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BP1018 Sizing and Best Practices for Citrix XenDesktop with Dell EqualLogic Storage 12
• Two PowerConnect 8024F switches were used as external SAN switches. We used four 10
GbE SFP+ uplink modules from M8024 switches on Fabric B1 and Fabric C1 to the two
PC8024F switches which are connected via a LAG of 4x10 GbE links.
• The other two ports on Fabric B and Fabric C (Ports B2 and C2) were dedicated for VDI traffic.
The two M6220 switches on Fabric B2 and C2 were uplinked to two external PowerConnect
6248 switches using two 10 GbE SFP+ uplink modules. The two external PowerConnect
switches were used exclusively for VDI connectivity and they were stacked together for high
availability and better performance. This network connectivity is not shown in the above
diagram. Please refer to Appendix C for detailed network connectivity diagrams for each of the
different networks.
3.5.2 Network characteristics
Provisioning servers stream the master disk image to all virtual desktops over the network. This means
that designing the network is very critical for achieving optimal VDI performance. While designing a
XenDesktop VDI solution, the most important network characteristics to be considered are
summarized in the table below.
Table 3 Network characteristics
Type of network
Description
VDI network
Represents the network traffic which happens when provisioning servers
stream the OS disk image to all virtual desktops over the network. The virtual
desktops contact the Active Directory server and DHCP server using the
same network.
iSCSI SAN Dedicated iSCSI SAN network through which all virtual desktop and other
infrastructure components access the EqualLogic storage.
Infrastructure network
Represents the network traffic due to the communication between different
infrastructure components such as the Web interface server, Active
Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, and VMware vCenter. The management
network of all ESXi servers and storage arrays was also configured on this
network.
3.5.3 vSwitch and VLAN configuration
The EqualLogic arrays were connected to the servers using a dedicated iSCSI SAN. A dedicated
vSwitch was used for each type of network.
The high-level diagram showing the different vSwitches and VLANs is shown in Figure 5.