Virtual Advantages: Changing the Economics of the Data Center

In the application virtualization space, many Citrix customers are looking to simplify their environments by virtualizing their Citrix XenApp* servers on Citrix XenServer*. Citrix recently benchmarked its XenApp 5.0 application virtualization solution with new XenServer 5.5 on the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series and demonstrated dramatic performance benefits, compounded by the use of Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology1 (Intel® HT Technology).

As reported in the latest issue of Intel Software Insight, going from a single Intel Xeon processor 7350 quad-core, physical XenApp test server to a single Intel Xeon processor 5500 series host server, the Citrix team saw a 6.5x jump in the number of concurrent XenApp users they could support. Turning on Intel HT Technology on the Intel Xeon processor 5570—the Intel Xeon processor 7300 series does not support Intel HT Technology—produced what Bernie Hannon, director of competitive engineering for XenServer at Citrix, termed “an incredible 10.8x” increase.

      Application Virtualization XenApp* 5.0 on XenServer* 5.5
      Source: Intel® Software Insight (Intel.com)

Moving from native performance on the Intel® Xeon® processor 7350 to the virtualized Citrix environment on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series, the number of concurrent users went from 47 to 352. Activating Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology on the newer platform took the figure up to 554 concurrent users—more than a tenfold increase. The team also reported that using Intel HT Technology on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series effectively doubled the number of VMs that could be created with the same number of processor cores. Hannon called the new solution “a remarkable server consolidation opportunity for any 32-bit XenApp administrator.”2

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