Desktop EDT Performance - OS Test
Adaptive Transport – a new transport mechanism for virtual servers is faster, reliable and more scalable, and improves application interactivity and quickly delivers HDX content to users on long-haul WAN and Internet over UDP or TCP. While TCP is a default choice for HDX content delivery, Adaptive Transport uses an enhanced version of UDP as the primary data transport protocol i.e., Enlightened Data Transport (EDT) protocol to overcome shortfalls of TCP. This mechanism has been built with the intelligence to automatically understand network conditions and react to changes dynamically. Based on dynamic determination of conditions where TCP would perform better, or should the network not support UDP, or in the event of an EDT failure, the ICA virtual channels intelligently switch from EDT to TCP automatically. Automatic fallback to TCP ensures that there is no connection timeout, faster and uninterrupted session connectivity for the users on WAN and increased session reliability. These benefits make the EDT a standard data transport protocol for HDX content delivery in the virtual environments. With such great user impact, monitoring the performance of sessions that are established via EDT becomes inevitable for administrators. Before a user complains about a problem on an EDT session, administrators need to have the capability to continuously monitor EDT performance and connectivity, and isolate bottlenecks for proactive troubleshooting. This is where the Virtual Desktop EDT Performance - OS test helps!
This test auto-discovers the citrix virtual desktop user sessions that use the EDT protocol, and reports the bandwidth usage, network traffic, and latency of each such session. Using these performance metrics, administrators can measure the experience of users connected over EDT, and accurately isolate bandwidth-hungry and latent user sessions.
Note:
This test will report metrics only if the following configuration is available in the environment:
- XenApp and XenDesktop 7.13 and above
- VDA for Desktop OS 7.13 and above
- VDA for Server OS 7.13 and above
- StoreFront 3.9 and above
- Citrix Workspace App for Windows 4.7 and above
- Citrix Workspace App for Mac 12.5 and above
- Citrix Workspace App for iOS 7.2 and above
- IPv4 VDAs only. IPv6 and mixed IPv6 and IPv4 configurations are not supported.
- NetScaler 11.1-51.21
Target of the test : A Citrix Desktop Group
Agent deploying the test : A remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for every user who is currently logged into the virtual machines provisioned by the Citrix Desktop Group via the EDT protocol.
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
|
Test period |
How often should the test be executed. |
|
Host |
The nick name of the Citrix Desktop Group component for which this test is to be configured. |
|
Port |
Refers to the port at which the specified host listens to. By default, this is NULL. |
|
Citrix Home |
By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent would automatically discover the location at which the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) is installed for collecting the metrics of this test. If the Virtual Delviery Agent is installed in a different location in your Citrix environment, then indicate that location in the CITRIX HOME text box. |
|
Inside View Using |
To obtain the 'inside view' of performance of the desktops - i.e., to measure the internal performance of the cloud-based citrix virtual desktops - this test uses a light-weight eG VM Agent software deployed on each of the desktops. Accordingly, this parameter is by default set to eG VM Agent. |
|
Report By User |
This flag is set to Yes by default. The value of this flag cannot be changed. This implies that the virtual machines in VDI environments will always be identified using the login name of the user. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename. |
|
Report Powered OS |
If this flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then the 'inside view' tests will report measures for even those desktops that do not have any users logged in currently. Such desktops will be identified by their name and not by the username_on_desktopname. On the other hand, if this flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those desktops to which no users are logged in currently. |
|
Is Cloud VMs |
Since this test runs for 'Citrix Desktop Group' component which is a cloud-hosted desktop group, this flag is set to Yes by default. |
|
Detailed Diagnosis |
To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG suite 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:
|
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Number of sessions |
Indicates the number of sessions intiated by this user. |
Number |
The value 0 indicates that the user is not currently connected to the Citrix server. |
|
Bandwidth |
Indicates the bandwidth usage of all sessions of this user. |
Kbps |
Compare the value of this measure across users to know which user is consuming the maximum bandwidth. |
|
Round trip time |
Indicates the round trip latency between the virtual machine and this user. |
Seconds |
Comparing the value of this measure across users will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify users who are experiencing higher latency when connecting to a virtual machine via EDT protocol. |
|
Flow window |
Indicates the size of the flow window. |
KB |
The flow window and congestion window are used to control the congestion in the network. The smaller the value of both the windows, the data will be sent without any delay. The larger the value, the data will be added up in the sent queue and it will be sent with delay. |
|
Congestion window |
Indicates the size of the congestion window. |
KB |
|
|
Sent packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets sent by this user. |
Packets |
|
|
Received packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets received by this user. |
Packets |
|
|
Retransmitted packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets that were retransmitted by the user. |
Packets |
|
|
Lost sent packets |
Indicates the number of packets lost by this user during transmission. |
Packets |
Ideally, the value of this measure should be zero. Comparing the value of these measures across users will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify users who have extensively lost packets during transmission and reception of packets via EDT protocol. |
|
Lost received packets |
Indicates the number of packets lost by this user during reception. |
Packets |
|
|
Sent acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of acknowledgements that were received by this user for sending the EDT packets. |
Number |
|
|
Sent negative acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of negative acknowledgements that were received by this user for sending the EDT packets. |
Number |
|
|
Received acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of acknowledgements that were received by this user for reception of EDT packets. |
Number |
|
|
Received negative acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of negative acknowledgements that were received by this user for reception of EDT packets. |
Number |
|
|
Data transmitted |
Indicates the amount of data transmitted by this user. |
KB |
Compare the values of these measures across all the users connected via EDT protocol to find out which user transmitted/received the maximum amount of data. |
|
Data received |
Indicates the amount of data received by this user. |
KB |
|
|
Packet arrival rate |
Indicates the rate at which the EDT packets arrived at this user's desktop. |
Packets/sec |
|
|
Packet sending period |
Indicates the time taken by this user for sending the EDT packets. |
Milliseconds |
|
|
Packets in flight |
Indicates the number of EDT packets that have been sent by this user but have not yet been acknowledged or confirmed as received by the destination. |
Packets |
|
|
Receiver queue size available |
Indicates the number of EDT packets in the receiver queue of this user. |
Number |
|
|
Sender queue size available |
Indicates the number of EDT packets in the sender queue of this user. |
Number |
|
|
Out of order packets |
Indicates the number of out of sequence packets received by this user. |
Number |
The out-of-order packets refer to data packets that arrive at the destination out of sequence. In an ideal network, packets arrive in the order they were sent, but due to various reasons, including network congestion, routing changes, or issues with network devices, packets might reach their destination out of order. The value of this measure is preferred to be low. |
|
Output buffers available |
Indicates the number of output buffers available for use by this user. |
Number |
A high value is desired for this measure. |
|
Output buffers in use |
Indicates the number of the output buffers that are currently in use. |
Number |
|
