Abstract

Citrix Systems Inc. commissioned The Tolly Group to evaluate the performance and scalability of the Citrix WinFrame/Enterprise (v. 1.6) application server when supporting clients running 32-bit Windows applications. The Tolly Group measured the time required for a Windows 95 client using a 28.8 modem connection to complete some common Excel tasks when an increasing number of LAN clients were running on the WinFrame server. The Tolly Group also measured the bandwidth required for a Microsoft Windows 95 client, running Microsoft Word from the WinFrame server, to perform some common Word tasks over 10 Mbit/s Ethernet.

Test Results
The Tolly Group found that the WinFrame server provides a scalable solution that is capable of supporting up to 30 clients on a dual-processor Pentium server, without significant degradation in response times for any one client. The Tolly Group also found that the WinFrame architecture makes efficient use of bandwidth, indicating that it is a good solution for bandwidth-constrained environments such as dial-up analog modem connections.

Scalability
The Tolly Group found that up to 30 clients — 29 LAN clients and one WAN client — could run Microsoft Excel from the dual-processor Pentium 90 WinFrame server without significant degradation. The WAN client took about 30 seconds to perform a group of common Excel tasks with no other clients accessing the WinFrame server. ith 19 LAN clients simultaneously accessing the WinFrame server, the WAN client’s response times in Microsoft Excel was degraded by less than 10 percent. With 29 LAN clients simultaneously accessing the server, response time on the dial-up client was degraded by less than 35 percent. The 29 LAN clients provided load on the WinFrame server by executing a looping Microsoft Test script, simulating the actions a typical user might execute in an Excel spreadsheet with graphs.