Getting started with Citrix VDI

[RobD]

Hi All,

 

I've recently moved into the educational sector and the School I work at is very keen to implement a VDI solution. I've not worked with VDI and the ICT firm we work with are happy to help me implement something but I was wondering if you could provide me with some basic information such as:

 

Is there a rule of thumb about how many thin clients will run per physical host? (I appreciate this will propably depend on the physical host)

How Many servers make up the citrix environment and what does each do? I'm guessing a broker server but not sure what else backend other than maybe a file server and SAN?

How does it work? I.e. I'm guessing you create a image thats hosted on our ESX servers thats accessed by the clients?

 

Any help would be great.

 

Thanks

[twin--turbo]

To give you an idea.... For starters.

 

We run Citrix VDI.

 

450 VDI's

 

3No SQL servers runnign 2 Main SQL Mirroed + One Witness SQl Server. (you could run one)

2No PVS Streaming servers ( they stream the actual os to the Virtual desktop ) (You could run one depending on the size of your environment.).

2No DDC ( or XDC ) Desktop delivery controlers

1No CSG

1No CAG

1No WI

 

All but the PVS's are virtual machines.. PVS's Need to be physical for performance.

 

These server 10no HP BL460g6 Blades. Each blade has twin hex core CPU's and 96GB of Ram. With the Hypervisor itself it hosts ~45 VDI's.

 

We use HP T5740, T610, and 4320T Devices as well as MAC and Desktops using VDI.

 

Rob

[_techie_]

Hi RobD.

 

Just out of interest, are you at Monmouth Boys School?

I can PM you some more details if you like as I'm also at the girls school just up the road....

Keep in touch, anything you need I'm happy to chat, and discuss with you.

 

In basic answer to your question.... Basically about 30-40 VM's per host (we've got win 7 VM's, 2GB RAM, with 25gb hard disk.)

Citrix Xendesktop is what we have, so you have 2 main components apart from the VM's. The web access, and the management server running desktop studio. The hardware setup is your basic esxi host setup, with switches linked to a SAN(s) depending on how much storage you need. The more VM's the more hosts and storage you need basically. You would need some sort of calculation done by a citrix architect to get specifics but that's the basics.

 

Disc usage is very disc efficient with Xendesktop as you have gold images that you create other base disc images from per datastore. The actual VM's are tiny 16Mb discs that get pulled out of the base disc image for each datastore. We have 3 SAN's, 2 HP MSA units, with a further HP P2000 SAN added quite recently apparently (I've just started at the girls school).

[RobD]

Hi,

 

Thanks for the replies both, I've pm'd you techie but yes thats me!!

[teklogic]

We run Citrix VDI.

 

450 VDI's

 

3No SQL servers runnign 2 Main SQL Mirroed + One Witness SQl Server. (you could run one)

2No PVS Streaming servers ( they stream the actual os to the Virtual desktop ) (You could run one depending on the size of your environment.).

2No DDC ( or XDC ) Desktop delivery controlers

1No CSG

1No CAG

1No WI

 

All but the PVS's are virtual machines.. PVS's Need to be physical for performance.

 

These server 10no HP BL460g6 Blades. Each blade has twin hex core CPU's and 96GB of Ram. With the Hypervisor itself it hosts ~45 VDI's.

 

We use HP T5740, T610, and 4320T Devices as well as MAC and Desktops using VDI.

 

Rob

 

I have the same setup, but only 1 DDC, for around 430 ish machines. The main thing to remember, do it correctly and don't cut corners, it will go wrong