WHITE PAPER Balancing Desktop with Citrix HDX MediaStream and Core and Intel Core vPro Processors

Balancing with Citrix HDX MediaStream and Intel Core and Intel Core vPro processors

Abstract Enterprise datacenters are increasingly interested in managed virtual desktop solutions. However, IT organizations face challenges in deploying efficient, centrally managed desktop environments while providing users the rich desktop experience that they are accustomed to today, particularly with regard to consuming and creating rich media content. Citrix® HDX™ MediaStream, through a process called “adaptive orchestration,” automatically senses intelligent clients and balances where rich media file types are processed. The result is a uniquely capable and truly optimized use of available computer resources that delivers high-density, centrally managed desktops and an uncompromising user experience when intelligent clients are present. With the combination of Citrix HDX and Intel®-powered intelligent clients and servers, this solution provides organizations with cost effective, highly efficient, optimized computing models for enterprise-scale desktop virtualization environments.

This document discusses the benefits of Citrix HDX MediaStream content delivery delivered from Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers to Intel® Core™ and Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor-based endpoints, and cites specific performance benchmarks. www.citrix.com Introduction Managing information technology often requires tradeoffs. Full-featured 100% 98% PCs, also known as intelligent clients, are flexible and powerful enough % for the most demanding organizational workloads, including multimedia creation and playback. Thin clients, on the other hand, can initially appear to be inexpensive, but require an increased investment in datacenter real

CPU estate, powerful servers, and network capacity to support them. However, 10% 10% even with this investment, thin clients still lack the capabilities required With Without for demanding multimedia applications and mobility that are found in MMR MMR intelligent clients. Virtual Desktop Server Load Figure 1: vCPU utilization per VM with and without multimedia Modern enterprises are making more use of rich media, not less. Examples redirection (MMR). include real-time video conferencing, desktop video training, and live meeting conferences. All require greater processing power and mobility to Multimedia redirection with deliver an uncompromised user experience. Citrix® HDX™ Mediastream helps reduce virtual desktop Organizations deploying a virtual desktop strategy often face performance server loads by redirecting and capacity problems related to rich media. Decoding multimedia content rich content to Intel®-equipped for multiple virtual desktop users can create unforeseen spikes in demand, intelligent clients for decoding and puts an added and often unpredictable strain on datacenter resources, and playback. This can servers, and networks. This strain can potentially hinder overall performance translate into lower costs by of an enterprise’s virtual desktop environment, creating stress between users increasing the virtual desktop and IT. Performance can also suffer at the endpoint, where video density on the host server. or audio playback might be compromised due to network congestion or underpowered endpoint processors.

Intel and Citrix bridge this gap through the combined use of Citrix HDX MediaStream and intelligent clients powered by Intel Core and Intel Core vPro processors. Citrix HDX MediaStream uniquely takes advantage of the power of intelligent clients to deliver uncompromising multimedia performance in a managed virtual desktop environment, including high- definition video playback and Adobe* Flash* animation. This combination also lowers TCO by increasing the density of virtual desktops on servers and lowering network traffic, which reduces the amount of hardware required to service users.

Citrix HDX MediaStream helps organizations Citrix HDX MediaStream overcome virtual desktop bottlenecks supports popular multimedia Citrix HDX MediaStream accelerates rich media performance by redirecting formats, such as: multimedia content streams to intelligent clients for local playback. Adobe Flash H.264 video Citrix HDX MediaStream uses the capabilities of both the endpoint and host server. Using Citrix HDX Adaptive Orchestration, the virtual desktop host MPEG 4 video server determines if an intelligent client has sufficient multimedia processing MPEG video power, and if there is sufficient network bandwidth and low latency. If the Windows* Media* Video endpoint and network meet specific performance criteria, the server can redirect the multimedia data to the intelligent client in its native, compressed DIVX video format for best playback performance1. This is in contrast to content delivery XVID video to clients with limited processing capabilities, where the multimedia content is rendered on the server and then sent to the client for display. MP3 audio

AC3 audio Delivering rich media content to thin clients can result in limited scalability since multimedia content must first be rendered on the server, consuming the WHITE PAPER Balancing Desktop Virtualization with Citrix HDX MediaStream and Intel Core and Intel Core vPro Processors server’s processing resources. Many rich media formats are also well-suited to streaming, making delivery to an intelligent client for local decoding a more efficient use of resources. By sending the multimedia data to the intelligent client for rendering, the Citrix and Intel solution reduces demands on the server and network, allowing greater virtual desktop density and better utilization of server and network resources.

Features on the Intel Core microarchitecture, such as Intel® Boost Technology and Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost, accelerate rich media performance, providing an uncompromised user experience.

Citrix HDX MediaStream helps increase host server performance Citrix® Labs performed internal tests to determine the specific impact HDX Test results MediaStream has on virtual desktop density. The test determined that Test overview desktop density can increase by up to 24 percent for The testing consisted of a series of single-server scalability tests. The Windows XP desktops and initial tests were run on Intel Xeon processor-based servers configured 33 percent for Windows 7 with Citrix® XenServer® 5.5 and Windows* XP SP3 virtual desktop agents desktops. Client-side CPU (VDAs), with subsequent tests run with Windows* 7 VDAs2. utilization increased by 20 The tests were built using LoginVSI Pro 2.0 by Login Consultants and percent, leading to better CPU included the execution of a series of * Office 2007 applications utilization at the endpoint. The while running multimedia applications (playing a WMV video file, playing key to achieving these results an MP3 audio file, and running a series of Flash animations) within each was the transfer of processor virtual desktop session. LoginVSI measured the response times to produce a and network load from the score3 that indicates how many desktops a given configuration can support. hosting XenServer to the client.

Related links Citrix HDX MediaStream http://hdx.citrix.com/hdx- mediastream Choosing the best business client http://www.intel.com/go/ Figure 2: Overview of the performance test environment using Windows* XP VDAs. businesspc Conclusion Citrix and Intel Partnership http://www.citrix.com/intel With the increased use of rich media in organizations, Citrix HDX MediaStream, combined with servers running Intel Xeon processors and Intel vPro Technology intelligent clients running Intel Core processors, offers an uncompromised http://www.intel.com/ user experience while giving IT the ability to manage more desktops with technology/vpro/index.htm less datacenter stress, as well as server and network hardware. This helps Citrix XenClient lower TCO while increasing user productivity. http://www.citrix.com/xenclient Endnotes 1 Decoding rich media on an intelligent client requires the codec for any supported multimedia stream to be present on both the host server and endpoint.

2 The test environment consisted of the following hardware and . Client launchers: Dell* PowerEdge 1950, single processor dual core 2.33 GHZ Xeon® LV 5148, 4 GB RAM, 2x Broadcom BCM5570C NetXtreme* II gigabit Ethernet, 72GB SAS 10K hard drive. Software: Microsoft* Windows* XP Professional SP3, Citrix® XenDesktop® ICA® client version 11.2.0.31560, Virtual Audio Cable version 1.5.5.266, Adobe *Flash* 10.0.32.18. XenDesktop® Delivery Controller: Dell PowerEdge 1950, single processor dual core 2.33 GHZ Xeon® LV 5148, 2 GB RAM, 2x Broadcom BCM5570C NetXtreme II gigabit Ethernet, 72GB SAS 10K hard drive. Software: Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 (32-bit), Citrix XenDesktop. XenServer® 5.5 Server: Dell PowerEdge R710, dual processor quad core 2.27 Ghz Xeon L 5520, 64 GB RAM, 4x Broadcom BCM5570C NetXtreme II gigabit Ethernet, 8x72GB SAS 15K hard drives. Software: XenServer* 5.5. Virtual Desktops: Windows* XP Professional SP3 - XenServer Virtual Machines (VDA), 1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 2 GB HHD, 1024x768 – 32-bit display resolution, 8GB Vdisk, XenServer 5.5 PV Driver, Virtual Audio Cable version 1.5.5.266, Adobe Flash 10.0.32.18. Windows 7 Ultimate Edition - XenServer Virtual Machines (VDA), 1 vCPU, 1024MB RAM, 2GB HHD, 1024x768 – 32-bit display resolution, 18GB Vdisk, XenServer 5.5 PV Driver, Virtual Audio Cable version 1.5.5.266, Adobe Flash 10.0.32.18. Profile Server: IBM* xSeries 345, dual processer Xeon CPU 2.66GHz, 6x36.6GB SCSI 15K hard drives, 2.5 GB RAM, 2x Intel® Pro/1000 MT Dual Port Network Adapter, ATI Rage* XL PCI 8 MB graphics card. Software: Microsoft* Windows Server* 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 x32 (Build 3790: Service Pack 2). Provisioning Server: Dell PowerEdge 2950, dual processer quad core 2.66 GHz Xeon processor, 6x146 GB SAS 15K hard drives, 4 GB RAM, 2x Broadcom BCM5508C NetXtreme II gigabit Ethernet (teamed), ATI ES1000 16 MB graphics card. Software: Windows Server* 2008 Enterprise Edition SP1 x64, Citrix® PVS 5.1. Database Server: IBM xSeries 345, dual processer Xeon CPU 2.66GHz, 6x36.6GB SCSI 15K hard drives, 2.5 GB RAM, 2x Intel® Pro/1000 MT Dual Port Network Adapter, ATI Rage XL PCI 8 MB graphics card. Software: Server 2003 R2 Enterprise SP2 32-bit, Microsoft SQL Server* 2005 SP3.

3 For more information on how the score is determined, please see the LoginVSI Pro 2.0 documentation, available at http://www.loginconsultants.com.

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