktop virtualization project.
CTX138217 - IntelliCache Reduction in IOPS: XenDesktop 5.6 FP1 on XenServer 6.1 - Citrix Knowledge Center http://ow.ly/o3Ma4
The purpose of this document is to provide testing results based on MCS-delivered streamed virtual desktops leveraging IntelliCache
This document provides guidelines for planning and designing a Citrix StoreFront infrastructure. StoreFront plays a critical role in user authentication, resource enumeration, and aggregation. Key recommendations include:
- Deploy at least two StoreFront servers and use an intelligent load balancer like NetScaler for high availability and load balancing.
- Implement SSL certificates to encrypt communication between Receiver and StoreFront. Also consider encrypting backend traffic between StoreFront and XenApp/XenDesktop controllers.
- Configure multiple controllers per XenApp farm/XenDesktop site and use load balancing for large environments or high login loads.
- Configure highly available internal and external beacon points to determine user network location.
- Use application
NetScaler Deployment Guide for XenDesktop7Nuno Alves
This guide demonstrates how to deploy Citrix NetScaler in conjunction with Citrix XenDesktop 7 with a focus on both simplicity in configuration and advanced features not easily delivered with other products. This guide shows how to provision the XenDesktop 7 infrastructure, the NetScaler appliance and NetScaler Insight Center services to extend Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure and services to remote users in small to medium-size enterprises.
Webinar: Transforming Substation Automation with Open Source SolutionsDanBrown980551
This webinar will provide an overview of open source software and tooling for digital substation automation in energy systems. The speakers will provide a brief overview of how open source collaborative development works in general, then delve into how it is driving innovation and accelerating the pace of substation automation. Examples of specific open source solutions and real-world implementations by utilities will be discussed. Participants will walk away with a better understanding of the challenges of automating substations, the ecosystem of solutions available to help, and best practices for implementing them.
Project Delivery Methodology on a page with activities, deliverablesCLIVE MINCHIN
I've not found a 1 pager like this anywhere so I created it based on my experiences. This 1 pager details a waterfall style project methodology with defined phases, activities, deliverables, assumptions. There's nothing in here that conflicts with commonsense.
Increase Quality with User Access Policies - July 2024Peter Caitens
⭐️ Increase Quality with User Access Policies ⭐️, presented by Peter Caitens and Adam Best of Salesforce. View the slides from this session to hear all about “User Access Policies” and how they can help you onboard users faster with greater quality.
Securiport Gambia is a civil aviation and intelligent immigration solutions provider founded in 2001. The company was created to address security needs unique to today’s age of advanced technology and security threats. Securiport Gambia partners with governments, coming alongside their border security to create and implement the right solutions.
Multimodal Embeddings (continued) - South Bay Meetup SlidesZilliz
Frank Liu will walk through the history of embeddings and how we got to the cool embedding models used today. He'll end with a demo on how multimodal RAG is used.
Discover practical tips and tricks for streamlining your Marketo programs from end to end. Whether you're new to Marketo or looking to enhance your existing processes, our expert speakers will provide insights and strategies you can implement right away.
UiPath Community Day Amsterdam: Code, Collaborate, ConnectUiPathCommunity
Welcome to our third live UiPath Community Day Amsterdam! Come join us for a half-day of networking and UiPath Platform deep-dives, for devs and non-devs alike, in the middle of summer ☀.
📕 Agenda:
12:30 Welcome Coffee/Light Lunch ☕
13:00 Event opening speech
Ebert Knol, Managing Partner, Tacstone Technology
Jonathan Smith, UiPath MVP, RPA Lead, Ciphix
Cristina Vidu, Senior Marketing Manager, UiPath Community EMEA
Dion Mes, Principal Sales Engineer, UiPath
13:15 ASML: RPA as Tactical Automation
Tactical robotic process automation for solving short-term challenges, while establishing standard and re-usable interfaces that fit IT's long-term goals and objectives.
Yannic Suurmeijer, System Architect, ASML
13:30 PostNL: an insight into RPA at PostNL
Showcasing the solutions our automations have provided, the challenges we’ve faced, and the best practices we’ve developed to support our logistics operations.
Leonard Renne, RPA Developer, PostNL
13:45 Break (30')
14:15 Breakout Sessions: Round 1
Modern Document Understanding in the cloud platform: AI-driven UiPath Document Understanding
Mike Bos, Senior Automation Developer, Tacstone Technology
Process Orchestration: scale up and have your Robots work in harmony
Jon Smith, UiPath MVP, RPA Lead, Ciphix
UiPath Integration Service: connect applications, leverage prebuilt connectors, and set up customer connectors
Johans Brink, CTO, MvR digital workforce
15:00 Breakout Sessions: Round 2
Automation, and GenAI: practical use cases for value generation
Thomas Janssen, UiPath MVP, Senior Automation Developer, Automation Heroes
Human in the Loop/Action Center
Dion Mes, Principal Sales Engineer @UiPath
Improving development with coded workflows
Idris Janszen, Technical Consultant, Ilionx
15:45 End remarks
16:00 Community fun games, sharing knowledge, drinks, and bites 🍻
Welcome to our third live UiPath Community Day Amsterdam! Come join us for a half-day of networking and UiPath Platform deep-dives, for devs and non-devs alike, in the middle of summer ☀.
📕 Agenda:
12:30 Welcome Coffee/Light Lunch ☕
13:00 Event opening speech
Ebert Knol, Managing Partner, Tacstone Technology
Jonathan Smith, UiPath MVP, RPA Lead, Ciphix
Cristina Vidu, Senior Marketing Manager, UiPath Community EMEA
Dion Mes, Principal Sales Engineer, UiPath
13:15 ASML: RPA as Tactical Automation
Tactical robotic process automation for solving short-term challenges, while establishing standard and re-usable interfaces that fit IT's long-term goals and objectives.
Yannic Suurmeijer, System Architect, ASML
13:30 PostNL: an insight into RPA at PostNL
Showcasing the solutions our automations have provided, the challenges we’ve faced, and the best practices we’ve developed to support our logistics operations.
Leonard Renne, RPA Developer, PostNL
13:45 Break (30')
14:15 Breakout Sessions: Round 1
Modern Document Understanding in the cloud platform: AI-driven UiPath Document Understanding
Mike Bos, Senior Automation Developer, Tacstone Technology
Process Orchestration: scale up and have your Robots work in harmony
Jon Smith, UiPath MVP, RPA Lead, Ciphix
UiPath Integration Service: connect applications, leverage prebuilt connectors, and set up customer connectors
Johans Brink, CTO, MvR digital workforce
15:00 Breakout Sessions: Round 2
Automation, and GenAI: practical use cases for value generation
Thomas Janssen, UiPath MVP, Senior Automation Developer, Automation Heroes
Human in the Loop/Action Center
Dion Mes, Principal Sales Engineer @UiPath
Improving development with coded workflows
Idris Janszen, Technical Consultant, Ilionx
15:45 End remarks
16:00 Community fun games, sharing knowledge, drinks, and bites 🍻
Leading Bigcommerce Development Services for Online RetailersSynapseIndia
As a leading provider of Bigcommerce development services, we specialize in creating powerful, user-friendly e-commerce solutions. Our services help online retailers increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
SCREENING OF RECOMBINANTS - BLUE AND WHITE SCREENING (MCQS)sabaridaran1310
Introduction about genetic engineering
Steps in rDNA Technology
Screening of recombinants
Selection of recombinants
Blue and white screening
Alpha complementation
Beta galatosidase
X gal
Antibiotic resistance screening
Replica plate technique
Colony hybridization
Screening by Immunological assay
Immunological screening
Protein activity
Enzyme activity
MCQS RELATED TO SCREENING OF RECOMBINANTS
Welcome to the XenServer Technical Presentation. In this presentation we’ll be covering many of the core features of XenServer, and we’ll have the option of diving a bit deeper in areas which you may be interested in.
For those of you unfamiliar with XenServer, XenServer is a bare metal hypervisor which directly competes with vSphere, Hyper-V and KVM. It is derived from the open source Xen project, and has been in active development for over six years. In this section we’ll cover the core architectural items of Xen based deployments.
Since XenServer is based on the open source Xen project, it’s important to understand how Xen itself works. Xen is a bare metal hypervisor which directly leverages virtualization features present in most CPUs from Intel and AMD since approximately 2007. These CPUs all feature VT-D or AMD-V instructions which allow virtual guests to run without needing performance robbing emulation. When Xen was first developed, the success of Vmware ESX was largely based on a series of highly optimized emulation routines. Those routines were needed to address shortcomings in the original x86 instruction set which created obstacles to running multiple general purpose “protected mode” operating systems such as Windows 2000 in parallel. With Xen, and XenServer, those obstacles were overcome through use of both the VT-D instruction set extensions and para-virtualization. Paravirtualization is a concept in which either the operating system is modified, or specific drivers are modified to become “virtualization aware”. Linux itself can optionally run as paravirtualized, while Windows requires the use of both hardware assistance and paravirtualized drivers to run at maximum potential on a hypervisor.These advances served to spur early adoption of Xen based platforms whose performance outstripped ESX in many critical applications. Eventually VMW released ESXi to leverage VT-D and paravirtualization, but it wasn’t until 2011 and vSphere 5 that ESXi became the only hypervisor for vSphere.
This is a slide that shows a blowup of the Xen virtualization engine and the virtualization stack “Domain 0” with a Windows and Linux virtual machine. The green arrows show memory and CPU access which goes through the Xen engine down to the hardware. In many cases Xen will get out of the way of the virtual machine and allow it to go right to the hardware.Xen is a thin layer of software that runs right on top of the hardware, Xen is only around 50,000 lines of code. The lines show the path of I/O traffic on the server. The storage and network I/O connect through a high performance memory bus in Xen to the Domain 0 environment. In the domain 0 these requests are sent through standard Linux device drivers to the hardware below.
Domain 0 is a Linux VM with higher priority to the hardware than the guest operating systems. Domain 0 manages the network and storage I/O of all guest VMs, and because it uses Linux device drivers, a broad range of physical devices are supported
Linux VMs include paravirtualized kernels and drivers. Storage and network resources are accessed through Domain 0, while CPU and memory are accessed through Xen to the hardwarehttp://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Mainline_Linux_Kernel_Configs
Windows VMs use paravirtualized drivers to access storage and network resources through Domain 0. XenServer is designed to utilize the virtualization capabilities of Intel VT and AMD-V enabled processors. Hardware virtualization enables high performance virtualization of the Windows kernel without using legacy emulation technology
XenServer is designed to address the virtualization needs of three critical markets.Within the Enterprise Data Center, XenServer solves the traditional server virtualization objectives of server consolidation, hardware independence while providing a high performance platform with a very straight forward management model.Since XenServer is a Citrix product, it only stands to reason that it can draw upon the vast experience Citrix has in optimizing the desktop experience and provide optimizations specific to desktop workloads.Lastly, with the emergence of mainstream cloud infrastructures, XenServer can draw upon the heritage of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace to provide a highly optimized platform for cloud deployments of any scale.
Since all these use cases depend on a solid data center platform, let’s start by exploring the features critical to successful enterprise virtualization
Successful datacenter solutions require an easy to use management solution, and XenServer is no different. For XenServer this management solution is called XenCenter. If you’re familiar with vCenter for vSphere, you’ll see a number of common themes. XenCenter is the management console for all XenServer operations, and while there is a powerful CLI and API for XenServer, the vast majority of customers perform daily management tasks from within XenCenter. These tasks include starting and stopping VM, managing the core infrastructure such as storage and networks, through to configuring advanced features such as HA, workload placement and alerting. This single pane of glass also allows administrators to directly access the consoles of the virtual machines themselves. As you would expect, there is a fairly granular set of permissions which can be applied, and I’ll cover that topic in just a little bit.
Of course any management solution which doesn’t have role based administration isn’t ready for the modern enterprise. XenServer fully supports granular access to objects and through the distributed management model ensures that access is uniformly applied across resource pools regardless of access method. In other words, the access available from within XenCenter is exactly the same access available via CLI or through API calls.
What differentiates Live Storage Migration from Live VM Migration is that with Live Storage Migration the storage used for the virtual disks is moved from one storage location while the VM itself may not change virtualization hosts. In XenServer, Live VM Migration is branded XenMotion and logically Live Storage Migration became Storage XenMotion. With Storage XenMotion, live migration occurs using a shared nothing architecture which effectively means that other than having a reliable network connection between source and destination, no other elements of the virtualization infrastructure need be common. What this means is that with Storage XenMotion you can support a large number of storage agility tasks, all from within XenCenterFor example:Upgrade a storage arrayProvide tiered storage arraysUpgrade a pool with VMs on local storageRebalance VMs between XenServer pools, or CloudStack clusters
One of the key problems facing virtualization admins is the introduction of newer servers into older resource pools. There are several ways vendors have chosen to solve this problem. They can either “downgrade” the cluster to a known level (say Pentium Pro or Core 2), disallow mixed CPU pools, or level the pool to the lowest common feature set. The core issue when selecting the correct solution is to understand how workloads actually leverage the CPU of the host. When a guest has direct access to the CPU (in other words there is no emulation shim in place), then that guest also has the ability to interrogate the CPU for its capabilities. Once those capabilities are known, the guest can optimize its execution to leverage the most advanced features it finds and thus maximize its performance. The downsize is that if the guest is migrated to a host which lacks a given CPU feature, the guest is likely to crash in a spectacular way. Vendors which define a specific processor architecture for the “base” are effectively deciding that feature set in advance and then hooking the CPU feature set instruction and returning that base set of features. The net result could be performance well below that possible with the “least capable” processor in the pool. XenServer takes a different approach and looks at the feature set capabilities of the CPU and leverages the FlexMigration instruction set within the CPU to create a feature mask. The idea is to ensure that only the specific features present in the newer processor are disabled and that the resource pool runs at its maximum potential. This model ensures that live migrations are completely safe, regardless of the processor architectures; so long as the processors come from the same vendor.
The ability to overcommit memory in a hypervisor was born at a time when the ability to overcommit a CPU far outpaced the ability to populate physical memory in a server in a cost effective manner. The end objective of overcommiting memory is to increase the quantity of VMs which a given host can run. This lead to multiple ways of extracting more memory from a virtualization host than was physically present. The four most common ways of solving this problem are commonly referred to as “transparent page sharing”, “memory ballooning”, “page swap” and “memory compression”. While each has the potential to solve part of the problem, using multiple solutions often yielded the best outcome. Transparent page sharing which seeks to share the 4k memory pages used by an operating system to store its read-only code. Memory ballooning seeks to introduce a “memory balloon” which appears to consume some of the system memory and effectively share it between multiple virtual machines. “Page swap” is nothing more than placing memory pages which haven’t been accessed recently on a disk storage system, and “memory compression” seeks to compress the memory (either swapped or in memory) with a goal of creating additional free memory from commonalities in memory between virtual machines.Since this technology has been an evolutionary attempt to solve a specific problem, it stands to reason that several of the approaches offer minimal value in todays’ environment. For example, transparent page sharing assumes that the readonly memory pages in an operating system are common across VMs, but the reality is that the combination of large memory pages and memory page randomization and tainting have rendered the benefits from transparent page sharing largely ineffective. The same holds true for page swapping whose performance overhead often far exceeds the benefit. What this means is that the only truly effective solutions today are memory ballooning and memory compression. XenServer currently implements a memory balloning solution under the feature name of “dynamic memory control”. DMC leverages a balloon driver within the XenServer tools to present the guest with a known quantity of memory at system startup, and then will modify the amount of free memory seen by the guest in the even the host experiences memory pressure. It’s important to present the operating system with a known fixed memory value at system startup as that’s when the operating system defines key parameters such as cache values.
Managing a single virtual machine at a time works perfectly fine when you’re evaluating a hypervisor, or when you’re a small shop, but eventually you’re going to want to manage applications which span a group of servers as a single item. Within XenServer, this is accomplished using a vApp. At its highest level, a vApp is a container which includes one or more VMs and their associated settings. This container is manageable using all the standard XenServer management options, and importantly can participate in HA and disaster recovery planning as well as backup export operations.
VM Protection & Recovery GoalProvide a way to automatically protect VM memory and disk against failures Snapshot TypesDisk onlyDisk and memorySnapshot frequencyHourlyDailyWeekly (multiple days)Start timeSnapshot retention configurable (1-10)Archive frequencyAfter each snapshotDailyWeekly (multiple days)Start timeArchive locationCIFSNFSCompressed export
As today's hosts get more powerful, they are often tasked with hosting increasing numbers of virtual machines. For example, only a few years ago server consolidation efforts were generating consolidation ratios of 4:1 or even 8:1, today’s faster processors coupled with greater memory densities can easily support over a 20:1 consolidation ratio without significantly overcommiting CPUs. This creates significant risk of application failure in the event of a single host failure. High availability within XenServer protects your investment in virtualization by ensuring critical resources are automatically restarted in the event of a host failure. There are multiple restart options allowing you to precisely define what critical means in your environment.
The features we’ve just covered form the basis of a basic virtualized data center. Once your data center operations reach a point where you’re operating at scale which has many admins, or multiple resource pools, some of the advanced data center automation components within XenServer will start to become valuable.
When looking at storage usage within virtualized environments, there typically is either a file based or block based model, but regardless of the model the shared storage is essentially treated as if it were nothing more than a large dumb disk. Advanced features of the storage arrays aren’t used, and storage usage might be inefficient as a result. StorageLink uses specialized adapters which are designed for a given array. These adapters take full advantage of the feature set contained within the storage array. Key advantages of StorageLink over simple block based storage repositories include: Thin-provisioning, deduplication and array based snapshot management.Note:Integrated StorageLink replaces the StorageLink Gateway technology used in previous editionsLUN-per-VDIUsing array “smarts”Does not require a (virtual) machine for running StorageLink componentsRemoves SPOFSupported AdaptersNetAppDell EqualLogicEMC VMX
When resource pools are small, and the number of VMs under management are similarly low, it’s not unreasonable for a virtualization admin to make acceptable decisions about where to place a given guest for optimal performance. Once the number of VMs reaches a critical point, typically between 20-30, placement decisions and interdependencies become so complex that humans aren’t going to place VMs in the most optimal location. This is why VMW and others have implemented resource placement services, and if you’re familiar with vSphere DRS, then XenServer Workload Balancing will look very familiar. Like DRS, WLB takes into account CPU and RAM utilization when attempting to determine where the best host to start or rebalance a VM is, but unlike DRS, WLB also includes key IO metrics such as disk reads and writes and network reads and writes in those computations. This allows WLB to ensure IO dominant applications are rarely placed on the same host, and that overall resource pool operations are optimized.In addition to performing workload placement, WLB is also directly integrated into XenServer power management to perform workload consolidation on a scheduled basis. This feature allows for the consolidation of underutilized servers onto fewer hosts during evening hours, and the evacuated hosts powered down for the duration. When the morning schedule takes effect, the powered down hosts are automatically restarted and workloads rebalanced for optimal performance.Lastly, WLB incorporates a series of health and status reports suitable for both operations and audit purposes.Schedule pool policy based on time of day needsWhen starting guests, an option to “Start on optimal server” is available, and XenServer chooses the most appropriate server based on policyUsers have the ability to over-ride policy, or specify guests or hosts that are excluded from policy (eg high-demand applications)
Planning for and supporting multi-site disaster recovery within a virtualized environment can be quite complex, but with XenServer’s integrated site recovery option, we’ve taken care of the hard parts. The key to site recovery is that we take care of the VM metadata, while your storage admins take care of the array replication piece. What this means is that every iSCSI or HBA storage solution on our HCL is supported for site recovery operations, providing that it either has built-in replication or can work with third party replication. When site recovery is enabled, the VM metadata corresponding to the VMs and/or vApps you wish to protect are written to the SR containing the disk images for the VMs. When the LUNs are replicated to the secondary site, the metadata required to reconfigure those VMs is also automatically replicated. Because we’re replicating the underlying VM disk images and associated metadata, if VMs in the secondary site are running from different LUNs Integrated Site Recovery can fully support active/active use models. Note that due to VM replication, active/active will require a minimum of two LUNs.Recovery from failure, failback and testing of failover is accomplished using a wizard within XenCenter. Each step of the wizard validates that the configuration is correct and that the system is in fact in a state of “failure”.
XenServer Web Console GoalsEnable XenServer Mgmt from a Web based console Offer VM level delegation so end users can manage their VM’sWeb SS delivers Remote ManagementITadmins have long wanted a means to mange VM’s remotely via a browser based, non-windows platformEnd User Self ServiceWSS also allows IT to delegate routine management tasks to the application/VM ownerThis satisfies the more strategic goal of helping IT to enable customer self service in the datacenterFinally WSS also provides a foundation for future innovation in the areas of web based mgmt, self service and an opencloud director layer for x-platform mgmt
Performing a snapshot of a running VM using live memory snapshot allows the full state of the VM to be captured during the snapshot, all with minimal impact to the running VM. Additionally, if the Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) is enabled within Windows VMs, any services which have registered themselves with VSS will automatically quiesce during the snapshot. Examples of services which register themselves include SQL Server.XenServer supports both parallel branches for the snapshot chains, and will automatically coalesce any chains if intermediate snapshots are deleted. Additionally, snapshots can be converted to custom templates.
Desktop virtualization is a core topic in many organizations today, and while some vendors would have you believe that a general purpose hypervisor is the correct solution for desktop workloads, the reality is that desktop workloads present a very distinct usage pattern not seen with traditional server based workloads. This is one reason why when you look at Citrix XenDesktop you see it taking advantage of specific features of XenServer which are unique to desktop virtualization. In this section, we’ll cover what the Desktop Optimized XenServer looks like and what specific benefits XenServer has when XenDesktop is used as the desktop broker.
Within desktop virtualization there are two distinct classes of users, those who are using general purpose applications and those who are using graphics intensive applications. Supporting the former is readily accomplished using the traditional emulated graphics adapters found in hypervisors, but when you need the full power of a GPU for CAD, graphic design or video processing those emulated adapters are far from sufficient. This is why XenServer implemented the GPU Pass-through feature. With GPU pass-through users requiring high performance graphics can be assigned a dedicated GPU contained within the XenServer host making GPU pass-through the highest performing option on the market.
So this use traditionalcase is shown on the left. Each blade or workstation needed a GPU installed, and Windows was installed physically.On the right we have the GPU pass-thru use case. We can install a number of GPUs in the XenServer host, and assign them to the Virtual machines.The actual savings will be determined by the number of GPUs in the server, or the capabilities of the new “multi-GPU cards” coming from vendors such as nVidia.
One of the biggest areas of concern when deploying desktop virtualization isn’t the overall license costs, but the impact of shared storage. On paper if you were considering a deployment requiring 1000 active desktops, and assumed an average of 5GB per desktop, if you happened to have space for a 5 TB LUN on an existing storage array, you might be tempted to carve out that LUN and leverage it for the desktop project. Unfortunately, were you to do so you’d quickly find that while you had the space for the storage you might not have the free IOPS to satisfy both the desktop load and whatever pre-existing users were leveraging the SAN. With XenServer, we recognized that this would be a barrier to XenDesktop adoption and implemented IntelliCache to leverage the local storage on the XenServer as a template cache for the desktop images running on that host.
The key to IntelliCache is recognizing that with desktop virtualization the number of unique templates per host is minimal. In fact, to maximize the effect of IntelliCache target the minimum number of templates to the given host. At the extreme, if the number of active VMs per template requires more than a single host, then dedicating a resource pool per template might be optimal.
Hidden as due to citrix.com website optimizations due at launch, the calculator will be offline
When desktop virtualization is the target workload, the correct hypervisor solution will be one which not only provides a high performance platform, and has features designed to lower the overall deployment costs and address critical use cases, but one which offers flexibility in VM and host configurations while still offering a cost effective VM density. Since this is a classic case of use case matters, take a look at the Cisco Validated Design for XenDesktop on UCS with XenServerhttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/Virtualization/ucs_xd_xenserver_ntap.pdf
As with desktop virtualization, there are unique characteristics of cloud workloads which make a general purpose hypervisor less than idea. The vast experience Citrix has with cloud operators such as Amazon, Rackspace and SoftLayer over the years has allowed us to develop features which directly address the scalability and serviceability of cloud infrastructure.
When dealing with high VM density in cloud hosting, the standard 1Gb NICs of a few years ago simply don’t provide the level of network throughput needed for most hosting providers. This lead to 10 Gb NICs becoming commonplace, but the hypervisor overhead of processing packets for a 10 Gb network artificially limited the throughput as well. This meant that even with 10 Gb cards, wire speed was hard to attain. SR-IOV is the answer to this type of problem. Through the use of specialized hardware, the physical NIC can be divided into virtual NICs at the hardware layer and these virtual NICs, commonly referred to as virtual functions, are then presented directly into the hypervisor. The core objective of this PCI standard is to minimize the hypervisor overhead in high performance networks. While SRIOV can provide significant efficiencies with 10 Gb networks, there are a few downsides to the technology today, but each of these limitations is being addressed as the technology matures.
It is through the use of SRIOV and other cloud optimizations that the NetScaler SDX platform is able to provide the level of throughput, scalability and tenant isolation that it can. The NetScaler SDX is a hardware Application Delivery Controller capable of sustained throughput over 50 Gbps, all powered by a stock Cloud Optimized XenServer 6 hypevisor.
As you would expect from Citrix, and our historical relationship with Microsoft, XenServer has a strong integration with System Center
CIMOM = Common Information Model Object ManagerXenServer uses the OpenPegasus CIMOM
XenServer is available in a variety of product editions to meet your needs with price points ranging from Free, through “Included with purchase of management framework”, to standalone paid editions.
Platinum: Integrated DREnterprise: Adds IntelliCache for improved TCO of XenDesktop installments and adds a monitoring pack for Systems Center Ops which can now be used to manage XenServerAdvanced: Adds Automated VM protection and recovery to protect VMs data in the event of an outage or failureXenServer: Improvements to capacity, networking, upgrading, and converting existing workloadsThe “Desktop Optimized XenServer” is available with the purchase of XenDesktop, and the “Cloud Optimized XenServer” is available with the purchase of CloudStack
One of the most obvious comparisons is between vSphere and XenServer. A few years ago vSphere was the clear technical leader, but today the gap has closed considerably and there are clear differences in overall strategy and market potential. Key areas which XenServer had lagged, for example with live migration or advanced network switching are either being addressed or have already been addressed. Of course there will always be features which XenServer is unlikely to implement, such as serial port aggregation, or platforms it’s unlikely to support, such as legacy Windows operating systems, but for the majority of virtualization tasks both platforms are compelling solutions.
Platinum Edition: Data protection and resiliency for enterprise-wide virtual environmentsEnterprise Edition: Automated, integrated, and production-ready offering for medium to large enterprise deploymentsAdvanced Edition: Highly available and memory optimized virtual infrastructure for improved TCO and host utilizationFree Edition: Free, enterprise-ready virtual infrastructure with management tools above & beyond alternatives .
More information on Citrix Subscription Advantage: http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_2317284.asp
Premier Support: http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_2321822.aspPremier Support Calculator: http://deliver.citrix.com/WWWB1201PREMIERSUPPORTCALCULATORINBOUND.html
The single vendor lock-in model only benefits the vendor. Choose the correct hypervisor for your workloads to ensure the best performance as well as extending your IT budget. Use POCs to measure how well each solution performs in your environment so you can truly gauge how much ROI you will get from a given implementation. Support is a valuable asset when deploying any environment and understanding each vendors model will make sure you don’t get stuck with a costly services bill later on.Understand the requirements of each project so you can assess the best tool for the job. Know what features are needed for your applications so you can spend money on costly features wisely.
Key items to note:GPU is attached to a VM at boot time, and stays attached as long as the VM is running.Mixing GPU and non-GPU workloads on a host will maximize VM densityThe number of GPUs which can be installed in a host is limited
*Require the HP Graphics Expansion Blade moduleKey items: There is a tight relationship between the host and GPU in this model, and that means a much more limited HCL. In other words, you can’t simply install a series of GPUs into a host and expect it work; it might, but it might not. There are a lot of moving parts.Current list: http://hcl.xensource.com/GPUPass-throughDeviceList.aspx
Pretty much read this slide. It’s important stuff
Key items:If you haven’t told the host to use local storage for intellicache, it won’t
Key items: Same idea when adding a host to desktop studio
Key items:As you would expect, we did some testing and found that IntelliCache made a differenceThese next three slides go together, and it’s important to pay attention to the vertical scale
Key items:While the best results were achieved with SSDs, this really is a spindle story so if you have a server which can host a number of high performance rotational disks, then you do get a significant benefit from IntelliCache. Live migrating a VM which is backed by IntelliCache can be done, but it does require additional configuration. By default since the disk is local, live migration won’t work.
Just read it
While not required for many private clouds, the concept of resource costing, billing and chargeback are core to determining the success of your cloud initiative. Eventually someone is going to be looking for usage stats, or better still capacity planning information. That information is going to be readily available in a solution which was designed to capture deployment details from the start. One important detail to bear in mind is that no billing solution is going to be perfect. Entire products are designed around the whole concept of “billing”, and XenServer isn’t such a product. Our approach is a bit different. It recognizes that there is going to be some requirement for external data (such as costing information), and that this information simply doesn’t belong in a billing system. What we’ve done is provide the billing primitives, and easy SQL data views to access the data. From this framework, custom billing and chargeback models can be developed without encumbering the cloud provisioning system with complex billing requirements.
Key items:Prior to XenServer 6, there was a feature known as Site Recovery Manager. This feature was implemented using the StorageLink Gateway and had a very limited HCL. We removed that feature and replaced it with the Integrated Site Reocvery starting in version 6 of XenServer. This allowed us to support any iSCSI or HBA array on the HCL.
Persist following SR information in the SR:name_labelname_descriptionallocationUUIDPersist the following VDI information for all VDIs in the SR:name_labelname_descriptionUUID is_a_snapshotsnapshot_ofsnapshot_timetypevdi_typeread_onlymanagedmetadata_of_poolThe metadata is stored in a logical volume called “MGT” in each SR. Writes to this volume are O_DIRECT and block size aligned, so the metadata is always consistent.
Shows the entire flow of setup and failover.
Core terminology used in this section
Explain the problems we’re attempting to address with the new switch.Rich, flexible virtual switching for each host thatGuarantees separation & isolationParticipates in all standard switching protocol exchanges, just like a physical switchProvides full visibility into and control of the packet forwarding pathBy and for multiple VM tenantsProvides complete management of all switch features just like a hardware switchBy and for multiple managing tenantsIs inherently aware of virtualizationVM ACLs are a property of the VMMulti-tenancy<clikc>Pooled state from multiple virtual switches in a virtual infrastructure to permit the abstraction of a virtual port to be separated from a software virtual switch on a single serverBuilding block of multi-tenant virtual private data center overlayPreserve network state per-VM as VMs migrate between physical serversPermit unified management, visibility into and control of VM traffic from a single point in the infrastructurePermit multi-tenant aware management of the distributed virtual switchPermit per-flow timescale decisions to be made for control of traffic on any virtual portMulti-tenant aware & secure
Key items: Access control is exactly the same as firewall rules in a traditional switch. What’s different here is that the definition of a virtual switch becomes analagous to a stack which allows network admins to define rulesets which apply regardless of what the virtualization admin might change.
Key items:QoS with bursting
Key items: Doing port mirroring on a VM without DVS requires filtering traffic from other VMs. With DVS, a couple of clicks of a mouse and you’re done.
Key items: NetFlow is an industry standard for network monitoring, and DVS handles it out of the box. All you need to do is configure the collector address and you’re done.
Key items: Built in to the DVSC is a basic NetFlow collector and analyzer. Good for small installations, but can be disabled for larger enterprises.
Key items:DVS gives us jumbo framesDVS allows us to create private networks using management interfaces, and those private networks are secured using GRE. This means that there are no VLAN boundaries to worry abouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_Routing_Encapsulation
Key items: Restart used for most critical servicesRestart if possible used if restart desired, but application design will ensure continued operation in the event the service can’t be restarted. This option also provides additonal failure “head room”Non-agile VMs can not be guaranteed to restart
New in XenServer 5.6 - Dynamic Memory ControlMaximize investment in server hardwareSome configuration risk – VMs not guaranteed to bootCrashed VMs automatically placed on best fit serversRunning VMs could be "squeezed" to free up RAM
When dealing with resilient applications and HA, there is always the potential for creating single points of failure which the application deployment guide cautioned against. For example, if you have a SQL Server cluster made up of two nodes, if both of those nodes end up on the same host and that host fails, the resiliency of SQL Server won’t save you. Here’s how to avoid such situations in XenServer by using both HA and WLB.Define a host in WLB to not participate in optimization and rebalancing activitiesPlace one node of the SQL Server cluster on that host (node A)Place the second node of the SQL Server cluster on any other host (node B)Configure HA to protect the second node of the SQL Server cluster using “restart if possible”, but not the first nodeLet’s explore the various automatic failure modes:If the host excluded from WLB activities fails, node A fails and does not restart. Node B continues to operate with no downtimeIf a host running node B fails, node B will be restarted on any surviving host except for the host excluded by WLB. If the only host with capacity to start node B is the excluded host, then node B won’t be started, otherwise it will be restarted without breaking resiliency
Embed multiple VMs in a single management frameworkPackage is managed as an entity (e.g. backup)VM start order and delays contained in package
Says it all
Key items: When you overlay a file system on to manage VMs, there are inherent features that file system imposes, and those features might not be compatible with what a given storage array can offer. The core objective of StorageLink is to maximize the potential of a storage array without artificially imposing virtualization concepts upon it.
So without StorageLink, you end up asking the storage admins for a LUN, and that LUN ends up being a storage repository in XenServer provisioned as LVM. LVM storage repositories are block based primitives which have the virtual disks contained within them and while a VM is running, LVM effectively requires that virtual disk to be fully provisioned. Obviously as you add more an more disks, there will come a point when the LUN will be full, but the virtual disks themselves might not be fully used. The net result being that additional VM capacity requires a second storage repository which in turn requires a new LUN.
With StorageLink, StorageLink manages the array directly and provisions a LUN for each virtual disk. Since StorageLink has direct access to the array, it can provision the LUNs using key features such as thin-provisioning and thus make more efficient utilization of the array. This model is known as LUN per VDI
In addition to LUN provisioning, since StorageLink has direct access to the array, it also can levearge the array’s native APIs to perform snapshots and clones. Without StorageLink, those snapshots live within the provisioned “fat LUN” and will compete for storage space with the primary virtual disks. StorageLink effectively frees the snapshot mechanism to leverage the entire space from the array.
StorageLink uses an adapter based architecture where the XenServer host and control domain have a StorageLink Gateway Bridge into which the adapters plug. Legacy NetApp and Dell EQL adapters are still in the code, but mainly for users upgrading to XenServer 6 who are using the Legacy adapter today. New SRs created from XenCenter will use the new integrated SL adapter.iSL supports NetApp, Dell EqualLogic and EMC VNX arrays
The primary driving force behind SRIOV support is that with the advent of 10Gb ethernet, the existing PV driver model simply can’t sustain full throughput on these cards. So while 1Gb line rate is possible, dom0 saturation prevents 10Gb from attaining line rate.
Taking a bit of a step back, we see that the solution itself requires more than just SRIOV, but rahter a series of enhancements.Starting with VMDq we create separate RX and TX pairs for each VM:Device has multiple RX queuesDedicate one RX queue to a particular guestProgram device to demultiplex incoming packets to the dedicated queue using guest MAC addressPost RX descriptors pointing to guest memoryDevice places received packet directly into guest memory avoiding data copyWith direct IO (VTd) we now can map the IO directly into a guest VM and this allows for attainment of line rate on 10GbMoving past VTd, we have SRIOV which itself carves out virtual NICs from the physical NIC to form virtual functions. Each of the virtual functions can be mapped into a VM, but more importantly since each VM can itself be performing high levels of IO the line rates can be further extended. This is precisely how the NetScaler SDX can attain its high throuput using standard XenServer.
When looking at the key objectives of virtualization and hardware, you can see that direct hardware access has historically provided limited scalability due to the inability of most devices to natively share access. With SRIOV, this scalability limitation is largely overcome.
Of course, since you’re mapping a dedicated hardware resource to a VM you’ve now prevented it from participating in live migration. With XenServer 6 we’ve introduced experimental support for SolarFlare cards supporting SRIOV with live migration.By default the guest VM will use the “fast path” for network traffic, however a regular VIF backup path is available and the VM will fallback to this path during migration to a different host. If a Solarflare SR-IOV adapter is available on the target host, the guest will switch back to the “fast path” again after migration.