How many users per terminal server?

A

aronesz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 17, 2011
Messages
389
I am looking for suggestions or "how you measure" perspectives for a terminal server environment. Factors considered are the number of CPU cores, number of logical CPUs, and RAM. Assume all servers are 2008 R2 64-bit Enterprise. Also assume that you have 1000 users you need to put on terminal servers. Don't worry about diskspace. There will be Exchange, Office 2010 Standard, and a SAN for all the network drives. There are a handful of users that are more resource intensive, but we will have resource management due to Enterprise edition (oh those hardcore Excel users! :D ).

It would help to give us an idea of what other sysadmins and organizations do and how they measure, i.e. "an 8GB single 4-core server could take 16 users". Thanks!
 
ToX said:
All physical servers or are VM's involved?
Click to expand...
Quite possible we might be going the physical route (colo). Can do virtual too (Rackspace Cloud). Either way would be through Rackspace.
 
It's been a while but we could pack 50 users on a single server no problem. And you could run 4 of those servers on a dual-quad server in VM's. Without the VM software it wouldn't scale.
 
Most likely, your bottleneck is not going to be the CPU, nor memory. It's going to be the disk system; specifically your iops and bandwidth.

You need to measure how often the apps are going to hit the disk then go from there.
 
XOR != OR said:
Most likely, your bottleneck is not going to be the CPU, nor memory. It's going to be the disk system; specifically your iops and bandwidth.

You need to measure how often the apps are going to hit the disk then go from there.
Click to expand...

I smell 10gbe :)
 
XOR != OR said:
Most likely, your bottleneck is not going to be the CPU, nor memory. It's going to be the disk system; specifically your iops and bandwidth.

You need to measure how often the apps are going to hit the disk then go from there.
Click to expand...
We have some Accounting users that use Excel to house a database. Lately due to massive migrations in business platform software, it has been a frequent thing that some of our terminal servers have completely gone flipside and tanked in resources -- and every time it has been because of some user in Accounting with an Excel.exe process eating 99% of the CPU. Unfortunately, our old terminal servers that we are working on migrating away from (to 2008 R2 Enterprise terminal servers in the cloud) are 2003 servers that are not Enterprise/Database editions which come with Microsoft Windows Resource Management.

Yes, obviously, these Accounting users should be utilizing Access for how they're using Excel -- because then it wouldn't be drowning servers. Unfortunately, higher ups in company and Accounting do not want their people using Access, and even if they did -- would have to spend time (which is unavailable) training on how to use Access. They do not know Access enough to "do it right" (hate to be that raw and blunt, but that's what it is).

So I have a question: how can one determine whether IOPS will be the bottleneck? Or why do you think IOPs would be the bottleneck? Sorry, I am not super experienced like some of you guys might be. :( Just trying to learn, understand, and grow from experts here on [H].
 
you are going to need a decent RAID controller, for heavy TS / Citrix use we make sure there is a decent amount of battery backed cache on the controller
 
Its been a while since I've seen a large enterprise deployment of TS. Most organizations have moved away from it and towards VDI. VDI is much more scalable and less problematic because of the Visualization of desktops.

What are your needs? Are these desktop users or are you using it an application deployment feature.
 
I've just reread your post, so there desktop users, are you really looking at 1000 users or are you looking at scalability from a view point of, total amount of users for a per server bases. Depending on your business case requirements will depend on shared storage and overall deployment. If your not looking at a mass deployment and only 20 or 100 concurrent users for TS and want a VDI route, you might want to look at an Infrastructure Provider, which will give you a cost effective full solution, which is scalable and redundant.

What are you business needs?
 
Resources needed by primary application(s) they'll be running?
A Remote Desktop Services server running Word/Excel/Outlook for 1k users may not do so well if it also had to run some CPU/memory/bandwidth hungry line of biz apps.
 
FlangeMonkey said:
Its been a while since I've seen a large enterprise deployment of TS. Most organizations have moved away from it and towards VDI. VDI is much more scalable and less problematic because of the Visualization of desktops.
Click to expand...

Not to mention 10x more expensive to start with for a small pilot.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Resources needed by primary application(s) they'll be running?
A Remote Desktop Services server running Word/Excel/Outlook for 1k users may not do so well if it also had to run some CPU/memory/bandwidth hungry line of biz apps.
Click to expand...

QFT. Also to echo XOR != OR, for most single server environments, Disk will normally be the bottleneck. Now if you are talking about a farm big enough to scale to 1000 users...? that needs MUCH more planning and tuning based on the SPECIFIC apps that will be run in it and their CPU, RAM, DISK needs. How will these users connect back to the TS Farm?
 
Nate7311 said:
Not to mention 10x more expensive to start with for a small pilot.
Click to expand...

I don't feel I can fully agree, it all depends on the business needs and how its deployed, so it can be more expensive because of the technologies involved to meet these needs. However usually virtualization is more expensive than providing 2 servers and only TS. If your already in bed with virtualization it can reduce cost for a small pilot and if you use an Infrastructure Provider, it will be cheaper.
 
Nate7311 said:
QFT. Also to echo XOR != OR, for most single server environments, Disk will normally be the bottleneck. Now if you are talking about a farm big enough to scale to 1000 users...? that needs MUCH more planning and tuning based on the SPECIFIC apps that will be run in it and their CPU, RAM, DISK needs. How will these users connect back to the TS Farm?
Click to expand...

I agree, it already sounds like you have infrastructure established using TS, it might be a good suggestion to audit what you have, which will make it easier to move forward. This will give you a more accurate projection on what you'll need rather than looking at other deployments using other companies user trends.
 
Would a server with a RAID10 consisting of 4x 300GB 15k (600GB total diskspace) provide enough IOPs for 16 users checking their Exchange e-mail, using Word/Excel, and using a business/ERP platform (which also depends on Excel and Crystal Reports; software connects to a core MSSQL server)? Majority of users will be doing pretty basic things -- seems hard to think that IOPS would be the bottleneck -- but I suppose I could be wrong. What do you guys think/say/know? :?
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Resources needed by primary application(s) they'll be running?
A Remote Desktop Services server running Word/Excel/Outlook for 1k users may not do so well if it also had to run some CPU/memory/bandwidth hungry line of biz apps.
Click to expand...
Well, either it will be a scalable Rackspace Cloud VM-based series of terminal servers (i.e. 16, 24, 32 users per vm terminal server), VDIs (though we are just looking into this and finding out some new information), or SANs with a few big bertha servers (16GB - 32GB RAM, quad-core to dual quad-core) running ESXi with a handful of VMs using a standardized terminal server image.

As far as how users connect, the idea is to have a gateway that determines which server/vm to send a user to based on available resources.
 
Depends on your memory, we running 30 Xenapp servers with dual hexacore xeons they all got 32GB of ram and they can run +/- do 50 sessions. Memory is the key cpu is less important :)
 
aronesz said:
Would a server with a RAID10 consisting of 4x 300GB 15k (600GB total diskspace) provide enough IOPs for 16 users checking their Exchange e-mail, using Word/Excel, and using a business/ERP platform (which also depends on Excel and Crystal Reports; software connects to a core MSSQL server)? Majority of users will be doing pretty basic things -- seems hard to think that IOPS would be the bottleneck -- but I suppose I could be wrong. What do you guys think/say/know? :?
Click to expand...

Maybe, maybe not. I'd use SSD's if you only need 600GB of space.
 
aronesz said:
Would a server with a RAID10 consisting of 4x 300GB 15k (600GB total diskspace) provide enough IOPs for 16 users checking their Exchange e-mail, using Word/Excel, and using a business/ERP platform (which also depends on Excel and Crystal Reports; software connects to a core MSSQL server)? Majority of users will be doing pretty basic things -- seems hard to think that IOPS would be the bottleneck -- but I suppose I could be wrong. What do you guys think/say/know? :?
Click to expand...

Woah, woah, woah... Is it 16 users or 1000? We're getting conflicting signals. If you are going to scale to 1000, then lets plan the 1st box accordingly, if not, then why spend the extra $ that we might not have to. For 16 users, assuming your ERP app behaves well under TS, you won't need near that kind of a box. Office (Word, Excel, Outlook) takes relatively few resources for NORMAL usage. Crazy Excel usage that you mentioned would increase the demands, but not by a huge amount. Without knowing the specifics of the app, I'd guess that for 16 users a single quad core, 8GB, and at least Mirrored 7200rpm drives would be fine. Again, planning for 16 is a FAR cry from 1000.
 
Nate7311 said:
Woah, woah, woah... Is it 16 users or 1000? We're getting conflicting signals. If you are going to scale to 1000, then lets plan the 1st box accordingly, if not, then why spend the extra $ that we might not have to. For 16 users, assuming your ERP app behaves well under TS, you won't need near that kind of a box. Office (Word, Excel, Outlook) takes relatively few resources for NORMAL usage. Crazy Excel usage that you mentioned would increase the demands, but not by a huge amount. Without knowing the specifics of the app, I'd guess that for 16 users a single quad core, 8GB, and at least Mirrored 7200rpm drives would be fine. Again, planning for 16 is a FAR cry from 1000.
Click to expand...
We're not going to put 1000 users on a single box, but spread them out across multiple instances (be it virtual or physical->virtual). Ultimately, we have 1000 users around the world who will need to connect to a terminal server. Will ask my supervisor if he could provide some details in this thread.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top