Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI with Lenovo ThinkAgile HX and ThinkSystem V3 Servers

Industries as diverse as healthcare, finance, government, retail, and education have the common requirement to support and secure a mobile workforce. Organizations often have a dispersed workforce using many PCs, laptops, and mobile devices distributed to field offices and remote locations. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a powerful solution to meet the need for flexibility and global availability of compute resources, while managing data security and compliance on mobile devices.

Lenovo VDI Solutions for Citrix® Virtual Apps and Desktops help your organization meet these business requirements by centrally managing the desktop image within the corporate IT environment rather than at the remote worker or office location. With user data, user profiles, and application data files on centralized servers, data center security and manageability are extended down to the user resources. Users have anywhere, anytime, secure access to data and applications from any device, including tablets and smartphones.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops provides a modern platform for secure delivery and monitoring of virtual Windows and Linux desktops and apps across the hybrid cloud. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deliver an immersive, feature-rich user experience for end users, allowing them to work anytime, anywhere, on any device. It supports a consistently rich end user experience for office workers, mobile workers, and even 3D developers across devices, locations, media, and connections.

Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops supports one-to-many provisioning and streamlined management of images, apps, profiles, and policies for an agile, lightweight, modern approach that speeds, simplifies, and reduces costs. You can rapidly deploy full-featured, personalized virtual desktops and apps in seconds, retain user customization and persona from session to session, and leverage an agile provisioning approach to quickly roll out updates at the next login.

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX are hyperconverged systems virtualized with Nutanix Acropolis, providing a seamless solution to run Citrix Virtual App and Desktop VDI workloads. Lenovo ThinkSystem servers are bare-metal servers supporting either shared or local storage. Lenovo ThinkAgile systems use ThinkSystem servers as a base platform.

ThinkAgile HX systems arrive with the hardware configured, software installed, and the option of having Lenovo Professional Services to integrate it into your environment. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series are available as Integrated Systems or Certified Nodes. Both are factory integrated, pre-configured systems with Lenovo hardware, Nutanix software, and deployment services. Integrated systems provide a quick and convenient path to implement a hyperconverged solution powered by Nutanix and a single point of contact provided by Lenovo for purchasing, deploying, and supporting the solution. HX Certified Nodes come with optional Nutanix software and services.

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX V3 servers and ThinkSystem Series V3 servers powered by 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors provide excellent performance, bandwidth, and speed. Specifications include:

• Up to 60 cores and 120 threads
• Processor base frequencies of up to 3.7 GHz
• Up to 32 DDR5 memory DIMMs, 16 DIMMs per processor, supports 1 DIMM per channel operating at up to 4800 MT/s or supports 2 DIMMs per channel operating at up to 4400 MT/s
• Using 256GB 3DS RDIMMs, the server supports up to 8TB of system memory

Figure 1. Lenovo ThinkAgile HX and ThinkSystem V3 Servers

Lenovo XClarity Administrator offers comprehensive hardware management tools that help to increase uptime, reduce costs, and improve productivity through advanced server management capabilities.

Login VSI’s Login Enterprise VDI benchmark was performed for the knowledge worker profile with different login intervals on a four-node Lenovo ThinkSystem HX650 V3 cluster with two different 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The benchmark calculates an EUX (End User Experience) score, a rating that represents the performance of a Windows machine on a scale from 0 to 10, with a higher score representing a better user experience. The EUX score drops as more users are added and the load on the platform increases. The benchmark also stresses the system to 100% CPU utilization and provides a VSIMax score based on the login time and application response time criteria, with a higher VSIMax score indicating more concurrent active sessions are supported at a given EUX score.

The testing was performed by Intel on June 12, 2024, using the following software and hardware configurations and settings.

• Login Enterprise 5.8.5
• Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2308
• Microsoft Windows 10 Version 22H2 build 19045.4291
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019, Microsoft Edge
• Per user VDI/VM configuration - 2 VCPU + 2 GB Memory + 60 GB disk
• 2 VCPU + 2 GB Memory + 60 GB disk
• 2 VCPU + 4 GB Memory + 60 GB disk
• 4 VCPU + 4 GB Memory + 60 GB disk

Table 2 below shows VSIMax values for different test scenarios.

• Up to 300 knowledge workers can be hosted per node with 2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8462Y+ 32C processors or 2 x Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48C  processors at 100% CPU utilization. In a typical deployment with 75%-80% CPU usage, ~200 desktops can be deployed, and the results show most of the Office applications’ response times are well below 2 seconds for up to 900 users as shown in Figure 4.
• Figure 2 and 3 shows the EUX score is above 6 for up to 1050 users indicating the application response time is not impacted when CPU usage exceeds 85%. It shows that 4^th Gen Intel Xeon processors can support more desktops with smaller headroom capacity to sustain peak and failover scenarios without compromising application performance.
• Testing with 12 logins per minute is comparable to peak load scenarios and increases application latency after CPU utilization reaches 90%. It shows that increasing the login rate reduces the VSIMax score due to increased application response time.
• Table 3 shows improved performance when using 4 GB memory and 4 VCPU configuration over tests with 2VCPU+ 2GB memory tests.  The login time and office applications start time and processing time are improved when using 4GB memory. The recommended minimum memory configuration for office applications is 4GB and it has to be sized based on the expected user experience and other applications running on the virtual desktop. The 4 VCPU tests shows slightly better performance than 2 VCPU but 4 VCPU is over sized configuration for knowledge worker profile used in the testing.
• More user density can be achieved by leveraging Intel Xeon processors with higher core count and the application response time varies based on clock speed.

Table 2: VSIMax for knowledge workers with Microsoft Office 2019

Table 3: VSIMax for knowledge workers with Microsoft Office 2019 with Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48C

Figure 2. Login Enterprise EUX Score on 4 Node ThinkAgile HX650 V3 servers with 4th Gen Intel Xeon CPUs

Figure 3. Login Enterprise EUX Score on 4 Node ThinkAgile HX650 V3 servers with Intel Xeon Platinum 8468 48C

Figure 4. Office 2019 applications’ response times – 4th Gen Intel Xeon CPUs

Login and Application Performance with Varying Memory Configuration

Figure 5 shows login performance for virtual desktop with 2 VCPU + 2 GB memory (dotted line) and 2 VCPU + 4 GB memory (solid line). The login performance is better with 4 GB memory configuration.

Figure 5. Windows 10 Enterprise Login performance with 2GB and 4GB memory on Intel Xeon 4th Gen Processors

Figure 6 shows start time performance of some of the Microsoft 365 applications on virtual desktops with 2 VCPU + 2 GB memory(dotted line) and 2 VCPU + 4 GB memory(solid line). The application performance is better with 4GB memory configuration. It is recommended to validate memory requirements for individual applications and size virtual desktop memory accordingly.

Figure 6. Microsoft 365 Applications Start time performance with 2GB and 4GB memory on Intel Xeon 4th Gen Processors

From devices to desktops, Lenovo helps businesses access the data needed to make informed decisions. Lenovo offers a wide range of PCs, tablets, thin clients, and smartphones for end-user access. The portability, versatility, and lightweight features of Lenovo thin clients allow for deployment across the organization, especially where space is at a premium.

To learn more about Lenovo workload solutions on ThinkSystem SR650 V3 and SR630 V3, ThinkAgile HX630 V3 and HX 650 V3, contact your Lenovo Business Partner or visit: https://www.lenovo.com/systems/solutions

References:

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX650 V3 2U Integrated System and Certified Nodes

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX630 V3 1U Integrated Systems and Certified Nodes

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650 V3 Server Product Guide

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 V3 Server Product Guide

Performance varies by use, configuration, and other factors. Performance results are based on testing as of dates shown in configurations and may not reflect all publicly available updates. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary. Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation.