XenServer Engineering has a dedicated performance team, working on optimising and scaling the platform. Over the last year they have put together a toolbox of documentation and whitepapers to assist those interested in tuning their XenServer deployments for performance. These guides will be of interest to those using XenServer for Server Virtualisation but also investigating XenServer as Citrix’s platform for XenDesktop, CloudPlatform and Netscaler SDX.

So here you go: 5 top whitepapers as recommended by XenServer Engineering:

  1. CTX137828 – XenServer 6.2.0 Administrator’s Guide In XS6.2 we added chapter 9, this details a vast array of metrics available from XenServer both new and old, many are off by default and so even those who are old hands with XenServer may find a few nice surprises. Includes details of how to view the metrics via XenCenter and a new rrd2csv tool.
  2. CTX134951 – Configuring dom0 Memory in XenServer 6.1.0
  3. CTX136861 – XenServer 6.1.0 Storage Performance Guide
  4. CTX117960 – How to Configure the Virtual CPU Management
  5. CTX139714 – How to use host-cpu-tune to fine tune XenServer 6.2.0 performance (CPU pinning)

These whitepapers all are relevant to the version in which they were issued but also all subsequent versions.

We’ve also started putting together more information for XenServer users and developers on the xenserver.org for those setting up test installations or debugging XenServer. In particular I’d welcome feedback to help develop the reference page of great analysis tools.

Update: The best thing about these blogs is the user feedback, already the comments have alerted me to great articles I didn’t know existed, I highly recommend that you carry on reading down.