Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks again James, this is fantastic information. I'm doing all I can to disseminate this amongst my team. I'm sure I'll have more follow ups as we start on the low level design and implementation of each technology.
- Sean On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 10:49 AM, James Rankin <[email protected]>wrote: > If you're using the Personalization Server feature (and it sounds like you > are), you need to be aware that if you lose this area of the environment, > not only do you get no customization of user profile, session or any of > their applications, you take the risk of overwriting the Personalization > data with default data and causing all sorts of problems for your user base. > > With this in mind, you'll want heavy redundancy on both the SQL backend > and in the web services that facilitate communication with the SQL backend. > AppSense supports clustering, replication, mirroring and all the other > usual SQL redundancy features. You will also probably want to configure > some failover in the web services that provide the Management Server site > and the Personalization Server site. > > There are some non-default options within Personalization itself I'd > recommend - Offline Resiliency ensures that in the event of a database > outage, the client caches Personalization data and resyncs once the > database is available. I'd also recommend enabling either the web portal > and/or the self-service profile reset features, which again will dictate > the sizing of your database depending on how many archives you keep. See > this article for a discussion of AppSense database sizing - > http://appsensebigot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/appsense-management-server-and_13.html > > There are also a few gotchas around AppSense and PVS I'd want to bear in > mind - > http://appsensebigot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/using-appsense-with-citrix-provisioning.htmland > some AV considerations - > http://appsensebigot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/antivirus-exclusions-for-appsense.html > > I'd also recommend you seriously consider using the Performance Manager > feature of AppSense. It can eke out up to 40% higher user density on XenApp > platforms - a serious ROI if ever there was one. > > On the XenApp side, I think Web has more than adequately covered what you > need. I'll back him up on the fact that StoreFront (I dare speak the name) > is not really fit for purpose yet. > > If you need any more advice on the AppSense side of things feel free to > shoot me an email offline, although at your current stage I don't think you > need do much other than scope for the heavy redundancy in the SQL side of > things. > > Cheers, > > > > JR > > > On 28 February 2013 17:29, Sean Martin <[email protected]> wrote: > >> We haven't gone through the low-level design process for each of the >> deliverables yet, so I am not sure if we're using that feature. Is that a >> part of the Environment Manager? Our implementation of AppSense is purely >> for a profile management solution because of the garbage that roaming >> profiles makes us deal with in our current environment. >> >> - Sean >> >> On Feb 28, 2013, at 8:03 AM, [email protected] wrote: >> >> Are you using the AppSense Personalization Server feature? That's >> going to have a big influence on your requirements if you are. >> >> Sent from my Blackberry, which may be an antique but delivers email >> RELIABLY >> ------------------------------ >> *From: *Sean Martin <[email protected]> >> *Date: *Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:58:09 -0900 >> *To: *NT System Admin Issues<[email protected]> >> *ReplyTo: *"NT System Admin Issues" < >> [email protected]> >> *Subject: *Vmware Design for XenApp 6.5 w/PVS >> >> Hello everyone, >> >> Let me start first by apologize for the length of this message. In my >> pursuit of providing all of the relevant information I fully expect for >> this to be a bit long winded. >> >> We're in the final planning stages of a migration from a purely physical >> XenApp 5 on Windows 2003 environment to a virtualized XenApp 6.5 with >> Provisioning Services environment on ESXi 5.0. I was hoping I could toss >> out our initial design and gather some feedback. >> >> Our current environment consists of a single farm, two sites, and just >> under 200 physical servers. That includes the SQL server, data collectors, >> existing Web Interface servers, licensing server and all of the >> presentation servers. We currently support 12 application silos. The >> purpose of each silo varies from application compatibility issues, business >> unit requirements, performance requirements, etc. At our peak, we support >> approximately 1400 concurrent sessions. This is the number we've used to >> design our future environment. >> >> The new environment will consist of a dedicated vSphere Cluster for the >> XenApp servers (using provisioning services). Other supporting services >> (SQL Server, zone data collectors, licensing server, etc.) will be >> supported in a general vSphere cluster. Web Interface will be migrated to >> NetScaler Appliances. We will also be deploying AppSense Environment >> Manager and using AppDNA to validate application compatibility. >> >> Anyway, my specific responsibility is to forcast the infrastructure >> requirements and work directly with our Citrix Admins. I used the following >> article as the primary reference material for starting our design. We >> decided to plan conservatively and base our consolidation ratios with a 20 >> users per guest target. The host config I've decided on are Dell PowerEdge >> R820s with Quad E5-4640 2.4GHz 8 core procs and 384GB RAM. Using the >> recommendation of 4vCPUs per guest we can support 16VMs per host which >> equates to 320 users per host. 5 hosts will allow us to support a peak of >> 1600 concurrent user sessions. We will purchase 6 hosts to maintain our N+1 >> cluster design standards. I dediced to bump the RAM per host considerably >> to allow for increased guest allocation. We support over 200 published >> applications in our environment, which are distributed amongst physical >> server silos currently. One of our goals with PVS is to consolidate the >> applications into as few images as possible si we want to certain we have >> the hardware resources to support the guests. Each host will include a >> FusionIO IO Drive to support maximum IO requirements and eliminate IO >> contention on our SAN during large scale provisioning. All of our hosts >> leverage infiniband with 80Gbps throughput for ethernet and native FC >> connectivity. >> >> >> >> http://blogs.citrix.com/2013/01/07/whats-the-optimal-xenapp-6-5-vm-configuration/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CitrixBlogs+%28Citrix+Blogs%29 >> >> So after reading all of that I feel like I'm bragging. However, I have a >> fundemental concern because even though we are being very conservative and >> are likely procuring more resources than necessary, I have no reliable >> means of validating the capabilities of this proposed environment vs. our >> current workloads. My experience with Vmware tells me that even though the >> aforementioned article suggests a 4 vCPU per guest configuration, we'll >> likely start with a single vCPU configuration and do our best at initial >> scalability testing while keeping an eye on CPU waits. Should we find >> guests perform optimally with few vCPUs than that will just increase our >> consolidation ratios. >> >> I'm hoping some of you out there with a lot of XenApp experience >> (Webster, James, etc.:) ) can either point out any major gaps in the >> initial hardware design or hopefully validate that we're more than likely >> over provisioning hardware resources. >> >> - Sean >> >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ >> >> ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ >> >> --- >> To manage subscriptions click here: >> http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ >> or send an email to [email protected] >> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin >> >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ >> ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ >> >> --- >> To manage subscriptions click here: >> http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ >> or send an email to [email protected] >> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin >> >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ >> ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ >> >> --- >> To manage subscriptions click here: >> http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ >> or send an email to [email protected] >> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin >> > > > > -- > *James Rankin* > Technical Consultant (ACA, CCA, MCTS) > http://appsensebigot.blogspot.co.uk > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > --- > To manage subscriptions click here: > http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ > or send an email to [email protected] > with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
