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The eG XenDesktop Monitor




Many organizations are looking to upgrade their approach to desktop management, by moving away from individual desktops with hard-coded combinations of OS, apps and user settings, and managed one-by-one on an ongoing basis. Virtual desktop technologies offer organizations significant usability, performance, and cost benefits. Citrix's XenDesktop technology offers an industry leading framework for provisioning and delivery of desktops to users.

The core component of the XenDesktop desktop virtualization infrastructure is the Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC) – the connection broker that manages the assembly of users’ virtual desktop environments, and brokers connections between users and their virtual desktops. So critical is the DDC to the virtual desktop service that even the slightest aberration in its performance can significantly impact the user experience. In an era where time is money, the penalties/losses associated with slowdowns or service outages are often significant. At the same time, it is important to know when a problem is being caused by the DDC and when it is resulting from issues with other parts of the virtual desktop infrastructure such as the network, the storage tier, the virtualization platform, etc. Hence, what virtual desktop administrators need is an end-to-end monitoring solution that monitors every layer of every tier of the VDI infrastructure and can offer early warning indicators of problems in any of the VDI tiers.

Various types of reports available in the eG Reporter provide powerful insights into an IT infrastructure's performance.

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Monitoring Desktop Virtualization

eG Enterprise provides a 100% web-based, end-to-end monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting solution for virtual desktop infrastructures. A critical component of this solution is the eG XenDesktop Monitor which periodically monitors the availability, performance, and usage of the Xen DDC and provides early warning alerts to administrators about impending problems.

A single eG agent deployed on the ‘master server’ in a Xen DDC farm is all that is required for monitoring any Xen DDC in that farm. The eG XenDesktop monitor discovers the controllers in the farm and their individual state. It also monitors the connectivity between the controllers and the license server, the datastore, and the virtualization platform. Virtual desktops are often organized as different desktop groups. The eG XenDesktop monitor discovers these desktop groups and tracks the simultaneous usage levels of desktops in each group, so that it can identify times when the DDC could be running out of available desktops.

With its unique single agent technology, eG Enterprise offers monitoring and reporting beyond the Xen DDC. eG agents monitoring the virtualization platform (vSphere, XenServer, Hyper-V, etc.) provide a unique 360 degree view of each and every virtual desktop, highlighting the amount of physical resources each desktop is consuming as well as the individual application processes that are responsible for the resource utilization. Specialized monitors are also available for the network devices, access gateway, web interface, license servers, profile servers, and other components of the virtual desktop architecture.

eG Enterprise analyzes the metrics from every tier of the virtual desktop infrastructure in real-time and compares the metrics with automatically generated baselines to determine the problem areas. A patented automatic root-cause diagnosis engine analyzes the problem areas and based on inter-application dependencies, accurately points administrators to the layer where the problem actually originated – this keeps the help desk focused on the problem source rather than the problem effects. The root-cause, once identified, is instantly intimated to the administrator via the eG monitoring console, email, SMS, or pager, thereby compelling the user to quickly initiate corrective measures. Faster problem resolution ensures a high uptime for the virtual desktop service.

eG Enterprise also offers a wealth of reports that are critical as administrators look to scale their desktop virtualization deployments. By analyzing the resource usage levels with load, administrators can determine how the infrastructure needs to be sized for future rollouts. Analysis of peak usage times, identification of top resource consuming users, load analysis across tiers, etc. can all be done using eG Enterprise’s web-based reporting capability.

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What the eG XenDesktop Monitor Reveals?

Citrix XenApp Technology
  • Is the IMA communication between the DDC and the other servers in the farm (i.e., other DDCs, the License server, data store) working properly?
  • Is the DDC able to connect to the data store?
VM Platforms
  • Is the DDC able to communicate with the virtualization platform?
  • Are any hosts unavailable in a desktop group? Which are the unavailable hosts and which group do they belong to?
Desktop Groups
  • How many desktops exist within a group? On which hosting infrastructure are these virtual desktops operating? How many more desktops on the hosting infrastructure are yet to be allocated to a desktop group?
  • Are there any powered off desktops within a desktop group?
  • Which desktops in a group are currently in use and which users are logged in to these desktops?
  • Are there idle desktops within a group?
  • Does any group have desktops that are currently in an 'Unknown' power state?
Desktop Controllers
  • Is the DDC healthy or has the alert logs of the DDC captured any critical errors/warnings?
  • Is the DDC accessible? If so, how quickly is the DDC responding to requests?
  • Which users have administrator rights to the DDC?
  • Which of the servers in the DDC farm is the master server?
DDC Farm
  • How many DDCs are in the farm? Which ones are these?
  • How many desktop groups have been configured on the farm?
  • How many of the desktop groups are currently unavailable? Which farms do they belong to?
  • Is the license server currently available and accessible to the DDC?
Virtual Desktops
  • Is the Citrix virtual desktop agent unavailable?
  • Is any virtual desktop in the maintenance mode currently?
  • Is any virtual desktop disabled?
  • Is any virtual desktop unavailable?
  • Is any virtual desktop currently in an 'Unknown' power state?
  • Are many virtual desktop sessions logging out suddenly?
  • Is any virtual desktop unregistered?

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Benefits of the eG XenDesktop Monitor

  • Hassle-free deployment : The same agent can be deployed on all the tiers of the virtual desktop infrastructure. This ensures a short learning curve and rapid deployment.
  • Proactive alerts : eG Enterprise auto-baselines the virtual desktop infrastructure. Deviations from the norm are flagged as proactive alerts. Thus, administrators can notice problems before users do.
  • Enhanced virtual desktop service uptime : Rather than looking at the infrastructure as server, application and network silos, eG Enterprise monitors the virtual desktop service end-to-end. By analyzing the performance of each tier relative to the other tiers, and considering the inter-dependencies between tiers, eG Enterprise quickly determines where the root-cause of a problem lies. Accurate problem diagnosis eliminates finger-pointing between silo experts, ensures rapid problem isolation and immediate rectification.
  • Extensive reporting capabilities : eG Enterprise's web-based interface offers historical reports for every layer of every VDI tier. Administrators can use these reports for post-mortem analysis, for trend analysis, bottleneck detection and for capacity planning as they scale out their desktop virtualization deployments.