Hardware Planning Tips for XenDesktop 3.0, Part 1

Planning for your new XenDesktop environment can be a tough process. Being a relatively fresh technology, there aren’t too many places to find straight answers regarding scalability. I intend on changing that. Here are a few helpful tips and straight answers to help you decide whether you have the hardware already, or need to purchase new. This will be a multi-part series, only some aspects will be addressed in this initial post.

Assumptions

• XenDesktop 3.0, Platinum Edition.
• XenServer 5.5.
• Provisioning Server 5.1.
• XenApp 5.0, Platinum Edition.
• Windows Vista Business (x86)
• 300 Users, all will use XenDesktop for OS and XenApp for Application Delivery.
• Endpoints are XP Embedded Thin Clients.
• Single Location, Single Data Center.
• Users occasionally want to access the environment from home.
• Users are “Task Workers”

While this scenario is pretty simple, I’ll be more than happy to help you with your questions in the comments, via Twitter, or e-mail.

In the next post, I’ll discuss Virtual Machine Specifications and choosing the right server specifications for your XenServer hosts.