UCS M-Series and Citrix XenApp Bare Metal Deployments

If you are one of the 330,000 organizations using Citrix XenApp (or if you are considering it) you need to consider Cisco’s UCS M-Series modular servers.

What are M-Series modular servers? M-Series servers are composable infrastructure that disaggregates storage and networking from the CPU/memory complex allowing workloads to be optimally matched to resources. An ideal workload for the M142 compute cartridge is Citrix XenApp. The M142 cartridge has two Intel Xeon E3 servers meaning a single 2RU M4308 chassis has 16 servers!

Cisco recently published a CVD (Cisco Validated Design) for Citrix XenApp 7.6 on M-Series. A CVD is a tested, documented, reference architecture to provide a cookbook for customers. This allows customers faster, reliable, and predictable deployments.

Cisco UCS M-Series with Citrix XenApp 7.6 Physical Server Deployment features the Intel Xeon E3-1275L v3 processors with 32GB per server. Amazingly this modest processor / memory combination supports 60 remote desktop session users or 960 users in 2RU!

Sounds great but what about performance? Cisco recommends that the Login VSI Average Response and VSI Index Average should not exceed the baseline plus 2000 milliseconds to insure that end user experience is outstanding (full methodology in the CVD). This determines the per server recommendation of 60 sessions as is seen in the performance graph for a single server.

This performance scales across all eight cartridges or 16 servers.

Join Cisco’s Jeff Nichols & Mike Brennan on December 10th for a BrightTALK webinar at 10am CT to discuss this solution.

I highly encourage to review the CVD and then talk with your Cisco account team or partner to see if the M-Series is the right solution for your Citrix XenApp deployment.