Memory Exhaustion Test

Memory exhaustion in virtual desktops occurs when the allocated memory resources of a desktop are completely consumed, causing the system to become slow, unresponsive, or crash. Memory exhaustion can lead to significant performance degradation and potential application failures. When memory resources are depleted, applications inside the desktop may experience significant slowdowns. In the process of managing memory pressures, the system may experience high CPU utilization. Memory being over-utilized may cause the virtual desktop to swap out to disk, which may be indicated by increased swapping or disk I/O. The operating system may display OOM errors that result from processes being killed to free up memory. Memory-reliant applications like databases, in-memory caches, or web servers may experience crashes or hangs due to memory shortages. Some applications may start throwing memory allocation errors or failing to start. The desktop can experience sluggishness or unresponsiveness, resulting in slow input or network communication. If memory exhaustion is severe, the whole desktop may freeze or require a restart. All the above mentioned issues points towards the importance of monitoring memory usage and proactive identification and remediation of memory exhaustion.

This test monitors every virtual desktop and notifies the administrators if there is any memory exhaustion happened, if the system commit charge approaches system commit limit, when paged pool and non paged pool usage is unusually high, or if the desktop is using high physical memory. This way the administrators can reduce the risk of memory exhaustion by identifying resource-intensive processes or applications, memory leakage, etc. long before it affects the performance of the system. This in turn helps to improve system stability, and ensure more efficient resource utilization.

Target of the test : A Windows System

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each desktop that is to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
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
Has memory exhaustion happened?	Indicates whether or not any memory exhaustion happened on this virtual desktop.		The values that this measure can report and their corresponding numeric values are discussed in the table above: Measure value Numeric value No 0 Yes 1 Note: By default, this measure reports the above-mentioned Measure Values while indicating whether memory exhaustion happened or not. However, in the graph of this measure, states will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents only. The detailed diagnosis of this measure reveals the name and PID of each application and the memory used by each application.
System commit limit	Indicates the maximum amount of virtual memory that can be committed without extending the paging file(s) on this virtual desktop.	GB
System commit charge	Indicates the the total amount of virtual memory that all processes have requested and that the system has committed to providing on this virtual desktop.	GB	If commit charge approach the commit limit, it could lead to performance issues.
Process commit charge	Indicates the total amount of virtual memory that a specific process has requested and that the system has committed to providing on this virtual desktop.	GB	This measure helps in identifying processes that consume excessive virtual memory.
Paged pool usage	Indicates the amount of paged pool used by this virtual desktop.	GB	If paged pool usage is unusually high, it may indicate a memory leak or inefficient memory usage by certain drivers or system components. In such cases, consider updating device drivers, especially network drivers, as they are often associated with memory leaks in the paged poo The detailed diagnosis of this measure sheds light on the top-3 paged pools that are being used by each virtual desktop.
Non paged pool usage	Indicates the amount of non paged pool used by this virtual desktop.	GB	If non-paged pool usage is unusually high, it may indicate a memory leak or inefficient memory usage by certain drivers or system components. The detailed diagnosis of this measure sheds light on the top-3 non-paged pools that are being used by each virtual desktop.
Total memory available	Indicates the total amount of physical memory available for use in this virtual desktop.	GB
Memory usage	Indicates the amount of physical memory used by this virtual desktop.	GB	This measure helps in identifying resource-intensive applications and potential memory leaks, ensuring your system operates efficiently.
Total processes	Indicates the total number of processes currently running in this virtual desktop.	Number