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My friends in HP Solutions Engineering tell me that historically capacity planning for server deployments was not a trivial task given the range of variables to consider, not to mention the time and therefore the expense required to do it right. And now add virtualization variables to the mix and capacity planning tasks can be even more challenging. YET, effective capacity testing can supply a big payoff by ensuring that your virtualized environment can be the best it can be, and that you gain all the cost savings and flexibility improvement benefits promised by virtualization. See here for a recent HP post on capacity planning in virtualized environments.
Of course it is not surprising that there are a number of innovative tools out there to assist in these efforts for Citrix environments, including HP LoadRunner, a popular load testing tool used for planning XenApp deployments, and the Citrix EdgeSight for Load Testing server sizing and application performance testing solution.
We have a excellent new technical resource for capacity planning with ESLT - the recently released "Using EdgeSight for Load Testing ..." white paper developed by HP and Citrix describes how to implement ESLT tools and scripts to characterize scalability for various HP ProLiant servers with XenServer and XenApp. This paper is a great addition to the ever expanding set of technical papers published on XenApp and XenServer - visit here to browse the entire library.
Don't forget to register for the Citrix Live! Virtual Event, Secrets, Lies and VDI happening Oct 20th and visit the HP sessions and exhibits! Enjoy.
Excited to use this post to promote the release of EdgeSight for Load Testing 3.5. The XenServer performance counters that can now be captured will make using ELST to test XenApp on XenServer even more powerful and Intelligent Load Control is really the smartest way to do load testing anyone has thought of.
I've recorded and posted a quick new features presentation detailing these items which I hope you will check out at http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/666
Look for more EdgeSight related videos from me on CitrixTV in the future.
As a Citrix consultant , one question that every customer asks me is, "How many users can I get on this server?" This seems like a simple question, but traditionally has had some difficult ways of finding an answer. Thankfully, the latest XenApp5 Feature Pack now includes Load testing services, an easy, efficient and inexpensive way to create a reliable answer to the question.
In the past, there were two main ways of answering this question. One required expensive and complicated software (and a team of experts who can actually program it) while the other required a team of people flying around to remote sites during off-hours so they could simulate user tasks. Needless to say either method was time-consuming, resource consuming and cost way too much money. In addition, when there was a new version of the application or a new remote office, you had to start from scratch and start the process all over again. This process is now far more exact and much easier with load testing services.
There are only two parts to load testing services, the controller and the launcher. The controller is the brains of the operation, and tells the launchers (installed on desktops or workstations in the remote sites) what tests to run. The launchers open a session to XenApp hosted applications, published desktops, a direct connection to the XML Broker, or through Web Interface. Once you give the controller a user account name and password and a target XenApp farm, you hit the record button and record what activities the simulated user should do. If you want the user to open Microsoft Word and copy an image, type a bunch of text or compose a letter, you simply do that while recording and load testing services translates that into instructions. After distributing the launchers to their remote locations, hitting the play button within the controller will instruct them to replay those tests for however long it has been scheduled.
While the tests are running, load testing services can track a myriad of Perfmon counters which can then be used to see when the server is at its limit. By turning on such items as Total Processor Time and Thread Queue Length or Memory consumption and Pages Per Second, one can determine when the server is running out of resources. All of these statistics and many others are presented to the administrator in a simple graph and table which, once viewed, will show when the bottleneck occurs. XenApp Platinum edition customers can also use application performance monitoring to measure performance as well.
Hopefully, I've made load testing services sound really easy to use, because in fact it really is that easy and anyone who can start a session on a XenApp server can use it effectively. Of course there are ways to use variables and wildcards and best practices for more advanced use cases, and more information on those items can be found in whitepapers and recordings available on Citrix.com or the Citrix Knowledge Base.
New applications, new servers, new users and new offices are being deployed throughout pretty much every organization and figuring out the correct amount of capacity needed quickly and cheaply has been, and will continue to be, a top priority for every IT department. With the inclusion of load testing services in XenApp5 Feature Pack, Citrix has given us the most effective way I have seen to do this. I encourage you to test it out for yourself.
Want to learn more? Also, check out Citrix.com/upgradetoxenapp5. As always, let us know your thoughts, questions and feedback below.
This post is part of a multi-part series on XenApp 5 Feature Pack:
- Part 1: Citrix Releases its own Economic Stimulus Plan with XenApp 5 Feature Pack
- Part 2: Manage your entire server farm from a single image with XenApp 5 Feature Pack
- Part 3: Profile Management, new in XenApp 5 Feature Pack! When does it make sense for your business?
- Part 4: Single Sign-on for any user! New in XenApp 5 Feature Pack!
- Part 5: XenApp 5 Feature Pack Transforms Server Sizing from an Art to an Exact Science!