Recommendation for the type of disk used in the VDA (thin provisioning or thick)

[lcruz765]

Is there any recommendation for the type of disk used (Thin provisioning or Thick) when provisioning VDA's through PVS? Will the Thick type the vhd file be too long?

[Sjoerd Van den Nieuwenhof]

I Would use Thin provisioning.

When having multiple PVS images, with thick provisioning this will take a lot of space. If you then also start working with versioning you need a lot of space to provision your images.

[Sjoerd Van den Nieuwenhof]

Hi, 

 

No it won't, as the data is streamed as needed. See the document here: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/provisioning/current-release/architecture.html#the-citrix-provisioning-solution

 

Instead of immediately pulling all the virtual disk contents down to the target device, the data is brought across the network in real time, as needed. This approach allows a target device to get a new operating system and software in the time it takes to reboot, without requiring a visit to a workstation. This approach decreases the network bandwidth required by traditional disk imaging tools, which supports a larger number of target devices on your network without impacting overall network performance.

 

When using Citrix XenServer (Citrix Hypervisor), you can use the Citrix Provisioning Accelerator and cache the vdisk into the memory of the host. This will make it faster and then it only get streamed once to every host. https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/provisioning/current-release/configure/configure-accelerator.html

 

Hope this helped. 

[lcruz765]

1 hour ago, Sjoerd Van den Nieuwenhof said:

I Would use Thin provisioning.

When having multiple PVS images, with thick provisioning this will take a lot of space. If you then also start working with versioning you need a lot of space to provision your images.

Thanks for the reply, I would like to understand if a large environment with more than 900 VDA's using thick type disks can interfere with network usage due to its size, even with a network used only for provisioning.