'DCV Server Imaging By Users Test

DCV imaging is the process of creating and managing images of desktops/servers (such as Amazon Machine Images) that can be streamed to remote users to establish a virtual desktop/server environment. These images contain pre-configured DCV server, applications, and the operating system, which can then be used to launch multiple instances of virtual desktops for remote access. These images can be quickly streamed to multiple users to simply launch new instances instead of manually setting up each server or desktop. The NICE DCV imaging simplifies the deployment of virtual desktops/servers especially in resource-intensive environments like 3D rendering, CAD, and simulations. The users of such environments rely on real-time interaction with their remote desktops, therefore, if frame processing/compressing/encoding process takes longer time or frames drop excessively or frame quality is low, then user experience suffers badly, particularly in graphics-intensive applications. This is why, administrators should continuously monitor processing durations, bandwidth, and frame rates to detect performance bottlenecks and resolve the same to ensure better user experience. This can be easily achieved using the DCV Server Imaging By Users test.

This test continuously monitors the images steamed to the users accessing the AWS AppStream Multi-session Host and reports the bandwidth available for each image streamed to each user. This helps administrators to address the network bottlenecks promptly if the bandwidth is insufficient. This test also reports the time taken for encoding and processing frames of each image and the quality of the image frames. Administrators can also find out the count of frames dropped during image streaming process.

Target of the test : An AWS AppStream Multi-session Host

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each image:user pair on the AWS AppStream Multi-session Host

This test also reports set of metrics to the Summary descriptor.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the target host listens.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Available bandwidth	Indicates the bandwidth available to use by this image streamed to this user.	Kbps	A low value for this measure is a cause for concern. The detailed diagnosis of this measure reveals the process name, available bandwidth in KB/s, the count of frames dropped during image transmission, the rate at which the frames were encoded, time taken for encoding the frames, etc.
Dropped frames	Indicates the rate at which the frames dropped from this image and were not sent to the client.	Frames/sec	The value of this measure should be very low.
Encoded frames	Indicates the rate at which the frames of this image are encoded.	Frames/sec
Encoding time	Indicates the time taken for encoding the frames of this image.	Seconds	A low value is desired for this measure.
Encoding time per megapixel	Indicates the time taken for encoding one million pixels of this image.	Seconds
Frame compression ratio	Indicates the percentage of frame size of this image compressed.	Percent
Frame processing time	Indicates the time taken for processing the frames of this image.	Seconds
Frame quality	Indicates the quality percentage of this image's frames.	Percent
Grabbed frames	Indicates the total number of frames of this image that were captured since the session started.	Number
Grabbed frames rate	Indicates the rate at which frames of this image were captured since the session started.	Frames/sec
Sent frames	Indicates the rate at which this image's frames were sent to the connected client	Frames/sec