Aaron Silber came across an interesting KB article that had some very impressive stats hidden in it!  This particular KB article reinforces a pretty standard Microsoft Windows  practice of removing unnecessary items from the session startup process.  Removing items such as the Java Runtime Update Engine, ICABar and Citrix Online plug-in from users’ startup can yield gains of 10 to 15 percent more users on your XenApp Servers! These tests and benchmarks were done by Citrix Labs and affirm the fact that some extra housekeeping and attention to detail during your server builds can really add up.

The KB Article mentions using msconfig to track down these unnecessary processes.  I’d recommend taking a look at Windows Sysinternal’s AutoRuns for a more complete picture of the processes running on your servers.

For the complete details, check out the rest of the article, it can be found here:  http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX124800

As published on VMwareInfo.com

As Published on VMwareInfo.com:

Last month, Citrix released a new version of their Provisioning Services product.  You can download the latest version here.  Lots of new and updated wizards in this version (Imaging Wizard, Enhanced Config Wizard, AutoAdd Wizard), Support for SQL server database Mirroring, optimized load balancing algorithm, Jumbo Packet support and other fixes and tweaks. 

The prior versions already had offline database support for local network fault tolerance and now with support for the SQL server database mirroring, DR solutions will be easier to architect.

Aaron Silber did notice an interesting blurb in the release notes concerning ARP Cache timeouts for Vista/W2K8 servers that you may want to take note of :

TR-8435: Occasionally server stops responding to booting target device requests for 2-3 minutes.

The default lifespan of ARP cache entries was lowered from 10min in Windows Server 2003 to a random value between 15 and 45sec in Vista/W2K8. As a result, the PVS bootstraps are twenty times more likely to experience a timeout during a Vista/W2K8 boot. The workaround is to increase the ARP cache entry lifespan for PVS-bound NICs:

1 Open a command shell window. At the command prompt, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces

2. To set the ARP cache entry lifespan to 600 seconds, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 set interface <PVS interface number> basereachable=600000

3. To verify the new setting, enter the following command:
netsh interface ipv4 show interface <PVS interface number>

The “Base Reachable Time” should be set to 600,000 ms, and the “Reachable Time” – to a value between 300,000 and 900,000 ms.
Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949589

About the Author:
Carlo Costanzo is a very active member in the Virtualization Community. In addition to being a full time consultant at IPM, Carlo also publishes tips, tweaks and article posts on his blog at VMwareInfo.com.