Virtualization world

Citrix Insight Services Citrix self support tool called CIS, formerly known as Tools-as-a Service (TaaS). Insight Services takes a XenServer status report, and analyses it to determine if there are any operational issues present in the deployment. A best practice is to upload a report after installing a XenServer host to determine if any issues are present which can result in latent performance or stability problems. CIS is used extensively by the Citrix support teams, but doesn't require a commercial support contract for end users link for the tool https://taas.citrix.com/AutoSupport/

1) Download Web interface package from Citrix downloads 2) Download OPEN JRE Package from citrix Downloads 3) log into netscaler 4) click configuration and select web interface 5) click "install Web interface" 6) select the JRE and web interface package 7) click install and web interface will be installed Now you can install web interface for xendesktop or xenapp for web or mobile devices

Citrix products progress through three distinct lifecycle phases: Mainstream Maintenance, Extended Maintenance and End of Life. please refer to following link to know the status http://www.citrix.com/support/product-lifecycle/legacy-product-matrix.html? Below is the links of troubleshooting tools available from citrix http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107572

So, what’s new in XenServer 6.5? A lot of good stuff! All 64-bit Massive performance improvements 50% increase in GPU density The return of the popular Workload Balancing (WLB) appliance Numerous usability enhancements So, let’s talk about some of these performance enhancements.  While XenServer has long been known for it’s world-class compute performance, we realized that more and work workloads are now becoming I/O bound.  Thus, the team put massive effort into improving the data path through the networking and storage systems.  Here are some sample benchmarks comparing the performance of XenServer 6.5 vs. XenServer 6.2 (the last major release). Comparison of XS 6.2 to 6.5 performance Who should be interested in XenServer 6.5?  Firstly, anyone who’s using XenServer today will find this a major step up.  Upgrade today and see the difference.  Who else should be interested?  Are you building a cloud?  Xen project is the most popul...

Step 1: to get the list of License run the command by going to the folder of  LS C:\Program Files\Citrix\Licensing\LS>udadmin.exe -list Step 2: run the below commands to release the licenses to delete device licenses for /f "tokens=1,2" %i in ('udadmin -list ^| find /i "_ud"') do @udadmin -f %j -device %i -delete To delete user licenses for /f "tokens=1,2" %i in ('udadmin -list ^| find /i "_ud"') do @udadmin -f %j -user %i -delete

In order to properly design the storage , we must first able to calculate the expected Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) requirements. The IOPS calculations must take the following into account: Parameter Description Values Disk Speed The speed that the disk spins has a direct impact on how fast the disk can read the correct sector. 15,000 RPM: 150 Random IOPS 10,000 RPM: 110 Random IOPS 5,400 RPM: 50 Random IOPS Read/Write IOPS are broken down into reads and writes. Certain processes are read intensive while others require more writes. The ratio between reads and writes impacts of the overall IOPS. It has been shown that most desktop implementations result in the follow read/write ratios: Reads: 20% Writes: 80% | RAID Level The RAID configuration impacts how many actual write IOPS are available due to the different types of redundancy in place. The write penalty reduces the overall IOPS for each disk spindle. RAID 0: No RAID Penalty RAID 1: Penalty of 2 ...

Step 1: Find out current date and time and then set the date and time using following command date –s Step 2: Then check the current time at BIOS using following command hwclock  --show Step 3: And then synch the clock using following command hwclock  --systohc

The following is the procedure to add plugins to xencenter for instances RDP connection, services and event viewer Download file from the following location https://citrix.sharefile.com/d/s4ba9032305b4f6fb unpack to xencenter folder and start using the features, example screentshot

Monitoring XenServer to identify problems 1) Load Average --> # top 2) XAPI Task Queue  --> xe task-list 3) General Storage & network monitoring --> # iostat, hdparm, dd, tcpdump, netstat, ifconfig use top command to get real time information regarding load Best Practices 1) Increase Dom0 memory allocation -- refer to CTX126531 2) Optimize shared storage for PVS or IntelliCache -- refer CTX130632 • CTX131339 - XenServer performance: reality and myths • CTX128724 - Memco.sh - Memory Data Collection Script for XenServer Dom0 or Linux Systems • CTX128714 - Perfco.sh - Performance Data Collection Script for XenServer Dom0 • CTX126986 - Troubleshooting XenServer Deployments • CTX125180 - Troubleshooting XenDesktop, Provisioning Services & XenServer Integration • CTX125178 - XenServer Storage Management and Troubleshooting • CTX118397 - Introduction to Storage Technologies • CTX129669 - Overview of XenServer Distributed Virtual Switch/Con...