Citrix Applications By GPU Test

GPU-accelerated computing is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU) together with a CPU to accelerate scientific, analytics, engineering, consumer, and enterprise applications. GPU-accelerated computing enhances application performance by offloading compute-intensive portions of the application to the GPU, while the remainder of the code still runs on the CPU.

In GPU-enabled Citrix XenApp environments, if users to virtual applications complain of slowness when accessing graphic applications, administrators must be able to instantly figure out what is causing the slowness – is it because adequate GPU resources are not available to the host? Or is it because of excessive utilization of GPU memory and processing resources by any of the applications on the host?  Accurate answers to these questions can help administrators determine whether/not:

• The host is sized with sufficient GPU resources;
• The GPUs are configured with enough graphics memory;

Measures to right-size the host and fine-tune its GPU configuration can be initiated based on the results of this analysis. This is exactly what the Citrix Applications By GPU test helps administrators achieve! 

To help with better utilization of resources, you can track the GPU usage rates of your instances for each application on the host. When you know the GPU usage rates, you can then perform tasks such as setting up managed instance groups that can be used to autoscale resources based on needs.

Target of the test : A Citrix XenApp server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each application that is using GPU assigned to the host being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed. By default, this is 5 minutes.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	Refers to the port used by the target Citrix XenApp server .
Report by Domain Name	By default, the flag is set to Yes. This implies that by default, this test will report metrics for every domainname\username configured for this test. This way, administrators will be able to quickly determine which user logged in from which domain. If you want the test to report metrics for the username alone, then set this flag to No.
Report by Client Name	By default, this flag is set to No. If set to Yes, this test will report metrics for each client machine from which users logged into the XenApp server - i.e., the host name of the client machines will be the descriptors of this test. In this case therefore, the User name column of the detailed diagnosis of this test will indicate the names of the users who logged into the XenApp server.
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
GPU Instances Currently Running	Indicates the number GPU instances that are currently running for this application.	Number
GPU Compute usage	Indicates the percentage of GPU compute capability utilized by this application.	Percent
Encoder usage	Indicates the percentage of GPU that is utilized for encoding process.	Percent	A value close to 100 is a cause of concern. By closely analyzing these measures, administrators can easily be alerted to situations where graphics processing is a bottleneck for any application.
Decoder usage	Indicates the percentage of GPU that is utilized for decoding process.	Percent
Memory Compute Usage	Indicates the percentage of the allocated GPU memory that is currently being utilized by this application.	Percent	A value close to 100% is a cause for concern as it indicates that the graphics memory on a GPU is almost always in use.
Memory Used	Indicates the amount of memory on the GPU used by this application.	MiB	For better user experience with graphic applications, enough memory should be available to the applications.