VDI Archives • Helge Klein

XenDesktop 7.6 VDA CPU & Memory Footprint

If you install the Citrix XenDesktop 7.6 Virtual Desktop Agent (VDA) on a small Windows 7 VM, you may be in for a big surprise, and not a good one. This article documents issues I have experienced and how to work around them.

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Sizing

This is the third article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Previously in this Series In the last article I explained that shared storage should be avoided, for two reasons: it is (very) expensive, and you, the VDI guy, are not in control. The […]

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Storage

This is the second article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Previously in this Series I started this series by defining requirements. Without proper requirements, everything else is moot. Remember that we are looking at running typical enterprise desktop workloads, we are trying to […]

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Architecture

This is the first article in a multi-part series about building and maintaining an inexpensive scalable platform for VDI in enterprise environments. Requirements Before we can even start to think about a possible architecture, we need requirements. Only requirements enable us to make choices that benefit the customer. Without proper requirements we are not building […]

How WinPE 4.0 Breaks ICA Connections

I had to troubleshoot a case where it suddenly was not possible any more to connect via ICA/HDX to freshly installed Windows 7 VDI machines. As it turned out, the root cause was a combination of Microsoft disabling legacy technologies and Citrix relying on them.

Comparing the CPU Performance of Physical and Virtual PCs (VDI)

When you move users from a physical PC to a VDI environment you may find that they are not too happy with their new machine’s performance – it happened to me. To quantify things I took a series of measurements comparing the old PCs we migrated away from with both VDI machines and the new […]

Benchmarking a $11,699 HP Enterprise Performance SSD

[Update on 29/06/2012: added tests 5 and 6 with RAID controller cache and Atlantis Ilio] When a 400 GB SSD comes nearly at the price of a small car, you expect a lot, performance-wise. At least I did when I got my hands on two drives from HP’s enterprise performance series. Read on to find […]

Removing “Eject VMware Virtual disk SCSI Disk Device”

The HotPlug functionality of VMware ESX(i) 4 and 5 has the negative side effect that it is easily possible to “eject” hardware devices from inside the virtual machine, completely removing the respective device from the VM configuration. This is especially bad if it happens to the network card, and others have already described how to […]

Will We Use Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops in 2020?

A desktop delivered from the cloud, accessible from everywhere, providing just the right amount of computing power for the task at hand, maintained by the cloud provider and paid for only when used – a dream? Or a commodity in ten years’ time? Time will tell, but in the meantime let us find out if […]

Tag: VDI

XenDesktop 7.6 VDA CPU & Memory Footprint

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Sizing

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Storage

Persistent VDI in the Real World – Architecture

How WinPE 4.0 Breaks ICA Connections

Comparing the CPU Performance of Physical and Virtual PCs (VDI)

Benchmarking a $11,699 HP Enterprise Performance SSD

Removing “Eject VMware Virtual disk SCSI Disk Device”

Will We Use Cloud-Based Virtual Desktops in 2020?