Citrix server spec

[iaind]

Was looking for some thoughts or ideas on spec for Citrix Xenapp servers for 75 users in a general office environment.

A while ago we moved from 3 physical severs (DL380 G4s) with 3.2Ghz Xeons and 4gb RAM running 2003 and PS4 to 6 Virtual images with 2gb RAM and XenApp 4.5 on 2003. (Virtual hosts are 2 x 1.9Ghz AMD Opteron HE Quads)

Doing the move didnt improve performance, nor did it degrade it but obviously gave us other benefits.

I'm at the stage where I want to move forward to Windows 2008 and XenApp 5 and I think I should be moving back to physical hardware for better performance. I'm thinking of Dell PoweEdge R610s or similar, probably 2 of them. Would keep a couple of the VMs for "overflow" should there be a problem with one of the physical boxes. The spec I'm looking at is:

Xeon E5520 x 2
8Gb RAM
25gb SSD x 2
Usual redundant PSUs etc

Would this be a worthwhile upgrade? Are the SSDs worth using in this sort of environment? They seem like a really good idea for this sort of thing.

I'm aware the 25gb SSDs are probably a bit small, but Dell charge a fortune for them. I'm contemplating buying them with the entry level disks and replacing them with Intel SSDs - would there be any issues with this?

Thanks all!

 

[iaind]

I'm not suprised you didn't see performance benefits if you cut the ram in half

75 users should be easily sustainable on 2 2008 x64 Virtuals with 8-12GB ram in each dependant on what you are publishing

Cut the RAM in half but doubled the number of machines - they performed better that way, CPU usage was more evenly spread.

We're publishing desktops with the usual office suits and databases installed

No issues other then voiding your Dell warranty.

Does it though? I've put aftermarket disks in a Dell before and they confirmed it was OK - although that was internal non hotswap disks.

 

[iaind]

Had confirmation from Dell that it's OK but they will ask for the original disks to be put back in if we need to log a support call.

HP and Sun have said it's fine too, they might only ask for the original disks to be put back if there's RAID type issues.

Question is, are they worth it? Seems like the type of application that would really benefit.

What do you reckon - Dell R610, HP DL360 G6 or Sun X4170?