The Virtual Desktop Layer
The Oracle VDI VMs layer provides an “outside” view of the different desktops - the metrics reported at this layer are based on what the VirtualBox is seeing about the performance of the individual desktops. However, an outside view of the desktop and its applications may not be sufficient. For instance, suppose one of the disk partitions of the desktop has reached capacity. This information cannot be gleaned from host operating system. Likewise, bottlenecks such as a longer process run queue or a higher disk queue length are more visible using an internal monitor. Internal monitoring (from within the guest operating system) also provides details about the resource utilization of different application(s) or processes.
The tests mapped to the Virtual Desktop layer provide an "inside" view of the workings of each of the desktops - these tests execute on a VirtualBox host, but send probes into each of the virtual desktops to analyze how well each desktop utilizes the resources that are allocated to it, and how well it handles user sessions, TCP traffic, and network loading.
By default however, clicking on the Virtual Desktop layer, does not display the list of tests associated with that layer. Instead, Figure 1 appears. This figure provides you with a list of all desktops and their respective state (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 : A list of desktops on an Oracle VirtualBox and their current state
To return to the layer model of the Oracle VirtualBox and view the tests associated with the Virtual Desktop layer, click on the component layers link in Figure 1. You can now view the list of tests mapped to the Virtual Desktop layer, as depicted by Figure 2 below.
