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Desktop’s HDX Channel Test
As already mentioned, the key factors influencing user experience in a virtual desktop infrastructure are the latencies experienced by the user while connecting to the desktop via ICA and the bandwidth used when a user interacts with a virtual desktop. High latency and excessive bandwidth consumption can often slowdown access to desktops, thereby significantly delaying subsequent user operations. Hence, monitoring the latency and bandwidth usage of the ICA communication channel between the user terminal and the virtual desktops is essential.
The Desktop's HDX Channel test auto-discovers the virtual desktops on the XenServer host and the users who are currently connected to each desktop. For each such user, the test monitors the communication between a user and the virtual desktop, and reports the following:
Using this test, an administrator can identify user sessions that are being impacted by high latency and abnormal bandwidth usage. In addition, the test also reveals the type of traffic that is causing excessive bandwidth usage, thereby providing pointers to how the client configuration can be fine-tuned in order to reduce bandwidth consumption and improve performance.
This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence: Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick Citrix XenServer - VDI as the Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose this test from the disabled tests list, and click on the >> button to move the test to the enableD tests list.
Note:
This test will report metrics only if the following conditions are fulfilled:
Target of the test : A Citrix XenServer
Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent
Outputs of the test : One set of results for every user who is connected to a virtual desktop via ICA
Configurable parameters for the test
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Measurements of the test
Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Session average latency: |
Indicates the average client latency over the lifetime of this session. |
Secs |
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 desktop. |
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Session deviation latency: |
Indicates the difference between the minimum and maximum measured latency values for this session. |
Secs |
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Audio bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used while transmitting sound/audio to this user. |
Kbps |
Comparing these values across users will reveal which user is sending/receiving bandwidth-intensive sound/audio files over the ICA channel. To minimize bandwidth consumption, you may want to consider disabling client audio mapping. |
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Audio bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used while receiving sound/audio from this user. |
Kbps |
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COM bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when sending data to this user’s COM port.
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Kbps |
Comparing these values across users will reveal which user’s COM port is sending/receiving bandwidth-intensive data over the ICA channel. |
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COM bandwidth ouput: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when receiving data from this user’s COM port. |
Kbps |
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Drive bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when this user performs file operations on the mapped drive on the virtual desktop. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user is performing bandwidth-intensive file operations over the ICA channel. If bandwidth consumption is too high, you may want to consider disabling client drive mapping on the client device. Client drive mapping allows users logged on to a virtual desktop from a client device to access their local drives transparently from the ICA session. Alternatively, you can conserve bandwidth by even refraining from accessing large files with client drive mapping over the ICA connection. |
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Drive bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when the virtual desktop performs file operations on the client’s drive. |
Kbps |
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Printer bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when this user prints to a desktop printer over the ICA channel. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user is issuing bandwidth-intensive print commands over the ICA channel. If bandwidth consumption is too high, you may want to consider disabling printing. Alternatively, you can avoid printing large documents over the ICA connection. |
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Printer bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used when the desktop responds to print jobs issued by this user. |
Kbps |
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Session bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from this user to the virtual desktop for a session |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user and which virtual desktop is performing bandwidth-intensive operatons for a session. |
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Session bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from the virtual desktop to this user for a session. |
Kbps |
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Session compression input: |
Indicates the compression ratio used from this user to the virtual desktop for a session. |
Number |
Compression reduces the size of the data that is transacted over the ICA channel. Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which client has been configured with a very low and a very high compression ratio. In the event of high bandwidth usage over an ICA channel, you can set a higher compression ratio for the corresponding client and thus reduce bandwidth consumption. |
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Session compression output: |
Indicates the compression ratio used from the virtual desktop to this user for a session. |
Number |
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Speed screen data channel bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from this user to the virtual desktop for data channel traffic. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user has been transmitting/receiving bandwidth-intensive data channel traffic.
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Speed screen data channel bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from virtual desktop to this user for data channel traffic. |
Kbps |
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Speed screen multimedia acceleration bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from this user to virtual desktop for multimedia traffic. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user has been transmitting/receiving bandwidth-intensive multimedia traffic.
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Speed screen multimedia acceleration bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from the virtual desktop to this user for multimedia traffic |
Kbps |
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HDX media stream for flash data bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from this user to virtual desktop for flash data traffic. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user has been transmitting/receiving bandwidth-intensive flash data.
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HDX media stream for flash data bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from the virtual desktop to this user for flash data traffic |
Kbps |
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USB bandwidth input: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from this user to the virtual desktop for the USB port-related traffic. |
Kbps |
Comparing the values of these measures across users will reveal which user has been transmitting/receiving bandwidth-intensive USB traffic.
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USB bandwidth output: |
Indicates the bandwidth used from the virtual desktop to this user for the USB port-related traffic. |
Kbps |
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Last recorded latency: |
Indicates the last recorded latency of this user session. |
Secs |
Comparing the value of this measure across user sessions will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify users who experienced high latencies recently. |
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Input line speed: |
Indicates the average line speed of all the sessions of this user to the desktop. |
KB/Sec |
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Output line speed: |
Indicates the average line speed of all sessions from the desktop to this user. |
KB/Sec |
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Bandwidth usage: |
Indicates the percentage HDX bandwidth consumption of this user. |
Percent |
Compare the value of this measure across users to know which user is consuming the maximum HDX bandwidth. |
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Resource shares: |
Indicates the total number of resource shares used by this user. |
Number |
By comparing the value of this measure across users, you can identify the user who is hogging the resources. |
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Frame rate: |
Indicates the rate at which frames are processed during this user session.
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Frames/Sec |
FPS is how fast your graphics card can output individual frames each second. It is the most time-tested and ideal measure of performance of a GPU. Higher the value of this measure, healthier is the GPU. |
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Framehawk frame rate: |
Indicates the rate at which frames are processed by the Framehawk virtual channel, if it is enabled for this user session. |
Frames/Sec |
The Framehawk virtual channel optimizes the delivery of virtual desktops and applications to users on broadband wireless connections, when high packet loss or congestion occurs. Note: This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk. |
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Framehawk network bandwidth: |
Indicates the bandwidth consumption of this user session when the Framehawk virtual delivery channel is used. |
Kbps |
This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk. |
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Framehawk latency: |
Indicates the latency experienced by this user session when the Framehawk virtual delivery channel is used. |
Secs |
This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk. |
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Framehawk network loss: |
Indicates the percentage of packet loss experienced by this user session when the Framehawk virtual delivery channel is used. |
Percent |
This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk. |
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User's connection quality indicator: |
Indicates the connectivity of this user with the Citrix environment. |
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The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table above:
Note: By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above. In the graph of this measure however, the value of this measure is represented using their numeric equivalents only. By default, Citrix recommends a standard computation of user’s connection quality indicator as mentioned in the table below:
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