AX on Citrix vs Remote Desktop Services (RDS)

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Alok Joshi

540

Hi all,

While choosing a "Desktop/Application publishing platform" out of Citrix or Microsoft Remote Desktop services for your AX implementation, has anyone done any benchmarking or performance test to compare these platforms ?

As far as I know, there are no benchmarks published by Microsoft on this topic. Microsoft published benchmarks are application specific and focus on virtualization, physical and hybrid topologies.

Appreciate if anyone has any relevant documentation in this regard and if they can share it with me?

Additional Info:

AX 2012 R2 CU7

500+ concurrent users

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (9)

Answers (2)

Verified answer

Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

Like (0)

Report

There are no official benchmarks for this, since it is hard to emulate client UI interaction in such a complex system.

The published AX benchmark whitepapers are also dry benchmarks without an actual client simulation.

In my opinion RDS is a better choice cost-wise, and it is a more native technology for the Microsoft stack. Also Citrix has no native support for functionality like redirecting Excel exports from AX to the local client, you can only run it on the Citrix farm and store documents there. There are probably other limitations as well, like mapping local printers to use with Print management, and more. You can find such topics here or on google with the "ax citrix issue" keywords.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Alok Joshi 540 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Vilmos,

Appreciate the prompt and detailed reply.

You have outlined some real-world known challenges with Citrix. To add to that list, there are few AX 2012 shortcuts which also don't work on Citrix. And in my personal opinion that ugly, annoying "Hanging overhead toolbar" just kills the user experience. But again that's my personal opinion and others's may have a different view on the "User Experience".

I have not looked into the Citrix pricing yet. However I have a fair idea of how much RDS would cost us.

I wanted to hear from different consultants/architects and their experience with Citrix and RDS specially on the "Performance".

In our pilot, we observed that the AX client works consistently faster on the RDS as compared to Citrix (Using the same Infrastructure). However there are no tools available to quantify that "faster" performance. Do we have any tools in this space which can help us quantify the same? As far as I know, I have not heard of any.

Has you/anyone used this "Remote Desktop Load Simulation Tools" with AX 2012?

There is one thing that we can certainly test on RDS and that is checking the "Response time" through "AX Test automation" tools. These can give us some data to "Quantify" whether it's fast or slow.

However it's always good to know the experiences/benchmarks/documents which other AX customers must have experienced/tested/referred before making the investment decision on the same!!!

Looking forward for more replies from the AX community.

[View:https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=2218:750:50]

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Verified answer

Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

Like (0)

Report

Performance for client communication is typically not an issue. If there is a performance bottleneck, that is 99% coming from the server tier (AX AOS, SQL Server, SSRS). As long as your RDS/Citrix hosts sit on the same high bandwidth isolated network space, where you have no chitchat on the switch/routing infrastructure of other non-AX-related components, whichever solution you choose should be satisfactory.

I only have seen performance issues for example on an RDS host when application usage restrictions were not set, like remote desktop connections were allowed and someone started to process heavy financials Excel sheets instead of their desktop, and memory consumption when through the roof. In my current setup no remote desktop logins are allowed, AX is only executing as RemoteApp and Excel requests are redirected to the local client. We also have seen performance problems with outdated printer drivers causing the print spooler have high CPU usage.

The only major difference between the two solutions are how the rendered data is getting transferred to the client screen when something moves or refreshes either end, and that should be in the sub-milliseconds range.

The AX Test automation tools if I remember this right are not using client UI interaction, so that would not be too useful. It is better suited to test server-side mass transaction processing. The built-in AX Unit Testing framework has some limited UI-capabilities, but that is not a very reliable tool i.e. it breaks if a button/field group moves around, or you switch screen resolutions.

What you would need is a tool where you could measure if a click/text input would come from a local computer, through to your RemoteApp or Citrix client, but I am unaware if any like that exists.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
SteveBurkett on at

Like (0)

Report

Where you're most likely to see big speed gains from using Citrix XenApp would be when your connecting remote clients have poor bandwidth or high latency connections. I.e. You're hosting in Europe and you've got people connecting in from Australia and South America, you've got roadwarriors connecting in using 3G-based devices, or you have guys out on an oil-rig bouncing internet signal in via a satellite.

The Citrix HDX/ICA protocols handles these conditions far better then RDP and you've got all sorts of granular control to manage users with these conditions. Printing traffic is also nicely optimised.

Maybe 7-10 years ago that was more of a problem with available bandwidth in some places causing screen refresh issues/freezes, but not these days.

Citrix XenApp also has good enterprise management features, including user profiles and print management, which might help get a user logged in quicker to an AX session than standard RDS, as well as server provisioning. If you're talking 15k users then those management tools would really help keep the thing ticking along and standing up new servers as required. If you're talking only a handful of Citrix XenApp servers then not so much.

Bare in mind that Citrix XenApp sits on top of RDS so you need to license for BOTH RDS and Citrix XenApp, that's not cheap.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

Like (0)

Report

Can you please make sure you tick the checkboxes for helpful answers next to each post, so the topic gets resolved? Thank you.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Alok Joshi 540 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Steve,

Appreciate the detailed content in the reply. I don't think we have users connecting from Australia or NA etc..

Our primary data center where AX (8 AOS's) , Citrix and DB is hosted is in Europe and at the moment the users are connecting from Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Poland, France and Israel.

Next year, we will add more users from Switzerland, Germany, Portugal etc..

Also agree with you on the RDS + Citrix XenApp cost factor there. That can't be neglected.

However, with the same Infra setup with MPLS, VPN connections etc..we witnessed RDP being faster from the same location where users reported slowness using Citrix and that is why the main post originated.

We also did a small RDS pilot with other locations from Europe and the initial test results were promising.

My search for the different customer experiences still continues... :-)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Alok Joshi - How did you proceed? RDP or Citrix? What´s your experience so far? My experience is that Citrix is fine but needs to be tuned in an monitored. The same with the I/O, high risk for latency if not properly set up.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Alok Joshi 540 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Rob,

We continued using Citrix (7.11) but we obviously have applied 1 below quick fix within the same which increases it's performance.

http://www.ryslander.com/disable-fair-sharing-in-windows-server/

There are 2 registry keys changes in Citrix which also increases it's performance. I don't have them handy but our Infra team does.

To improve the overall Citrix performance::

1) It's best to run Citrix VM's on a dedicated blade with high frequency core processors.

Regards,

Alok Joshi

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Jimmywick 70 on at

Like (0)

Report

What is Remote Desktop?

Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) makes it possible to grant remote access to a computer over a network or the Internet. The remote user can access all applications and peripheral devices of the host computer while connected. However, not all versions of Windows support RDP connections. There is an open-source alternative called Virtual Network Computing (VNC) which is often used on Linux and other operating systems.

Remote Desktop Services (RDS) previously known as Terminal Services is developed by Microsoft and it provides a thin client solution allowing a user to take control of a remote computer or virtual machine over a network.

What is Citrix?

The term Citrix is often used to loosely refer to a number of related remote access technologies. Citrix Systems is in fact a technology company based in Florida, USA. They specialize in virtualization technology. Two of its offerings include XenApp and XenDesktop.

Citrix XenDesktop App allows you to remotely install and access software on the server machine without having to install anything on the client.

The original Remote Desktop Service (RDS) code was actually developed by Citrix Systems and the code was subsequently licensed to Microsoft. Citrix offers central management tools that make expanding and monitoring your company’s infrastructure that much easier. It presents a more streamlined user experience.

Citrix focuses on Thin Clients but also other networking solutions. Together with Microsoft, they are industry leaders in Thin Client applications. Citrix’s Virtual Applications allows the remote monitoring of applications on a remote machine.

Regards,
J Wick

Was this reply helpful? Yes No