VIRTUALIZING Terminal Server : analyzing Terminal Services (TS) workloads running on the latest generation hardware and hypervisors
Virtualizing Terminal Server and Citrix XenApp workloads is highly recommended, for managment and consolidation benefits and if you are thinking on x86 TS so far for more scalability.
So, If you are planning to run Terminal Server in a Virtual Environment, you shoud read the The Project VRC phase 2 whitepaper, that focuses completely on analyzing Terminal Services (TS) workloads running on the latest generation hardware and hypervisors.
Here is a brief summary :
"When comparing hypervisors, performance is close to equal throughout when no Hyper-threading is used by the VM’s. In all test the hypervisors perform with a 5% range with the Terminal Server workloads, with a slight edge for vSphere 4.0. Utilizing Hyper-Threading, on all platforms a performance increase in seen, but vSphere 4.0 trailing slightly by 15% in comparison to XenServer 5.5 and Hyper-V 2.0. These differences are only visible under full load.
Strikingly, XenServer 5.5 and Hyper-V 2.0 perform almost identical in all tests. The only differentiator between these two is that XenServer 5.5 (and vSphere 4.0) support 8vCPU’s, where Hyper-V 2.0 has a maximum of 4vCPU per VM"
if you are curious about the impact of different hypervisors and the performance differences with various hardware and if you are searching for best practices for your virtual Desktops … Project VRC whitepapers are a must read!
Altaro
Recommended Books
System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine
System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Cookbook
Cloudtidings.com 