As you might have read, I recently ran a few XenServer PVS Accelerator tests to determine a starting point for the cache size. This initial investigation looked at Windows 10 and Windows 2012R2 for boot and logon operations. Looking back, I determined that I want to include three additional items Impact of a larger cache… Continue reading XenServer PVS Accelerator Sizing – Part 2
Tag: pvs
XenServer PVS Accelerator Cache Sizing
How large should we make our PVS Accelerator cache? Too large and we waste resources. Too small and we lose the performance. Let’s take a step back and recall our best practice for sizing the RAM on Provisioning Services. We would typically say allocate 2GB of RAM for each vDisk image the server provides. This… Continue reading XenServer PVS Accelerator Cache Sizing
Improving Logon Time with PVS Accelerator
The title is correct. We can improve user logon time by implementing PVS accelerator in XenServer 7.1. This actually makes perfect sense. We already showed that PVS Accelerator drastically improves VM boot times because portions of the master vDisk image are cached locally. Booting a VM equates to roughly 80% reads and 20% writes. VMs… Continue reading Improving Logon Time with PVS Accelerator
Provisioning Services Accelerator
An interesting new feature was included with the XenServer 7.1 release: Provisioning Services Accelerator. In a single sentence, PVS Accelerator overcomes PVS server and network latency by utilizing local XenServer RAM/Disk resources to cache blocks of a PVS vDisk to fulfill local target VM requests. Take a look at the demo video to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_vhMf3SFks… Continue reading Provisioning Services Accelerator
PVS vs MCS – Part 7: Summary
As Q said in the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “All good things must come to an end” and after 6 previous blogs focusing on deciding between Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services, it is time to end. As I explained, over the past 5 years, improvements were made to Provisioning Services… Continue reading PVS vs MCS – Part 7: Summary
PVS vs MCS – Part 6: Architecture
This is part of a series comparing Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services Part 1: Resource Delivery Options Part 2: Scalability Part 3: Storage Optimization Part 4: Deployment Part 5: On-going Maintenance Part 6: Architecture Part 7: Summary In the previous blogs comparing PVS with MCS, I focused on functionality within each technology, but this… Continue reading PVS vs MCS – Part 6: Architecture
PVS vs MCS – Part 5: On-Going Maintenance
This is part of a series comparing Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services Part 1: Resource Delivery Options Part 2: Scalability Part 3: Storage Optimization Part 4: Deployment Deploying Machine Creation Services is extremely easy as there is nothing to deploy. Deploying Provisioning Services is easier with Hyper-V Gen2 VM support and the single-stage Boot… Continue reading PVS vs MCS – Part 5: On-Going Maintenance
PVS vs MCS – Part 4: Deployment
This is part of a series comparing Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services Part 1: Resource Delivery Options Part 2: Scalability Part 3: Storage Optimization Part 4: Deployment Part 5: On-going Maintenance Part 6: Architecture Part 7: Summary So far, the latest analysis between Machine Creation Services and Provisioning Services included within XenApp and XenDesktop… Continue reading PVS vs MCS – Part 4: Deployment
Machine Creation Services RAM Cache and XenServer IntelliCache
As I was discussing the storage optimization capabilities in the Machine Creation Services vs Provisioning Services debate, I mentioned the use of a XenServer RAM-based read cache. This can be misunderstood as XenServer IntelliCache (a mistake I’m sad to say I’ve made in the past). XenServer IntelliCache (released with XenServer 5.6 SP1) and XenServer RAM… Continue reading Machine Creation Services RAM Cache and XenServer IntelliCache
PVS vs MCS – Part 2: Scalability
This is part of a series comparing Provisioning Services and Machine Creation Services Part 1: Resource Delivery Options Part 2: Scalability Part 3: Storage Optimization Part 4: Deployment Part 5: On-going Maintenance Part 6: Architecture Part 7: Summary In Part 1 of the PVS vs MCS debate, we saw Provisioning Services bridges the gap between… Continue reading PVS vs MCS – Part 2: Scalability
