Application Performance Engineering Blog - Shunra Software » Microsoft

Using Shunra VE Technology in a VDI Implementation

Yigal Gafni — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:23:12 +0000

The latest buzzword in IT is “Virtualization”. Of course, the acronym can be apply to many cases, but the most commonly used case refers to the PC replacement with new generation of “terminals” that are commonly referred to as “DV”, Desktop Virtual Infrastructure. No, we are not talking about the reincarnation of V-100 green screen monsters from a generation ago! These DVs are perfectly functional personal computers with full graphic and audio capabilities, they are virtually indistinct from a full fledged desktop or laptop computer.

The new Virtual PC is based on new technologies that continue to evolve at an amazing space. The core consists of very powerful servers that can run dozens of sessions, each one supporting an individual “PC” with its own “memory”, “hard disk” and, naturally, CPU.

The secret sauce is a “Hardware Virtualization Layer” often called a “Hypervisor”, which is a program that allocates resources to each virtual machine, and also isolates them from its neighbors. As a result, completely separate computers are essentially created on the server hosting the virtual environment. The user, on the terminal or “virtual PC” receives only screen shots or sound bytes. All data is kept on the “virtual partition” on the server. As a result, the terminal can be a scaled-down version or an older version of a PC. However, local copies of the software are still needed on the terminals leaving the amount of actual savings debatable.

There are three main players in the field, VMware, Citrix and of course Microsoft. Each one with a particular flavor, however, they all share the same issue. At the end of the line there is a client and you must test the impact of the delivery mechanism, the network. Only testing with Shunra VE will ensure end-user performance and satisfaction.

Is Microsoft Quietly Providing an Alternative to WAN Acceleration

Amichai Lesser — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:08:54 +0000

As part of our service offerings at Shunra’s professional services, we help our clients analyze the performance ROI of WAN acceleration. We also wrote a best practices paper about it here http://www.shunra.com/uploads/pdf/WAN-acceleration-whitepaper-031909.pdf.

Which is why I was very interested in learning about 2 new developments from Microsoft. These developments provide improved performance for branch office users with a Windows 7 client accessing applications hosted on a Windows Server 2008 in a remote data center.

The first development is the improved TCP stack and improved SMB implementation which mitigates one of the biggest performance problems at remote branch offices around file access and web access (internal web access). More on the TCP stack performance improvements can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_networking_technologies#Network_performance and on the file transfer performance improvements (namely SMB2 improvements) you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block#SMB2. and more evidence to these performance enhancement for remote branch users can be found here: http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2008/11/11/file-server-performance-improvements-with-the-smb2-protocol-in-windows-server-2008.aspx

A 2nd development that couples the next generation TCP stack is the new BranchCache feature. You can read more about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EE07308F-7C53-4C76-9ED9-670BC25A4C9D&displaylang=en

Why is this so interesting? Well, for many of my clients, slow file transfers and slow access to static data are big pain points. It is also one of the drivers behind the WAN acceleration industry. If the new Windows 7 – Windows 2008 R2 lives up to its promise we may see it being an interesting alternative to WAN accelerators, curious to hear what you think, especially if you had any experience with deploying any of these new solutions.

Talk to you soon,

Amichai Lesser

P.S. peer to peer torrent access to cached data inside the branch, really? !! I challenge the first IT engineer to share his experience with implementing this option.

Web page performance testing using WAN simulation

Dave Berg — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:33:12 +0000

Everyone knows that performance of Web sites is critical to their success. In order to build a well performing Web page, everyone also knows that testing needs to be done early and often. What most people do not seem to know is what or how to test.

This recent Microsoft Developer Zone Magazine article does a good job of outlining common issues with Web pages, and gives specific examples for how you can improve your page design and testing. One common question I am asked is ‘under what network conditions should Web pages be tested?’ Surely the best approach is to know exactly who your customers are and then tailor your testing to model their network connectivity. Unfortunately most Web pages do not have a clear enough picture of their users’ network demographics to build such a model. Instead of worrying about the details, this article explains a different approach:

“At Microsoft, we use a WAN simulator benchmark of 300/64Kbps bit rate, 300ms RTT for global content and 50ms RTT for local Content Delivery Networks. Our packet loss setting is 3%. This benchmark allows us to test across multiple versions of multiple applications and see their relative performance in the same environment.” – Jim Pierson, Microsoft

Read the article