Overcoming 3 Citrix VDI Performance Issues with Azure [2018 Update]

[ServicesExperts]

In traditional on-premises Citrix deployments, poor performance can wreck your end-user experience. Issues generally come from poor provisioning or management of Citrix VDIenvironments and are far easier to avoid than you might expect.

Three of the most common VDI performance challenges we see are:

• Managing storage I/O
• Under provisioning
• Network bottlenecks

Let’s take a look at these issues in more detail and discuss how you can use Azure deploymentsand native cloud technologies to overcome them in a far more agile and cost effective manner.

Citrix VDI Performance Issues: What should I Look out for?

1. Storage I/O

Challenge: Data travelling from storage to other VDI components goes through an input/output process (I/O). In VDI, storage I/O plays a large part in performance, with the collective I/O demands of thousands of virtual desktops causing bottlenecks and increased latency.

Solution: Optimised resource allocation is critical to smooth VDI performance.

In Azure, rapidly deployed, containerised server offerings (based on factors such as managed disks) leads to faster I/O for VDIs and faster network throughput for brokering services.

2. Under Provisioning

Challenge: When it comes to provisioning VDI, companies may initially allocate fewer resources to save money and only purchase additional hardware when performance degradation occurs.

However, this ignores the root cause of the Citrix VDI performance issue. A proper analysis of these issues prior to deploying additional resources is crucial. You need to understand which VDI components require fast I/O SSD drives and which VDI components require traditional HDDs to fully optimise your network.

Solution: The root cause of many performance issues is the underlying disk subsystem.

In Azure, assigning SSD disks to facilitate faster I/O performance is quick, easy, and fully automatable. Finding the right combination of storage techniques and high-performance SSD will make the biggest difference to VDI performance.

3. Network bottlenecks

Challenge: While this has become less of a challenge in recent times, networks that don’t meet virtual desktop bandwidth demands ultimately result in VDI bottlenecks.

This also applies to WAN connectivity when deploying desktop workloads into the cloud.

Network considerations are critical to any VDI expansion process. Typically, additional compute resources are the main focus of expansion projects. But, additional network infrastructure transaction requests must also be taken into account, as a lack of network capacity can cause bottlenecks to occur.

Solution: The easiest way to prevent network bottlenecks is to monitor and segregate traffic. For example, a network carrying both VDI data and another form of data in the same segment will hinder VDI performance.

In Azure, it’s easy to assign VDI resources to their own Resource Group and VNet, segregating network traffic from other workloads.

It’s also possible to accelerate and compress VDI traffic as part of an initial Azure configuration of VDI resources. In this scenario, deploying sufficient WAN connectivity between your on-premises environment and Azure ecosystem becomes a priority too.

Start at the bottom and work your way up

Most VDI performance challenges begin with issues in the infrastructure layer. However, failed VDI deployments can also stem from a serious misunderstanding of the application layer.

With Azure you have the ability to change this, by rapidly expanding resources to meet client application requirements. Rightsizing your initial VDI environment in the cloud gives you inbuilt flexibility and better rapid deployment options. This means you can proactively deal with current VDI performance issues, while limiting the number of problems you experience in the future.

Want to learn more? Our VDI experts can help you discover and manage the best virtual solutions for your organisation and help you move VDI into the cloud.