Our partner Denamik has released a new version of Denamik LoadGen. The execution of massive load and stress tests is now easier than before. You can now record your own user action scripts from within LoadGen, and setup LoadBots to handle the execution of these scripts. LoadGen allows you to manage LoadBots to create remote sessions and evaluate your IT environment under stress. A built-in reporting facility will give you instant results.

What is new in LoadGen 2.3:

• Rewrite of installation and activation of LoadBots
• Rewrite of internal functions of the DUAF language to speed up interaction with XenApp desktops
• Introducing the possibilities to add your own libraries to DUAF scripts

Feel free to check out Denamik LoadGen 2.3, it’s free up to 15 virtual users.

Yesterday we succeeded in the last step of a migrating a physical Citrix XenApp farm to a virtualized XenApp farm.

The old environment consisted of 48 physical servers (HP Blades) running Windows 2003 (x86) and XenApp 5 with an average 30 CCU per server.

The migration goal was to reduce the number of physical servers to 16 (using server virtualization) and to introduce Internet Explorer 8 (old was still IE6 based).

We did a loadtest (using the DeNamiK Loadgen) to get an answer to the following questions:

• What is the optimal configuration regarding the number of Virtual XenApp servers per physical machine (on this hardware with our apps and our usage)?
• What is the impact on the CCU per server of introducing IE8?
• Take 300GB or 500GB hard drives (the 500GB drives are slower)?

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While using the load generator LoadGen, of DeNamiK .We got a 102% load on the physical CPU of the ESXi host according to de VEEAM Monitoring. The LoadGen is used  to simulate users activities on several Citrix virtual machines to see how many users can be active on one Citrix virtual machine and eventually on 1 ESXi host without performance degree. In the load test where we saw the 102% we had 4 virtual machines. which where configured with 2 vCPU 4 GB memory. The host is en ESXi 4.1 with the latest and greatest patches installed. The resources pool seen in the picture is not visible in vCenter but is the mother (root) resource pool of VMware. There are no “handmade” resources pools on the server.

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DeNamiK is proud to present the DeNamiK LoadGen 2.1. With the DeNamiK LoadGen it’s possible to perform the following actions:

• Load test
• Stress test
• Performance test
• Constant monitoring
• Benchmark
• Reporting

With the DeNamiK LoadGen 2.1 there are lots of new features and improvements. Let’s name just a few:

• ICA File support
• Performance Counter module 2.0
• Internal processes are optimized

The DeNamiK User Action Framework for XenApp has been updated:

• More DUAF functions which will help you create more reliable scripts
• Status updates possible from the LoadBots to the Director and to the reports
• XML reports available

Also one of the best changes: the LoadGen moved from .Net Framework 1.1 to:

• DeNamiK LoadGen Director: .Net Framework 3.5
• DeNamiK LoadBots: .Net Framework 2.0

Read the whole article on the website of DeNamiK!

Daniel Nikolic

Citrix Synergy starts tomorrow in San Francisco. From wednesday 12 may till friday 14 may all updates, new features and other news is presented to the public. One thing that’s excites me most is the upcoming XenClient, a baremetal hypervisor.

Combined with a VDI solution like XenDesktop the XenClients enables the customer to take the VM outside the datacenter en get it onto his desktop / laptop using his local resources. Altough this sounds a bit like we were used to work, and in fact it is, there is a big difference.
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If you’re familiar with the challenges of printer drivers in a multiuser environemnt you can skip the first part of this post.

The challenge of printer drivers in a multiuser environment
The first terminal server implementation i’ve done was a Windows NT 4 Terminal Server. This is where i’ve learned (the hard way) that printer drivers and a multiuser enviroment is a snake pit. Finding the right driver for the printer is a difficult job which was done by trial-and-error.
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Zo; net thuisgekomen van een avond load testen bij een klant van ons. Wij hebben een implementatie gedaan van SQL 2005 en Reporting Services voor een Management Informatie Systeem. Wij hebben SQL 2005 geïnstalleerd op een virtuele machine binnen VMWare ESX. Doordat SQL 2005 beter kan in zijn jasje zit als 64-bit versie hebben we zowel Windows 2003 als SQL 2005 als 64-bit geïnstalleerd. De machine heeft 2 procs. en 6GB intern geheugen. Vrij ok zou je zeggen….

De laatste paar dagen ben ik bezig geweest met een tool die zeer snel internet acties opneemt. Deze recorder gaat straks deel uitmaken van DUAF. Ik heb dus een flink aantal scripts gemaakt die de gebruikers activiteiten op dit Management Informatie Systeem simuleert. De scripts werkten goed, dus om terug te komen bij de loadtest…. die ging vrij slecht, met 50 gebruikers ging de machine goed onderuit, pagina’s laden via de Reporting Services van SQL duurde zo’n drie tot vier minuten! Dit zijn dus gewoon asp.net webpagina’s.

Na het toevoegen van twee extra procs. en 2GB geheugen ging het een stuk(-je) beter, maar niet denderend veel beter. Ik moet de meetresultaten nog analyseren en dan kom ik hier op terug. Voor nu;

Later….