Performance Evaluation of VDI Environment

Abstract: Virtualization technology is widely used for sharing the abilities of computer systems by splitting the resources among various virtual PCs. In traditional computer systems, the utilization of hardware is not maximized and the resources are not fully consumed. By using the virtualization technology, the maximum utilization of computer system hardware is possible. Today, many organizations especially educational institutes are adopting virtualization technology to minimize the costs and increase the flexibility, responsiveness, and efficiency. In this paper, we built a virtual educational lab in which we successfully implemented Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and created more than 30 virtual desktops. The virtual desktops are created on the Citrix XenServer hypervisor using the Citrix XenDesktop. Finally, we used benchmarking software tool called Login VSI in order to measure the performance of the virtual desktop infrastructure and the XenServer hypervisor. The results have shown that the system performs well with 30 virtual desktops without reaching the saturation point.