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XenDesktop Planning Guide: User Bandwidth Requirements

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Overview
Regardless of the flavor of virtual desktop being implemented (hosted shared, hosted VM-based VDI, local streamed, etc.), the network plays a critical role, especially for remote and branch office users. If the network bandwidth is not planned properly, users will most likely experience poor performance with their virtual desktop. When planning a virtual desktop solution, one must think about how the users workload will evolve. The design must be able to support future activities, not just todays. As can be observed, the content users interact with is changing from textual-based to more multimedia-based. Any solution and methodology must be able to account for these changes in user behavior. Although there is no single answer to the question of how much bandwidth will a user need, this planning guide provides recommendations on how to estimate the user network requirements. This guide is used to provide bandwidth estimates during the planning and design phase. Actual results may vary during implementation due to user habits, bandwidth utilization, and infrastructure implementation. This methodology provides an average bandwidth estimate. Different activities will result in a burst of traffic (video and printing). It is assumed traffic bursts will be random between users throughout the workday. If all users have network bursts at the same time, performance will degrade as adequate bandwidth levels will not be available. The bandwidth estimates were obtained through the testing procedures identified in the CTX124457 Performance Assessment and Bandwidth Analysis for Delivering XenDesktop to Branch Offices white paper. Additional modifications, as explained in CTX125060 - Best Practices for Optimizing HDX Technologies white paper, can be used to further reduce bandwidth consumption at the cost of the user experience.

Guidelines
As one would expect, the user experience can degrade as the latency increases and the bandwidth decreases. Proper network planning must be based on the type of work users are performing and the overall network topology. The bandwidth requirements of delivering a full Windows desktop will likely be higher than the bandwidth required for delivering few applications using a solution like XenApp because a full Windows desktop provides a richer experience along with more multimedia and graphical content and is idle less often than when a user is only accessing few applications. Estimating network requirements needs planning and following best practices because Citrix HDX technology tunes itself based on several factors including the servers, end points and the amount of network bandwidth available. For example, if less bandwidth is available then more compression is applied.
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Also, to better determine user bandwidth requirements, the users activity must be assessed. Simply estimating bandwidth for Office-based applications will result in inadequate performance if users also print and access multimedia content. The percentage of time a user spends working with Office-based applications, browsing the Internet, accessing videos, and being idle will help in determining the overall bandwidth required.

Planning
By calculating the percentage of time a user is expected to be doing certain activities, a rough estimate can be determined for HDX bandwidth requirements, which is shown in the follow table: Parameter (medium workloads)
Office-based Internet Printing Flash Video Standard WMV Video High Definition WMV Video Idle

Native XenDesktop
43 kbps 85 kbps 555-593 kbps 174 kbps 464 kbps 1812 kbps Based on active applications

XenDesktop with Branch Repeater

31 kbps 38 kbps 155-180 kbps 128 kbps 148 kbps 206 kbps Based on active applications

Note: These are estimates. If a user watches a WMV HD video with a bit rate of 6.5 Mbps, that user will require
a network link with at least that much bandwidth. In addition to the WMV video, the link must also be able to support the other user activities happening at the same time. When the user group is small, it is easy for calculations based on averages to come out short of the actual required pipe size. An interesting point with regards to bandwidth usage is during idle time. If the user is idle but the applications are still active, chances are that there is still a bandwidth element to consider. Many applications (Outlook, Internet browsers, etc) continue to update the screen through constant updates and synchronization. These will in turn impact the overall bandwidth usage. Also, if multiple users are expected to be accessing the same type of content (videos, web pages, documents, etc.), integrating the Branch Repeater into the architecture can drastically reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed. However, the amount of benefit is based on the level of repetition between users.

Note: Additional details on the bandwidth estimates can be gathered by referring to the following Citrix white paper:
CTX124457 Performance Assessment and Bandwidth Analysis for Delivering XenDesktop to Branch Offices. By using this information, the following formula can be used to estimate the bandwidth requirements for a group of active users with similar workloads:

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Based on the formula, the following scenario is used to help calculate the average network consumption for a typical 8AM to 5PM workday. Office-based: 4 hours Internet: 1 hour Printing: 15 minutes Flash Video: 30 minutes Standard WMV Video: 10 minutes HD WMV Video: 5 minutes Idle: 3 hours (one hour lunch and two, one hour meetings)1

For an entire day, a particular user in this scenario would require roughly Average
Native XenDesktop XenDesktop with Branch Repeater 78 kbps 34 kbps

Burst
1812 kbps2 206 kbps

Caution must be taken when using the average value. By averaging out the bandwidth requirements across an entire day and across many users, there may be a lack of bandwidth if a large percentage of users have a large burst in traffic at the same time. Based on the expected user habits, it is advisable to include a bandwidth burst calculation for unexpected bursts of traffic.

Note: Branch Repeater bandwidth estimates assume users are watching and accessing similar content. If the content
is different, the bandwidth savings will not be nearly as great. For certain environments, additional modifications to XenDesktop and HDX can be implemented to try and reduce the bandwidth requirements even further. Many of these modifications reduce bandwidth by slightly degrading the user experience. The estimates used in this document were based on mostly default configurations. By utilizing additional functionality, like the following, the bandwidth requirements can be reduced further:
1

The bandwidth usage for idle sessions is not being calculated as part of the formula. It is often recommended to lock the desktop and enable a screen saver after a short period of idle time. To conserve bandwidth, the selected screen saver is to blank the screen, thus not consuming additional bandwidth. 2 Assuming the burst is coming from the user watching High-Definition WMV videos. For own calculations, utilize the activity that has the largest bandwidth consumption. Page 4

More aggressive HDX compression Bandwidth limitations on HDX virtual channels Reduction in the video rendering frame rates

A more complete list of bandwidth tuning tips can be found by leveraging the CTX125060 - Best Practices for Optimizing HDX Technologies white paper.

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Revision History
Revision 1.0 Change Description Document created Updated By Daniel Feller Lead Architect Date July 28, 2010

About Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the leading provider of virtualization, networking and software as a service technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the worlds largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2008 was $1.6 billion.

2010 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, Access Gateway, Branch Repeater, Citrix Repeater, HDX, XenServer, XenApp, XenDesktop and Citrix Delivery Center are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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