Here’s a great blogpost listing how to customize XenClients GUI

CitrixBlogs – Customize XenClient GUI
 

Currently I am evaluating XenClient for users in an organization. Part of this project involved providing XenClient systems running Windows 7 Enterprise x64 to very demanding users. We had some feedback that was mixed. In order to get quantitative results I put the XenClient through some performance metric testing.

The testing was done on the following system:

• HP 8460P (Intel® Core™ i5-2520M (2.50 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache)
• 4GB RAM
• SATAII 250GB HD 7200RPM
• AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 1 GB dedicated DDR3 video memory

**Note that this is the first model which includes VTd which is required to allow direct access to the Video Card to allow HDX 3d enabled VMs. While this sounds like it would not be required for all users – the fact that extending the display to multiple monitors requires this could be a huge show stopper! We got caught by this – so check carefully as the Citrix HCL does not indicate this clearly.

The benchmark I used was Performance Test 7.0 (1025) Win64 by PassMark software.

Conclusion:

When the second vCPU was enabled the performance dramatically improved to the following (Percent performance of XenClient VM with 2vcpus and 3d enabled compared to Native bare metal install).

• CPU Mark – 75%
  
• 2D Graphics – 124%
• Memory Mark – 68%
• Disk Mark – 107%
• CD Mark – 94%
• 3D Graphics Mark – 96%
• Passmark Rating – 91%

I did not run extensive iterations of all tests but these results are a good indication of how well a XenClient VM can perform. The CPU and memory results indicate there is an overhead associted with virtualizing the workload, while its not huge, its not irrelevant either.

The fact that multiple CPUs are required to achieve near native performance combined with the warning from Citrix that it may cause instability for mutliple VMs should be noted for users requiring all of their hardwares raw performance.

Also there is an identified instability when allocating over 3GB of RAM to VM’s using HDX 3D access which forces users to leverage less memory resources than are potentially available to the VM.

Results:

Native Install (no XenClient – Win 7 Enterprise x64 Bare Metal install)

*note this system would have an edge as it would leverage all 4GB of RAM compared to the 3GB VMs

• CPU Mark – 3961
• 2D Graphics – 385
• Memory Mark – 1261
• Disk Mark – 676
• CD Mark – 482
• 3D Graphics Mark – 420
• Passmark Rating – 1442

Native BareMetal Win7 install HP 8460p

XenClient 2.1 Installed VM (Win7 Ent x64 – No 3D enabled, single vCPU, 3GB RAM)

• CPU Mark – 1379
• 2D Graphics – 563
• Memory Mark – 873
• Disk Mark – 712
• CD Mark – 545
• 3D Graphics Mark – N/A
• Passmark Rating – 1005

XenClient HP 8460p No 3D enabled, Single vCPU

XenClient 2.1 Installed VM (Win7 Ent x64 – 3D enabled, single vCPU, 3GB RAM)

• CPU Mark – 1511
• 2D Graphics – 524
• Memory Mark – 789
• Disk Mark – 692
• CD Mark – 439
• 3D Graphics Mark – 152
• Passmark Rating – 849

XenClient HP 8460p 3D enabled, Single vCPU

XenClient 2.1 Installed VM (Win7 Ent x64 – 3D enabled, two vCPUs, 3GB RAM)

**Note at this time multiple vCPUs are not configurable in the GUI and must be done via command line. See the XenClient 2.1 release notes

XenClient_2_1_Release_Notes.pdf

I have detailed the better results of the two runs I did. Both results are listed below.

• CPU Mark – 2951
• 2D Graphics – 480
• Memory Mark – 852
• Disk Mark – 722
• CD Mark – 453
• 3D Graphics Mark – 402
• Passmark Rating – 1311

XenClient HP 8460p 3D enabled, Two vCPUs (Second Run)

XenClient HP 8460p 3D enabled, Two vCPUs (First Run)