Making Notes ROCK on Citrix
February 12 2009
I've noticed an interesting trend over the last couple of months. More and more of my customers are talking about Citrix. I think it's the "cost-cutting" mode that we're all in these days, and while I don't know a lot about Citrix, I know it has been one way that customers are cutting back on desktop hardware, etc.
So, I've been getting more and more questions about Notes on Citrix and how to make it perform for the Notes 8.x client. So..in the interest of helping to educate the masses, I decided to learn about it myself and let you all in on some great configurations our Notes/Citrix team has been working with! So...here you go!
We all know the Notes 8.x client isn't exactly what we would call "light". There's a LOT of stuff in there (and that's OK)! With Expeditor being used as a foundation and with all the great plug-ins and features we've added, it can take a fair amount of memory to run. And, apparently, therein lies the issue when trying to put Notes clients on Citrix for end-users. And, what exactly does that mean to you, the Notes or Citrix administrator?
Well, in the Notes 7.x days, a typical Citrix deployment would be able to house approximately 35 Notes users on a single Citrix server. When Notes 8.0 came along, things worked a little bit differently. Initially, the Notes 8.0 client did not collocate all components and this caused issues when running on centralized servers - like Citrix. And, the Notes 8.0 client footprint was very large in comparison to 7.x and therefore the number of users you were able to place on a single Citrix server was significantly smaller - possibly even 1/3 of what you were able to house before! Obviously, this was not optimal and made it so that many customers running Citrix would be faced with what many called an "undeployable" situation.
Obviously, with more and more of you running Citrix, something had to change! So, in 8.0.2, the focus was on scalability improvements - including a reduction in the memory footprint in general and then the developers asked themselves the question "Is there anything specific to Citrix that can help?". So, they collaborated with Citrix and brought a Citrix engineer on-site to work with the dev team to see what could be done. And lo and behold - cool things happened!!!
One of the performance changes from 8.0.2 was a Notes-specific setting that was created that helped with the java class setting. It had no major impact on single user clients, but made a significant impact in a multi-user client setting - like Citrix. Essentially, it made it so that the client could share java classes across all the clients - saving a lot of resources!
Another change was the ability to support PAE on 32-bit systems, which allows 32-bit applications to access memory beyond the 4GB RAM limit. So, when we move from a base Citrix system (Win 2003 with 4GB RAM) to a system with 8GB RAM, we can effectively double the number of users on that system. So we're taking better advantage of the hardware.
Then, for Citrix only, development made the option to support running the Notes client on a 64-bit system - which means you can now have access to "almost unlimited" amount of memory. What does this mean in terms of deployment? Well, development tested a quad-core, 32Gb system and showed that they could increase the number of users on the system from 40-60 users to almost 150 users on a single Citrix system! That's a HUGE benefit for those of you running Citrix! You could potentially reduce the size of your Citrix farms!
Of course, there are a TON of details out there on how to do this and I guarantee I'm not doing this justice (I'm not a Citrix administrator)!! So take a look for yourself... There is a white paper about scalability for Notes 8.0.2 on Citrix XenApp 4.5. that outlines all this information including the testing configurations and results. This white paper is currently about Notes 8.0.2, but will be updated for 8.5 in the very near future.
So..there you have it!! Citrix administrators rejoice!!
Oh..and the developers aren't done! This is an evolving process and obviously they would like to do more. As we move forward with new Notes releases, the developers are looking to improve more - like the installation process on Citrix or easier upgrades from previous versions of Notes. This might eve include making the install program Citrix-aware. But..the developers need your help! What do you need? What do you see, as a Citrix administrator that concerns you about Notes on Citrix? What issues/concerns do you have? Feel free to comment here or send me an email and I'll forward that information on! Your feedback will help!
So, I've been getting more and more questions about Notes on Citrix and how to make it perform for the Notes 8.x client. So..in the interest of helping to educate the masses, I decided to learn about it myself and let you all in on some great configurations our Notes/Citrix team has been working with! So...here you go!
We all know the Notes 8.x client isn't exactly what we would call "light". There's a LOT of stuff in there (and that's OK)! With Expeditor being used as a foundation and with all the great plug-ins and features we've added, it can take a fair amount of memory to run. And, apparently, therein lies the issue when trying to put Notes clients on Citrix for end-users. And, what exactly does that mean to you, the Notes or Citrix administrator?
Well, in the Notes 7.x days, a typical Citrix deployment would be able to house approximately 35 Notes users on a single Citrix server. When Notes 8.0 came along, things worked a little bit differently. Initially, the Notes 8.0 client did not collocate all components and this caused issues when running on centralized servers - like Citrix. And, the Notes 8.0 client footprint was very large in comparison to 7.x and therefore the number of users you were able to place on a single Citrix server was significantly smaller - possibly even 1/3 of what you were able to house before! Obviously, this was not optimal and made it so that many customers running Citrix would be faced with what many called an "undeployable" situation.
Obviously, with more and more of you running Citrix, something had to change! So, in 8.0.2, the focus was on scalability improvements - including a reduction in the memory footprint in general and then the developers asked themselves the question "Is there anything specific to Citrix that can help?". So, they collaborated with Citrix and brought a Citrix engineer on-site to work with the dev team to see what could be done. And lo and behold - cool things happened!!!
One of the performance changes from 8.0.2 was a Notes-specific setting that was created that helped with the java class setting. It had no major impact on single user clients, but made a significant impact in a multi-user client setting - like Citrix. Essentially, it made it so that the client could share java classes across all the clients - saving a lot of resources!
Another change was the ability to support PAE on 32-bit systems, which allows 32-bit applications to access memory beyond the 4GB RAM limit. So, when we move from a base Citrix system (Win 2003 with 4GB RAM) to a system with 8GB RAM, we can effectively double the number of users on that system. So we're taking better advantage of the hardware.
Then, for Citrix only, development made the option to support running the Notes client on a 64-bit system - which means you can now have access to "almost unlimited" amount of memory. What does this mean in terms of deployment? Well, development tested a quad-core, 32Gb system and showed that they could increase the number of users on the system from 40-60 users to almost 150 users on a single Citrix system! That's a HUGE benefit for those of you running Citrix! You could potentially reduce the size of your Citrix farms!
Of course, there are a TON of details out there on how to do this and I guarantee I'm not doing this justice (I'm not a Citrix administrator)!! So take a look for yourself... There is a white paper about scalability for Notes 8.0.2 on Citrix XenApp 4.5. that outlines all this information including the testing configurations and results. This white paper is currently about Notes 8.0.2, but will be updated for 8.5 in the very near future.
So..there you have it!! Citrix administrators rejoice!!
Oh..and the developers aren't done! This is an evolving process and obviously they would like to do more. As we move forward with new Notes releases, the developers are looking to improve more - like the installation process on Citrix or easier upgrades from previous versions of Notes. This might eve include making the install program Citrix-aware. But..the developers need your help! What do you need? What do you see, as a Citrix administrator that concerns you about Notes on Citrix? What issues/concerns do you have? Feel free to comment here or send me an email and I'll forward that information on! Your feedback will help!
