Microsoft do offer some mitigation, after a fashion – for instance, GPOs exist that allow you to limit the cache option to just a couple of months’ worth of email, but this simply “hides” the issue until the user starts searching for mail from more than a specified time ago. But we’re using Office 365 – and we’re not in a position to put our RDSH into Azure as well – so what do you do? If you’re doing RDSH, then they suggest that you keep the Exchange server on the same network switch as the RDSH server. So while using Cached Exchange Mode is the main performance tweak Microsoft recommend for Outlook, they also don’t recommend using it for Remote Desktop Session Host. If you bite the bullet and use Online Mode, you’re going to give yourself a lot of availability and performance issues (large calendars being a particular bottleneck), as well as a substantial increase in network overhead. You also can’t use traditional UEM solutions to deal with the OST file as imagine a user with a 15-20GB mailbox – do you want to copy that down onto the endpoint at every logon and back to the network at logoff? Redirection doesn’t cut it, because that’s an unsupported configuration. In non-persistent XenDesktop environments, the user profile is discarded between sessions, and again, the OST file cannot be stored locally. But in XenApp environments, the user OST cannot be stored locally as the user may not always land on the same server for their next session. Microsoft generally recommends using Cached Exchange Mode for Office 365, in order to provide acceptable startup, session, and search/indexing performance.
Assuming you’re using the “Exchange Online” version of Microsoft Office (rather than the full-fat web-based version), where there is still a client involved, you may well have come across some of these performance problems. One of these is the performance of Office 365 in the virtual environment – particularly in the Citrix-provided desktop arena.
Hyperconvergence, superfast storage arrays, GPUs – technologies that can deliver have overcome a lot of the early blockers to widespread virtualization adoption.īut of course, there are still problems to be overcome – the final pieces of the jigsaw to be put into place, the last bumps in the user experience to be ironed out. Issues with storage and infrastructure are much less noticeable, and Moore’s Law has seen that we now have solutions that are much more capable of dealing with the nuances of a virtualized desktop environment. One of the things I found most intriguing was the perception that on a number of levels, desktop virtualization – either on full-fat VDI or hosted shared desktops – is moving into a much more mature phase. Anyways, having spent part of last week at BriForum London, it’s interesting to come away with a broader view of what is happening in the virtualization world.
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