XenDesktop Planning Guide: User Bandwidth Requirements
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Overview
Regardless of the flavor of virtual desktop being implemented (hosted shared, hosted VM-based VDI, local streamed, etc.), the network plays a critical role, especially for remote and branch office users. If the network bandwidth is not planned properly, users will most likely experience poor performance with their virtual desktop. When planning a virtual desktop solution, one must think about how the user’s workload will evolve. The design must be able to support future activities, not just today’s. As can be observed, the content users interact with is changing from textual-based to more multimedia-based. Any solution and methodology must be able to account for these changes in user behavior. Although there is no single answer to the question of how much bandwidth will a user need, this planning guide provides recommendations on how to estimate the user network requirements. This guide is used to provide bandwidth estimates during the planning and design phase. Actual results may vary during implementation due to user habits, bandwidth utilization, and infrastructure implementation. This methodology provides an average bandwidth estimate. Different activities will result in a burst of traffic (video and printing). It is assumed traffic bursts will be random between users throughout the workday. If all users have network bursts at the same time, performance will degrade as adequate bandwidth levels will not be available. The bandwidth estimates were obtained through the testing procedures identified in the CTX124457 – Performance Assessment and Bandwidth Analysis for Delivering XenDesktop to Branch Offices white paper. Additional modifications, as explained in CTX125060 - Best Practices for Optimizing HDX Technologies white paper, can be used to further reduce bandwidth consumption at the cost of the user experience.