Excellent XenDesktop with Microsoft Technologies Microsite

By Matt McSpirit - virtualboy. Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist for Virtualization;
http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit

For those of you looking at integrating technologies like XenDesktop, with platforms like Hyper-V, there’s an excellent resource recently popped up on t’internet, dedicated to providing information on those very topics.  The XenDesktop with Microsoft Technologies microsite is written by Paul Wilson, who, apart from owning a very cool hat, has worked at Citrix for over 10 years, and specialises in the XenDesktop and Password Manager product lines.  Paul’s currently a XenDesktop Architect, so if anyone should know his stuff, it’s him.  There are a number of useful posts on the microsite, so definitely one to add to your favourites or RSS reader.

So, now you know about the microsite, what else is new?  Well, I thought you’d find the XenDesktop Design Guide for Microsoft pretty darn useful…

The guide goes through a number of different areas, from hardware considerations through to networking, an from DR configurations to sizing guidance.  Very useful information indeed.  You can grab that document, here.

Final one – there’s a very interesting post around which is the best hypervisor for VDI, and with many people looking at Windows 7 going forward, it’s good to know that Windows 7, on Hyper-V R2 is a fantastic platform, and actually outperforms the others…I’ll let you check out the results for yourself!  Don’t know what was going on with the XP results though!  One we need to look into, as it seems a bit strange!  One thing you’ll notice in some of the comments, is that a number of VMware fans are asking why TPS (Transparent Page Sharing) wasn’t used, which in effect, can increase density, apparently at no cost to performance, however, the effects of TPS can be considerably reduced as memory page size increases (as with newer OS’s), and you can read all about Jeff’s TPS overview here.  I’d thoroughly recommend it as an educational read.  One thing Jeff doesn’t go into is Address Space Load Randomization (ASLR), which can also have a an effect on the effect of TPS, and you can read a bit more about that, here.

The moral of the story?  There’s a lot to consider when virtualising your desktops, on any platform!  Good luck!