New citrix environment x32 of x64 what sould i do?, in the x64 Terminal Server / Citrix forum on BrianMadden.com

Hello,


This year we want to install a new citrix environment and we need to buy new hardware for the citrix servers.
At first my idea was to install a 64bit OS and run Citrix in an x64 environment so we could take advantage of the 64bit performance and scalability.

Now we also asked for an advise from an company who is a Microsoft Gold parner and a parner of Citrix.
They advise us to use the 32bit OS and use the windows2003 enterprise (so the 4gb limitation is not an issue) because we have only 2 64bit applications and let say about eight 32bit applications.
They say that the performance of the 32bit applications may degreede.
Also not all of the printer drivers that we have are 64bit.

I am not sure if this is the right advise.

Hope someone can advise me.

Thanks,

The only way to know if X64 is the right way to go for your apps and environment, is to test. X64 does scale much better, as it supports 16GB RAM with Standard Edition and doesn not have the 2GB Kernel Memory Limit. That being said, it does not support any 16 bit code, requires 1.8 times as much memory to run 32 bit apps and requires 64 bit printer drivers.

If you want to use X64, you'll need servers with 12-16G RAM to scale significantly higher than 32 bit servers with 4GB RAM. Setup a Proof of Concept Environment and kick the tires, before deciding one way or the other.

I am a fan of virtualizing multiple 32 bit terminal servers on VMware or Virtual Iron, with connected SAN to get the similar scaleability benefits w/o the 64 bit limitations.

Patrick,

Thank you for youre answer.
Just one question. They also advised to use Thinstall because we have some applications that are not Citrix compatible (it can only be runned once and not by multiple users on a citrix environment).
Is it possible to run 32bit apps on a 64bit environment with thinstall? So that if we have problems with some apps on Citrix 64bit we can run it on thinstall?

Thanks again,

Not sure about that, but Presentation Server 4.5 Enterprise & Platinum Editions come with both Application Isolation and Application Streaming, so I wouldn't bother with Thinstall unless Citrix native features won't work.

As for the compatibility of Thinstall & X64, ask the vendor.

From the Thinstall website:

https://thinstall.com/help/index.php?whatcanbevirtualized.htm

Cheers,

I am considering the same quandry. Is it possible to mix and match? I would like to have a silo for Published Desktops running just MS Office and have smaller silos for specific applications. These third party apps would most likely run smoother on 32 bit but the Published Desktops would be ideal for 64 bit.

Is this feasible?

Yes. That's definitely feasible. How do you plan to handle printing? If you're going to require print drivers installed (for example if you use Session Printer policies) then you need to be sure that all printers, now and in the future, will have the relevant x64 driver for it.
They guys at the top of the post mentioned this but all the focus has been on the apps. In my experience, the printing issue is definitely one to look out for.

Looks like we're goint to invest in ThinPrint. We have a lot of users at remote sites where we have no control over the printers used and a couple of devices aren't supported by Citrix

As someone who has been bitten hard by 64 bit and 64bit desktops in particular

I can tell you now

There is no adobe flash for 64 bit
All apps using old versions of Java and Oracle Jinitiators will not work
You get 32bit and 64bit IE, but not all weblinks work in the 64 bit
(IE is the only 64 bit app I know)
Very little real world 64 bit support
Most IE plugins dont work on 64 platform
They rewrote IE on the 64bit win2003 and now some weblinks dont work because of it

Good luck!

I agree with Pat, I like Scaling out, not up.

More x86 boxes(VM's) give you a better user experience combined with better redundancy. Just my personal opinion.

We are using XenServer to do just that.

I had this same decision and I went with the 32bit Enterprise servers. I could not be happier. The project was significantly simplified due to reduced testing (still had to test to see how enterprise would react ut no software changes were required).

One note, even with the reduced testing I saw our memory profiles change dramatically when we went from MFXP on Win2k3 Std to PS45 on win2k3 Enterprise.

I cannot prove it for sure, but I suspect that the memory manager in Enterprise was the cause of this. It actually made a huge difference in scaling in our environment. We are running an older version of JDE Edwards and the application would often go from the 36 Mb footprint on start up too 125 Mb+ during the day. On the old system it would never release memory from the working set, so the entire 125 Mb was in memory. On the new one it pushes alot of that to the page file so our memory per session has been reduced by close to half.

The point being baseline your apps before you move forward, you may see differences even in the 32 bit upgrade.

Update….

We tested all our apps and printer drivers to run on x64, we replaced some old printers.
All apps and drivers were performing well on x64.
So in june this year we installed the Windows2003 standard edition with x64 bit Xenapp5 advanced edition  on Xenserver.
Now we are moving users from our Terminal-server to Xenapp.

For now we use the free version of Xenserver.
I’m very happy with the performance and the simple configuration and installation.
The ability to make snapshots and exports of the virtual Xenapp environment is great.

The Xenapp environment performs well. There is no heavy load on the server because we moved only 6 users for now so how it performs with 25 users I will let you know.
We hired an expert to install our x64 xenapp environment because they know  exactly what things to expect and how to configure and tweak the environment.
The only problem we have is that google-maps is very slow over a wan (4MB) connection.
Its performing slow and we are now testing the content-redirection to redirect googlemaps to the local browser.