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 Desktop EDT Performance - OS test helps!
This test auto-discovers the 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:
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XenApp and XenDesktop 7.13 and above
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VDA for Desktop OS 7.13 and above
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VDA for Server OS 7.13 and above
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StoreFront 3.9 and above
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Citrix Workspace App for Windows 4.7 and above
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Citrix Workspace App for Mac 12.5 and above
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Citrix Workspace App for iOS 7.2 and above
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IPv4 VDAs only. IPv6 and mixed IPv6 and IPv4 configurations are not supported.
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NetScaler 11.1-51.21
Target of the test: A Hyper-V VDI server
Agent executing the test: An internal agent
Output of the test: One set of results for each user connected to the Hyper-V VDI server via the EDT protocol.
Parameter | Description |
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Test period |
This indicates how often should the test be executed. |
Host |
Specify the HOST for which this test is to be configured. |
Port |
Specify the port at which the target host is listening. 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 Delivery Agent is installed in a different location in your Citrix environment, then indicate that location in the Citrix Home text box. |
Inside View Using |
By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the Inside View Using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows). Typically, to establish this remote connection, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Configuring Windows Virtual Machines to Support theInside View Using the eG VM Agent topic for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set the Inside View Using flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password parameters to none. |
Domain, Admin User, Admin Password, and Confirm Password |
By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. Accordingly, the Inside View Using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows) by default. To obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with the privileges of an administrative user to the domain within which the guests reside. The first step towards this is to specify the DOMAIN within which the virtual guests reside. The Admin User and Admin password will change according to the Domain specification. Discussed below are the different values that the Domain parameter can take, and how they impact the Admin User and Admin Password specifications:
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Report By User |
For the Hyper-V monitoring model, the Report By User flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the Hyper-V server are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, for the Hyper-V VDI model, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of VDI servers, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename. |
Report Powered OS |
This flag becomes relevant only if the report by user flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the Report Powered OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the Report Powered OS flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently. |
Ignore VMs Inside View |
Administrators of some high security Hyper-V environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Hyper-V host by default. Note: While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box. |
Exclude VMs |
Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs. |
Ignore WINNT |
By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the Ignore WINNT flag is set to Yes by default. |
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:
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Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
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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 |
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Sent packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets sent by this user. |
Packets |
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Received packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets received by this user. |
Packets |
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Retransmitted packets |
Indicates the number of EDT packets that were retransmitted by the user. |
Packets |
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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 |
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Sent acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of acknowledgements that were received by this user for sending the EDT packets. |
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Sent negative acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of negative acknowledgements that were received by this user for sending the EDT packets. |
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Received acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of acknowledgements that were received by this user for reception of EDT packets. |
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Received negative acknowledgements |
Indicates the number of negative acknowledgements that were received by this user for reception of EDT packets. |
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