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The release reads, “Improved scalibility across multiple virtual desktop delivery models” and all at a significantly lower cost… And as you read further into the release. “Citrix  XenDesktop 4 with FlexCast delivery technology has now been verified to deliver up to 125 VDI-based desktops, 500 hosted shared desktops and 5,000 local  streamed desktops from a single physical server tuned to take advantage of the  unique innovations of the latest Intel Xeon processor 5500 technology”

Now we can fully perform this test, but feel its necessary to take a few monents to add a little commentary.

• Woooo, okay now that is impressive right? How the heck can see the test plan for the above? One server is hosting 5000 local streamed desktops? There is no freaking way. I just simply don’t believe it.  Now we have have a server available to run this test but not sure if the software is available, or even where to begin. I’m baffled, as this must have been one huge server.
• Mr. Ido Kadim says “the performance and consolidation levels aghievable by XenDesktop, deployed on intel Xeon 5500 based servers are significant and compelling”. So to that we can only respond with, yeah! Very compelling, but to what cost both on the licensing side, the cal side, and ultimately how much will the server cost to host this massive virtual environment.

Here is the server we plan to test XenDesktop and FlexCast across 5000 streamed desktops:

• OS: Server  2008 Enterprise, SP1
• Hardware Type: PowerEdge R710
• CPU: 16 Core 2.27 GHz Intel Xeon L5520
• Memory: 49142 MB
• Drive: 337.55 GB

The press release in the latter portions indicates the following: “The latest Citrix scalability tests were carefully designed to use a  mainstream server configuration. Desktop workload simulations incorporated a  real-world mix of line-of-business apps, office productivity apps, web browsing  and multimedia. The results demonstrate that XenDesktop 4 with FlexCast can  deliver up to 40 times more users (5 000 per physical server) than competing  solutions which only support VDI-based desktops and max out at just over 100  users per physical server. This makes XenDesktop the only solution on the market  that can truly deliver enterprise-wide virtual desktop deployments in a  cost-effective way. With XenDesktop 4, desktop virtualization can now be  implemented with 20 percent lower infrastructure costs.”

• re. “Carefully designed to use a mainstream server configuration” – please! We’d love to look at how this test was configured.
• re. “Desktop workload simulations incorporated a real-world mix of line-of-business apps, office productivity apps, web browsing and multimedia” – honestly, its hard to not be sarcastic here. What type of real world applications are we talking about here? Notepad, Calc.exe? Yeah, we can see office apps like word, outlook but nothing data intensive like Microsoft excel with real-time market data feeds from Bloomberg or Reuters, especially across 5,000 streamed desktops. Web browsing? Do you mean like we simulated a google search?