HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL A scientific approach to XenApp farm sizing Helge Klein

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Who is Helge Klein? CTP, MVP Author of SetACL and Delprof2 Independent consultant and developer Architect of what later became Citrix Profile Management

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL talking about? What is he Scientifically sound farm sizing methodology How to calculate farm capacity

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Methodology 1. Determine capacity of existing farm 2. Measure load and identify bottlenecks 3. Calculate capacity of new farm

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Example Description Farm capacity old (total) Farm capacity old (per user) Factor Farm capacity new (per user) Farm capacity new (total) RAM for user sessions [MB]630, ,575,000 CPU [normalized cores]1, Hard disk [write IOPS]7, ,688 Network [MB/s]24, ,000

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Where to get the numbers? 1. Data collection 2. Observation 3. Measurements 4. Calculation

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Data collection

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL for /f %i in (AllFarmServers.txt) do wmic /node:%i cpu get name, maxclockspeed, systemname, description, manufacturer, revision /format:csv >> CPUs.txt Collect CPU data Create AllFarmServers.txt with qfarm Use resulting list to determine server model

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Srv001,x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 10,GenuineIntel,3400,Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.40GHz,1034,Srv001 Srv002,x86 Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2,GenuineIntel,2666,Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 2.67GHz,11266,Srv002 Srv003,x86 Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2,GenuineIntel,2666,Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 2.67GHz,11266,Srv003 Srv004,x86 Family 6 Model 26 Stepping 5,GenuineIntel,2666,Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon-Prozessor,6661,Srv The result

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL RAM, NICs hard disks Could be determined via WMI, too Often knowing the server model is sufficient Components per model often identical

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL ComponentHP DL360 G4 CPU2x Xeon dual core 3,0 GHz, no Hyper Threading 4 Cores, CPUID: x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1 RAM4 GB NICs2x Gigabit, 1 connected RAIDSmart Array 6i Hard disks2x 70 GB configured as RAID-1, Compaq BF0728A4CB, 3,5“, R/Min, Ultra320 SCSI Spec sheet

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Resulting data Server modelNumber DL360 G726 DL360 G652 DL360 G570 DL360 G4p60 DL360 G435

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Observation

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL How many users are logged on? Load of CPU, RAM, NICs Individual processes with a lot of RAM or CPU?

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Physical Disk\% Disk Time Physical Disk\Avg. Disk Queue Length „Time“ is equivalent to flickering of hard disk LED Disk queue length: Number of waiting IOs

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Hypothesis: farm is memory limited Limiting factor will differ between farms

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Measurements Tool: Perfmon Next slides: relevant counters

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Terminal Services\Active Sessions Terminal Services\Inactive Sessions Terminal Services\Total Sessions System\Processes General system information

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Disk Time PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Avg. Disk Queue Length PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Disk Reads/sec PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Disk Writes/sec PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Avg. Disk sec/Transfer Hard disk activity Load, queue length, operations per second, latency

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time Memory\Available MBytes Network Interface(*)\Bytes Total/sec CPU, RAM and network RAM: total amount must be known!

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL logman create counter TSPerf -f csv -cf C:\PerfLogs\Counters.txt -o C:\PerfLogs\Server13.csv -si 60 -rf 24:00:00 Automation Create and start data collector set. Format CSV, performance counters are read from C:\PerfLogs\Counters.txt, output file is C:\PerfLogs\Server013.csv, 60 second sampling interval, duration 24 hours.

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL logman create counter TSPerf -f csv -cf C:\PerfLogs\Counters.txt –o C:\PerfLogs\Server13.csv -si 60 -rf 24:00:00 -s Server13 Execution on remote computer Server13

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL for /f %i in (Servers.txt) do logman create counter TSPerf -f csv -cf C:\PerfLogs\Counters.txt -o C:\PerfLogs\%i.csv -si 60 -rf 24:00:00 -s %i Many servers One computer name per line in Servers.txt

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Analyzing the measured data

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL CPU and sessions Server 37 Moderate load during logon phase, afterwards even less A lot of overcapacity

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL CPU and sessions Server 89

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Overlaying the CPU load of many servers Easily verify the analyis

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL HDD and sessions Server 37 Moderate load, peaks during logon phase Full load at aprox. 200

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL HDD and sessions Server 89

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Overlaying the HDD load of many servers Easily verify the analyis

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL RAM and sessions Server 37 Continually increasing load, maximum in the afternoon Available RAM must not go near zero (because of disk cache) High load

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL RAM and sessions Server 89

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Overlaying the memory load of many servers Easily verify the analyis

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Network and sessions Server = 2 MB/s Average rate < 200 KB/s Very low load, a lot of overcapacity

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Network and sessions Server 89

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Overlaying the network load of many servers Easily verify the analyis

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Hypothesis confirmed : farm is limited by available memory CPU load: low, network: negligible hard disk: moderate

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Calculating farm capacity Description Farm capacity old (total) Farm capacity old (per user) Factor Farm capacity new (per user) Farm capacity new (total) RAM for user sessions [MB]630, ,575,000 CPU [normalized cores]1, Hard disk [write IOPS]7, ,688 Network [MB/s]24, ,000

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL How to compare performance of different CPUs? Benchmarking is difficult Better: Moore’s law (doubling of performance every months) Surprisingly accurate (amongst other things because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy) Normalizing CPU performance

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Performance after time (in months) Assumed performance doubling every 21 months Oldest CPU in farm = 1,0

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL CPUCoresFirst soldPerformance index Performance index per core Xeon 7100 „Tulsa“ 3,0 GHz 208/20061,0 Xeon 7100 „Tulsa“ 3,4 / 3,6 GHz 203/20071,26 Xeon E5430 / E /20071,640,82 Xeon X /20092,781,39 Xeon E /20104,132,06

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL CPU Number of CPUs Number of cores Number of normalized CPUs Number of normalized cores Xeon 3 GHz Xeon 3,4/3,6 GHz Xeon E5430/E Xeon X Xeon E Total

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Farm capacity: 1250 normalized CPUs 0.63 CPUs / user

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Hard disk performance = IOPS With many concurrent accesses transfer rate is mostly irrelevant More important: IOPS (operations per second) Exact number depends on measurement method  do not believe vendors

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Disk Reads/sec PhysicalDisk(_Total)\Disk Writes/sec IOPS measurement with Perfmon Read and write IOPS may be very different

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Read and write IOPS Average: ~15 Including spikes: 30

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Farm capacity: 7300 IOPS 3,7 IOPS / user

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL RAM – how much do we have? We need total RAM that is available for user sessions

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Server modelRAM / server [GB]#ServersRAM / server total [GB] DL360 G43,535122,5 DL360 G4p3, DL360 G53, ,5 DL360 G63, ,48 DL360 G73,492690,74 Total

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL DescriptionMemory [MB] Session 0 (OS + Presentation Server + antivirus)325 Kernel (pooled + non-pooled)175 File system cache400 Total 900 Calculate RAM used by the OS (Server 2003)

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Farm capacity: 630 GB 315 MB / user 25% Overhead because 900 MB used by OS

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Network – too much for HDX? 1 Gigabit/second per server ~ 100 MB/s

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Farm capacity: 24 GB/s 12 MB/s / user Extreme overcapacity

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Future capacity Description Farm capacity old (total) Farm capacity old (per user) Factor Farm capacity new (per user) Farm capacity new (total) RAM for user sessions [MB]630, ,575,000 CPU [normalized cores]1, Hard disk [write IOPS]7, ,688 Network [MB/s]24, ,000

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Parameters. Calculation includes: Changed user count, different memory requirements of new OS, server replacement, capacity increase for disaster recovery ParameterValue Farm users old (CCU)2,000 Farm users new (CCU)2,500 RAM for OS new [MB]1,300 CPU performance new [normalized cores] 1.9 IOPS per disk new300 Reserve for disaster recovery1.5

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Servers are memory limited  after setting the amount of RAM, the other parameters can be calculated Virtual server RAM [MB] User sessions49.9 CPU cores (physical)4.1 IOPS273 NICs0.6

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL After setting the number of VMs per host the other parameters can be calculated. Excel sheet available upon request. Physical servers VMs per host3 #Virtual servers 50 RAM [MB]101,376#Hosts25 CPU cores12 Users / host 150 Hard disks3 NICs2

HelgeKlein.com Home of SetACL Thank you! Helge Klein