Citrix XenDesktop / XenApp 7.7 and Windows 7 Scalability

This article by Daniel Feller will give you a great summary of what factors have the biggest impact of the scalability of a Citrix XenDesktop / XenApp 7.7 and Windows 7 deployment from a single server perspective.

They meased how the different factors impacted single server scalability:

• PVS vs MCS
• PVS Disk Cache vs RAM Cache
• Citrix Policies: Very High Definition vs High Server Scalability vs Optimized for WAN
• Windows 7 optimizations

Each test was conducted utilizing the same, knowledge worker workload.

As you see, each test builds upon the previous test while only modifying a single parameter. As I’ve gone through the initial results, some things quickly popped out at me:

1. Machine Creation Services, from a purely single server scalability perspective, shows some impressive numbers.
2. Enabling the RAM Cache feature within Provisioning Services gave us a 9% gain in server density.
3. Every hypervisor tested showed similar percent changes between the different tests.
4. There was little difference between High Server Scalability and Optimized for WAN because the items within the policy were not a significant part of the tested workload.
5. Switching from the Citrix Very High Definition User Experience Policy to the Citrix High Server Scalability Policy improved server density by a whopping 30%.

Read more at the source: http://virtualfeller.com/2016/01/25/xendesktop-7-7-and-windows-7/