Understanding the performance requirements of desktops will also help plan the virtual desktop infrastructure more efficiently. For example, known heavy CPU using desktop users can be load balanced across servers. Likewise, by planning to assign a good mix of CPU intensive and memory intensive user desktops are assigned to a physical server, it is possible to get optimal usage of the existing hardware resources.

Taking this discussion one step further, it is interesting to draw a parallel with how server virtualization evolved and to see what lessons we can learn as far as VDI is concerned.

A lot of the emphasis in the early days was on determining which applications could be virtualized and which ones could not. Today, server virtualization technology has evolved to a point where there are more virtual machines being deployed in a year than physical machines, and almost every application server (except very old legacy ones) are virtualized fairly well. You no longer hear anyone asking whether this application server can be virtualized or not. From focusing on the hypervisor, virtualization vendors have realized that performance and manageability are key to the success of server virtualization deployments.

VDI deployments could be done more rapidly and more successfully if we learn our lessons from how server virtualization evolved. VDI assessment needs to expand in focus on just the desktop and look at the entire infrastructure. Attention during VDI rollouts has to be paid to performance management and assurance. To avoid a lot of rework and problem remediation down the line, performance assurance must be considered early on in the process and at every stage. This is key to getting VDI deployed on a bigger scale and faster, with great return on investment (ROI).

To learn more about VDI performance, join the on-demand webinar “Top-5 Best Practices for Virtual Desktop Success“

Therefore, once a decision to try out VDI is made, the primary focus is to benchmark the performance of physical desktops, model their usage, predict the virtualized user experience and based on the results, determine which desktops can be virtualized and which can’t. This is what many people refer to as “VDI assessment”.

One of the fundamental changes with VDI is that the desktops no longer have dedicated resources. They share the resources of the physical machine on which they are hosted and they may even be using a common storage subsystem.

While resource sharing provides several benefits, it also introduces new complications. A single malfunctioning desktop can take so much resources that it impacts the performance of all the other desktops. Whereas in the physical world, the impact of a failure or a slowdown was minimal (if a physical desktop failed, it would impact only one user), the impact of failure or slowdown in the virtual world is much more severe (one failure can impact hundreds of desktops). Therefore, even in the VDI assessment phase, it is important to take performance considerations into account.

In fact, performance has to be considered at every stage of the VDI lifecycle because it is fundamental to the success or failure of the VDI rollout. The new types of inter-desktop dependencies that exist in VDI have to be accounted for at every stage.

For example, in many of the early VDI deployments, administrators found that when they just migrated the physical desktops to VDI, backups or antivirus software became a problem. These software components were scheduled to run at the same time on all the desktops. When the desktops were physical, it didn’t matter, because each desktop had dedicated hardware. With VDI, the synchronized demand for resources from all the desktops severely impacted the performance of the virtual desktops. This was not something that was anticipated because the focus of most designs and plans was on the individual desktops.

In part 2 of this article, we will take a closer look at the parallels to server virtualization and what lessons we can learn for VDI.

Learn more about the eG Enterprise performance management solution featuring the industry’s only virtualization-aware service topology mapping and automatic correlation technology. This unique capability allows administrators to monitor RHEV server and desktop platforms – not as a silo but as an integral component of the overall business service infrastructure. This approach delivers deep, actionable insights into the true causes of cross-domain service performance issues and enables administrators to pre-emptively detect, diagnose, and fix root-cause issues – before end users notice.

During the live expo (starting at 9 am ET) you can ask your questions directly to the eG Innovations team and you’ll also be able to interact with the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization experts, partners and other attendees participating in the online event.

We look forward to seeing you at the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Virtual Event!

Register now: https://vts.inxpo.com/Launch/QReg.htm?ShowKey=7670

A growing number of administrators are relying on 2X ApplicationServer XG for quick and reliable virtual desktop and application delivery. Performance failures often have a terrible effect on user experience and organizational effectiveness. Many times, the cause of such failures cannot be easily pinpointed, especially in dynamic virtualized environments, making recovery difficult.

eG 2X Monitoring provides total performance visibility for 2X installations of all sizes, providing a comprehensive management solution for 2X farms, with complete visibility and monitoring for all layers and tiers of the organization’s 2X infrastructure. Monitored layers include the network, servers, virtualization platform, storage and more. With eG 2X Monitoring, administrators can dramatically accelerate the discovery, diagnosis and resolution of performance issues to improve the end-user experience within virtual, cloud and physical infrastructures.

eG 2X Monitoring improves the monitoring and visibility of 2X environments in multiple ways:

• Total Performance Visibility – Each service layer and tier is monitored – from desktops to applications, and from the network to storage – so administrators know what’s working and what isn’t.
• Proactive Issue Detection and Resolution – Allows 2X environment performance to be auto-baselined, sending proactive alerts when infrastructure usage and performance are abnormal; and administrators can automatically correlate performance events across the service environment, and identify and diagnose issues before users call the helpdesk.
• User Session and Application Performance Diagnosis – In-depth user session visibility allows administrators to diagnose abnormal user sessions and misbehaving applications.
• Powerful Reporting & Analytics – Pinpoint performance bottlenecks in 2X environments, identify excessive users, and load intensive applications – helping you to right-size your IT environment and get better return out of your IT investments.

For more information, please download the eG 2X Monitoring Solution Brief .

This report will help you understand what your peers think about performance management and where the market is going. It will also help eG Innovations deliver better products to you. The aggregated survey results are anonymous.

Virtual desktop and VDI initiatives promise a variety of benefits – but the underlying IT architecture adds significant complexity and risk. Virtual desktop users expect application delivery to be as fast and reliable as their physical desktop experience. A single failure in the service infrastructure can bring virtual desktop performance to a crawl, and significantly impact user productivity and business processes. And when a user calls about “slow applications”, how do you discover and quickly fix the true service performance bottleneck: Is it the network? Profile server? Web? Desktop Virtualization platform? Storage?

Join the on-demand webinar (http://www.eginnovations.com/webinar/vdi) and learn from desktop transformation experts Karin Kelley (451 Group) and Srinivas Ramanathan (eG Innovations) about the top-5 best practices on how to build scalable performance assurance into virtual desktop environments, and how to provide end-to-end performance visibility across every layer and every tier of dynamic service infrastructures – from virtual desktops to applications, and from the network to storage. Learn how to proactively manage service performance so you can make informed IT operations decisions, move from insight to action, and quickly resolve the root cause of service performance issues – before they impact user productivity and the success of your desktop transformation initiative.

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!

Bill Covington, COO of IO Integration said, “We have evaluated all major performance management solutions and were truly impressed with eG Innovations’ ability to proactively pinpoint performance issues across multiple mission-critical systems, whether they are physical, virtualized or cloud based, and do so before issues impact user productivity and ROI. Our new IO Monitor service now offers true 24x7x365 support and offers total performance visibility across every layer of every tier of our client’s IT infrastructure.”

IO Integration uses eG Enterprise to enable its clients to keep their mission-critical business services running at peak performance, and to deliver tangible ROI to clients undertaking transformational IT initiatives.

This partnership allows IO Integration to expand the range of services offered to clients to include advanced remote performance management, analysis, and reporting of mission-critical systems. It will dramatically accelerate the discovery, diagnosis, and resolution of service performance and user experience issues.

Application performance monitoring has become increasingly important for enterprises and service providers alike. But virtualization and cloud computing have introduced new challenges for application performance monitoring. To be effective in these environments, application performance management solutions must be virtualization and cloud aware. They must handle newer forms of interdependencies between application components, the dynamic location of these components and the multi-domain nature of these environments.

The eG Enterprise solution from eG Innovations excels in providing total performance visibility to heterogeneous physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures. This enables companies to ensure maximum service performance and user productivity and thereby deliver on the ROI promise of transformational IT initiatives.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) includes 27 vendors, with key inclusion criteria being that vendors have a global presence, at least 50 customers who use their APM products in production and their products support at least two of the key APM functionalities as defined by Gartner.

For this Magic Quadrant, Gartner evaluated eG Innovations’ Application Performance Monitoring solution on four of the dimensions of APM functionality, namely end-user experience monitoring, application run-time architecture discovery, modeling and display, component deep-dive monitoring in application context and application performance analytics.

* Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring, Will Cappelli, Jonah Kowall, September 19, 2011.

A single failure in the extended XenApp/XenDesktop infrastructure can bring application performance to a crawl and impact user productivity. Most of the time, Citrix is probably not the root cause of these issues – but how do you prove it? And how do you proactively discover and fix the true performance bottleneck: Is it the network? Profile server? Web? Virtualization platform? SAN?

Join this webcast and learn from desktop transformation experts Doug Brown (CEO, DABCC), Johny Hartanto (Lender Processing Services), Bala Vaidhinathan (CTO, eG Innovations), and Rick Ruskin (eG Innovations) how you can get total performance visibility into every tier and layer of the infrastructure supporting your key business services.

Webinar: Delivering Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop Performance – How to Provide Total Performance Visibility and User Satisfaction

Now available on-demand: http://www.eginnovations.com/webinar/xenapp

Find out how to correlate and visualize performance metrics to make informed decisions, move from insight to action, and quickly resolve the root cause of performance issues – before they impact user productivity.

We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!