With the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop 1903 release, Machine Creation Services continues to improve!
The RAM-based write cache feature has been updated and improved. I wanted to see how the new RAM-based write cache capability compared to the previous version and how it compares to a desktop without using a RAM-based write cache.
First, let’s look at the 95th percentile IOPS with a LoginVSI knowledge worker workload running for one hour with different sizes for the RAM cache
Seeing a 15-20% reduction in storage IOPS from the 1811 RAM cache and a 50%+ reduction compared to using no RAM cache.
Let’s now look at the % Disk Time (how busy is the disk)
A 40-60% reduction in total disk activity time when we compare to the previous version. In 1903, we reduce disk write time to under 1% with 256MB write cache. It took 512MB in the 1811 version to achieve a similar performance.
Daniel (Follow on Twitter @djfeller)
Citrix Workspace Poster
XenApp/XenDesktop On-Prem Poster
XenApp/XenDesktop Cloud Service Poster
How does this compare to Provisioning Services?
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There’s a flow chart that shows when PVS is applicable vs MCS. IMO, I would only be doing PVS if I had physical endpoints I had to stream to, but then again I’m only running under 100 desktops. If you are in the thousands then PVS probably makes sense. As for comparison, PVS also has a similar feature called ram cache overflow
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Richard, this is the cache in RAM technology PVS has had for some years, finally ported in MCS.
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Glad i went with the 256 option on my catalog
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Thanks for the data points Daniel! Any updates to supporting MCSIO on Azure / AWS ?
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Perfmon MCS Cache Counter doesn’t work anymore. Windows Server 2016 and 1903 VDA. Has anyone else this Problem?
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