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Environment
My environment is a Xenapp 7.13 test lab using a 2016 image delivered via PVS. I am using UPM best practices and folder redirection. It is fully patched as of time of writing.(16/07/2017)
Citrix OPTIMISER
The optimised image used the new Citrix Optimiser provided here: https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX224676
When you run the Optimiser executable you are presented with a choice of predefined templates.I chose the 2016 template.
As you can see it already has predefined best practice settings such as services to disable.
It also easily allows you to disable scheduled tasks with ease.
There is also an analyse option which will let you know if settings for best practice are applied or not.
When you choose Execute mode the settings are applied.
A lot easier than manually carrying out individual optimisation!
Initiating LOGIN PI Workload
The login PI process once configured will start to initiate a launched desktop session. The launcher will verify connectivity.You will see a desktop session launch.
Within the session a workload will initialise.
In my example, I chose native apps to launch such as Paint, Calculator, Notepad and Wordpad.
The apps will close. We will then see the session log off.
Results of non-optimised and Optimised Image
I ran the Workload for a good few hours in each scenario. The LOGIN PI dashboard provided the following Insights:
NON OPTIMISED
I could see the applications were all within their action response times the last 15 minutes. Login times were as follows.
OPTIMISED
Non- optimised
OPTIMISED
Director Console Results
NON OPTIMISED
OPTIMISED
NON OPTIMISED
OPTIMISED
Conclusion
The results are not what I was expecting. There was not much difference between my 2016 optimised image from my standard. I would therefore suggest moving to a 2016 O/S if you have not already done so as this is a very good base O/S for your workloads. There were 137 login sessions in a 2 hours window as shown by the optimised screen shots compared to around 70 on the non optimised image in an hour. Almost the same. The optimised image was slightly better but there was not much in it. These results are based on a single user workload. I would like to run through the tests using multiple workloads and I will post results later. I would also like to try my own set of customisation's to see if I can improve on the results found here. What I hope to highlight is the usefulness and insights provided by Director and Login PI in order to assess login issues. Moving forward we are entering a world of automation and having the capability to simulate Xenapp workflows is very much welcome. I have more work to be done so expect future posts on optimisation.