and Deployment on Intel® Platforms
Client Aware Cloud with RES Virtual Desktop Extender
Audience and Purpose
Cloud computing offers numerous business and technical benefits to enterprise organizations, including improved efficiencies in capital spending, increased resource utilization, and a more uniformed approach to IT infrastructure. Unfortunately, cloud construction is still an intimidating task for most organizations to undertake. Working with partners, Intel provides reference architectures through its Intel® Cloud Builders program as a guideline for constructing an enterprise cloud.
The service-oriented architecture of cloud computing lends itself very well to hosting client computing environments and can ease the deployment and management challenges associated with traditional endpoint architectures. However, the current generation of users requires more than basic application and data access. Today’s users require a high performance, rich experience with complex interfaces as well as access to an array of external peripherals such as webcams and USB storage devices. These high demand users will not be satisfied with a sluggish virtual desktop session; therefore, it is critical to identify approaches which provide a high quality user experience. This paper presents a solution to enhance the experience and overall usability of virtual desktop sessions while maintaining the advantages of a typical Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployment.
The target audience of this paper is enterprise IT departments that are looking for a balanced solution for delivering an uncompromised user experience with a VDI deployment. The paper first discusses today’s standard VDI architecture and points out some of the inherent user experience challenges. Next, RES Virtual Desktop Extender*
technology is introduced, and its architecture and benefits for VDI environments are discussed. Finally, the paper lays out performance benchmarks showing the raw numbers generated when executing both a synthetic as well as a “more realistic” HTML5 webpage workload, both of which clearly demonstrate the positive impact that the RES technology has on VDI deployments.
Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series Intel® Xeon® Processor 5600 Series
Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . 3
Introduction . . . 3
Current IT Landscape . . . 3
RES Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX) . . . 5
RES VDX integrated with RES Workspace . . . 6
Process . . . 6
Results . . . 7
Conclusion . . . 9
utilization of both server and client computing resources. Current VDI technology is hindered in its ability to provide a capable platform for both real-time applications such as VoIP and graphics-intensive applications such as rich media. Leveraging the resources of the local client device is one technique for effectively executing resource-heavy applications and services while reducing the burden on both the network and data center infrastructure. In our tests, we have shown how running RES Virtual Desktop Extender (VDX)* on PCs powered by Intel® Core™ processors can merge the benefits of centralized VDI processing and management with local client computing resources.
Introduction
As VDI deployments become more prevalent on enterprise clouds and IT departments move away from rich end- point devices towards thin clients, most end-users notice a reduced experience if intelligent client capabilities are not leveraged.
Virtual desktop solutions are designed to ease desktop management for organizations but normally overlook the impact on the end-user experience. Figure 2 shows the topology of these data center focused VDI deployments. While this may have some benefits for the IT department, it prohibits end users from getting the most productive experience. Common complaints of response time and slowness stem from over saturated servers and network congestion. These limitations have made it difficult for enterprises to fully adopt cloud-based virtual desktop services.
applications, such VoIP and rich media.
This approach provides “client aware”
delivery of virtual desktop services that balance infrastructure resources, user experience, and centralized manageability.
This paper presents some of the benefits provided by the joint Intel and RES solution.
Current IT Landscape
Traditional IT infrastructure is generally comprised of a centralized data center model that provides services and storage to devices that run at the edge of an organization’s network. With this approach, the majority of processing is done by end client devices. This model (figure 1) requires a significant amount of dedicated resources (both people and hardware) to support and maintain functionality for productivity in an enterprise network. This paradigm has provided the most flexibility for new hardware adoption and expansion but it is very costly for an organization to keep up
the client computing environment is consolidated into the data center (figure 2). This provides a variety of advantages within an enterprise network, including centralized image management, data security, and end-user device flexibility.
Unfortunately, VDI has a negative impact on the end-user experience when dealing with rich user interfaces, graphics rendering, and peripheral device support.
Due to these limitations, VDI has only been implemented for limited use cases that don’t involve functionality beyond basic data entry. To strike a better balance between endpoint and data center processing in a VDI environment, RES Software leverages their patented reverse seamless technology in a solution called Virtual Desktop Extender or VDX*, which enables organizations to utilize client-side resources in a VDI deployment (figure 3). By providing this balanced approach, VDX enables enterprises to deliver a rich end-user experience while still realizing the benefits of VDI.
Figure 1: Traditional Enterprise Desktop Architecture
Figure 3: Balanced VDI Compute Model enabled by RES Virtual Desktop Extender Figure 2: VDI Architecture
seamless technology. VDX leverages an endpoint’s resources to enhance the end-user experience of a virtual desktop environment. VDX provides client awareness by utilizing the endpoint’s local system resources to handle the execution of applications that cannot run or whose performance is significantly degraded within a virtual desktop environment.
This solution provides a unique method to balance the user’s workload between their endpoint device resources and the virtual desktop session hosted on the cloud. RES VDX supports Microsoft Remote Desktop Services* and VDI running over RDP*, VMware View running over PCoIP* and Citrix XenApp* and XenDesktop* running over HDX*.
For example, figure 4 shows the local client menu available within a XenDesktop 5.0 virtual desktop session.
Figure 5 shows both a locally and a centrally executing application running seamlessly in a virtual desktop. In this particular case, a local executing media player leverages the resources of the endpoint to properly render video content, while an Outlook client runs centrally.
Both are presented in a single screen, preventing the user from having to switch between the local and virtual desktop.
Key benefits:
• Publish applications from the local start menu within a remote desktop session
• Present both local and centralized applications seamlessly in a single screen
• Allow resource heavy applications to leverage local resources
Figure 4: Local start menu inside Citrix XenDesktop 5.0* virtual desktop session populated by RES VDX from the local desktop
Figure 5: Local and centralized applications presented seamlessly in a virtual desktop
Figure 6: RES VDX integrated with RES Workspace Manager RES VDX integrated with RES
Workspace Manager
RES VDX runs either as a standalone solution or integrated with RES Workspace Manager*.
RES Workspace Manager enables IT to manage and secure access to resources such as applications, data, and network and printer mappings for both physical and virtual desktops. It integrates with existing application delivery and image management tools to control the personalization, configuration, and security of a user’s desktop environment.
The integration between VDX and Workspace Manager allows an IT administrator to control which local applications can be executed in the virtual desktop as well as specify certain file types to be opened by local applications.
For example, if a user opens a media file in their remote session, the local Windows Media player can execute instead of the one hosted in the virtual desktop, thereby maximizing the user experience and reducing the bandwidth consumed by the virtual desktop session.
Figure 6 shows an image of RES VDX configuration within RES Workspace Manager and how shortcuts can be created on the virtual desktop to link directly to either locally or virtually installed applications.
Key benefits:
• Control which local applications are exposed in the virtual desktop session based on a user’s context (location, endpoint, time of day, etc.)
• Provide unified personalization, configuration and security across local and remote applications
Process
In order to determine the capabilities of the RES VDX, we configured an environment that would allow us to measure the impact on user experience as well as on the server workload. We utilized PassMark Performance Test 7.0*, a commercially available performance benchmark to analyze the hardware performance differences between the two test iterations.
The PassMark performance benchmark runs a variety of tests to determine an overall system rating including CPU, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, memory and hard disk. Individually each test is a single skew/vector, but combined they provide a method to quantify the performance a user would experience.
PassMark Performance Test metrics
• System Rating – A total system rating weighted by the following variety of system performance characteristics.
• CPU Rating – A set of tests to determine the throughput and peak performance utilizing mathematical operations, compression, encryption, and SSE instructions.
• 2D Graphics Rating – An assessment of the ability to complete rendering of 2D graphical modifications. This test includes windows interface constructions such as text boxes, radio options, and check boxes.
• 3D Graphics Rating – An assessment of the vector processing capabilities for 3D rendering.
• Memory Rating – A set of tests to determine the performance of memory allocation and access speeds.
• Disk Rating – A set of I/O tests designed to give a performance rating for seek time and random read/write operations on the system hard disk.
Table 1: Citrix XenDesktop 5.0 with Microsoft Windows 7 virtual machines - PassMark benchmark results (Higher is better) Provisioned
Processors (CPU)
Provisioned Memory (GB)
CPU Rating 2D Graphics Rating
3D Graphics Rating
Memory Rating Disk Rating
1 1 1017.9 256.5 FAILED 652.0 618.9
1 1.5 1031.7 268.0 FAILED 680.7 626.2
1 2 1338.4 308.7 FAILED 886.6 560.2
2 4 2546.9 326.9 FAILED 1205.2 470.1
Table 2: Client device PassMark benchmark results with reverse seamless capabilities from RES Virtual Desktop Extender (Higher is better)
Client Device System
Rating
CPU Rating 2D Graphics Rating
3D Graphics Rating
Memory Rating Disk Rating
Wyse Xenith Zero Client* - - - -
Wyse C90LEW Zero Client* - - - -
Wyse R90LW 212.2 404 256.7 44.0 291.0 Fail**
HP t5740e (Intel Atom N280)
234.3 323.5 117.3 116.4 146.8 736.4
Lenovo ThinkPad T400 (Intel Core 2 Duo)
1027.8 1943.4 424.8 183.6 917.7 1670.4
Lenovo ThinkPad T410 (Intel Core i5)
1520.4 2985.9 550.4 390.1 1144.9 1438.0
Lenovo ThinkPad T420 (Intel Core i7)
1709.5 4269.0 765.5 265.6*** 1292.4 1623.0
in a virtual desktop session. This provides a simple technique to leverage end-client resources for specific applications or services that are unable to execute within a virtual desktop or whose performance is significantly hindered when executed remotely.
of the server-hosted virtual machine is not the limitation on user experience. As indicated, 3D graphics applications are not able to run within the virtual desktop environment. Table 2 shows the results with RES Virtual Desktop Extender enabled. The user performance scales
and 2, it is apparent that the end-point device can provide more performance than a virtual machine hosted on a remote server. This suggests that a VDI deployment should utilize the available resources of an intelligent client device to provide optimal performance.
* Note: Insufficient resources to run local executables on zero client configurations.
** Note: Write filters on the Wyse R90LW prohibited the disk read/write test from completing.
*** Note: Lenovo ThinkPad T420 rendered 3D graphics with 4x multi-sampling providing higher quality graphics rendering at a slight performance cost.
User Experience Analysis:
Unfortunately, exclusively looking at synthetic benchmark tests only shows how well the individual platforms handle specific workloads. In order to give a better representation of the impact a user will experience, we tested the impact of Web applications. With the growing popularity of rich user interface
Figure 7: Webvizbench.com FPS and Benchmark scores for client devices with RES VDX enabled and disabled
Web media using HTML5 and WebGL, it is important for IT organizations to be aware of the impact on both the user experience and the associated data center workload.
To accurately quantify the impact of using the HTML5 webvizbench.com benchmark, we measured virtual desktop and client device system resources (CPU, RAM and network) utilization when running Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.
Looking at Figure 7, it is apparent that leveraging local resources has a positive impact on the user experience across all tested devices, with the exception of the HP t5470e thin client. These results show how RES VDX can effectively use intelligent end-point device resources to quickly render Web graphics across several generations of Intel products.
Figure 8: Webvizbench.com CPU workload on client device and virtual machine execution to the end point device. This
reduction in data center and network resource consumption translates to increased VDI scalability and enhanced quality of service for end users.
Additionally, it is important to recognize that the lower CPU consumption on the intelligent client device indicates that additional applications and services may be transitioned to the device without hindering user experience.
deployments to greatly enhance the user experience while simultaneously decreasing the consumption of network and data center resources.
In our tests, we have highlighted the benefits of using RES VDX, its positive impact on the end-user experience and its ability to reduce the load on data center resources. We observed that the user
both provided the lowest CPU utilization when the workload was shifted to the client device, thereby providing the headroom for additional processes to be executed locally by leveraging RES VDX.
This processing workload shift from data center hosted virtual machines to client devices also translates into increased VDI user density per server, saving additional power and cooling resources.
Server Model information:
• SuperMicro X8DTG-QF
• 2x Intel Xeon Westmere EX x5670 @ 2.93 GHz
• 96 GB of DDR3
• 1.5 TB of RAID5 storage for virtual machine repository
• 300 GB storage for base XenServer 5.6 installation
PassMark Performance Test:
http://www.passmark.com/
Disclaimers
∆ Intel processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family, not across different processor families. See www.intel.com/
products/processor_number for details.
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The test results show the advantages of an intelligently balanced compute model that is capable of efficiently leveraging both endpoint and data center resources to provide an optimal computing solution. Intel supports companies like RES Software that develop intelligent solutions capable of better distributing processing between endpoint devices and data centers, resulting in more flexible VDI deployments.
More Information:
• Intel Cloud Builders program, visit www.intel.com/cloudbuilders
• Intel® Xeon® processors: www.intel.com/
itcenter/products/xeon/index.htm
• Intel processor-based laptops and desktops: www.intel.com/itcenter/
system/client/index.htm
• RES Software Virtual Desktop Extender:
www.reverseseamless.com
