The shift from physical desktops to virtual desktops is not an easy task and the IT sector must ensure the most effective performance of the virtual desktops. In order to ensure the most desired performance of the virtual desktops, the administrators of an organization should rely on the performance metrics. In today’s world, organizations are realizing and giving more importance to the IT end user experience than the raw performance metrics.
Performance Metrics:
In some situations, although performance metrics show healthy data, end users may complain about the slow performance of the systems. On the other hand, sometimes, users may experience good performance, but the performance metrics may show different indications. These two situations reflect that you are not examining the metrics correctly.
Solution for Performance Metrics:
If you want to have correct metrics monitoring for your VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure, you need to work out how to improve your VDI monitoring software for a better end-user experience, instead of spending time and effort to examine a series of raw performance metrics. Therefore, you need to follow three things, such as
- You need to evaluate which type of end-user activities are likely to be reported for slow performance.
- Then, you need to assess what CPU, storage, memory, and network sources are engaged for those activities. In simple words, you have to understand what OS and hardware are working on to complete the activities.
- Once you have understood which resources are responsible for different activities, you can now concentrate on monitoring the user experience metrics in order to find out the configuration issues of the OS, storage, network, or server that result in the performance issues for the users.
VDI End-User Experience Metrics:
What a user sees or feels using a system that determines his or her perception about the system performance. The major VDI user experience metrics are-
1. App Load Time:
When the users launch an application, the loading process should not take a longer time. Instant loading is essential to satisfy the users.
2. Logon Duration:
Logon duration refers to the time taken by the users to log into a system. After the logon, the user should be able to access the desktop immediately.
3. App Response Time:
This is a difficult end-user metrics to measure. However, the basic idea is that the users should not wait or have to stop for further catch-up of the application while using an application.
4. Graphics Quality and Responsiveness:
Graphics quality and responsiveness metrics reflect that an end-user should be able to experience the same graphical quality in a virtual desktop environment that he or she could have experienced on physical desktops.
5. Session Response Time:
Session response time reflects how an operating system responds to the input of the users. The session response time should be very minimum, and the users should not wait to perform an activity.
End-User Problems:
From the above discussion of the end-user metrics, we can have an idea about the problems that the users may face. The common problems that most users face are high app load time, app response time, session response time, slow logon, and bad graphic performance. Therefore, you need to monitor the VDI end-user experience metrics effectively in order to provide a better user experience.
