Performance Rating Tests

Typically, in order to know the overall performance of a server, IT administrators should keep track of all metrics reported by eG Enterprise for that server. An executive on the other hand, may want to quickly determine server status, without having to look through hundreds of metrics. This is where performance ratings help.

Administrators can define a performance rating as an aggregate metric that is based on a number of other metrics collected and reported by an eG Enterprise agent. Consider this similar to APDEX rating or Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI). For example, the user experience of a Citrix user can be defined based on the logon time of the user, the screen refresh latency of the user, the profile size of that user and the network latency seen by that user. By looking at a single metric that takes a percentage value between 0 and 100, an executive can easily determine if that user is happy or dissatisfied. Likewise, a stress rating for a server can be based on its CPU utilization, memory utilization, disk space available and disk activity level.

With a Performance Rating, administrators can:

  • quantify the overall performance of an entity using a sub-set of metrics that eG Enterprise reports for that entity
  • ascertain, at a glance, whether performance of that entity is within desired levels or not
  • receive a single alert when the performance rating dips, instead of a flood of alarms, thereby enabling you to rapidly detect performance degradations
  • instantly pinpoint which parameter/measure caused the overall performance of the entity to slide
  • highlight the key performance indicator of a server, user, service on dashboards

There are 3 out-of-the-box performance rating tests available:

  • Citrix User Experience Rating
  • Citrix XenApp User Experience Rating
  • VDI User Experience Rating

These out-of-the-box tests do not require any additional license. You may just want to enable the test from the ENABLE/DISABLE TESTS lists provided you have managed atleast one Citrix/VDI server in your infrastructure. For example, if you have managed the Citrix XenApp 7.x server, then you can enable the Citrix User Experience Rating test from the DISABLED TESTS lists (see Figure 1)

Enabling Performance Rating Test

Figure 1 : Enabling a pre-configured Performance Rating test

Alternately, you can add a new Performance Rating test to suit your requirements. In order to avail such flexibility, the Metric Aggregation capability should be enabled in your eG manager license ( see Figure 2).

Enabling Metrics Aggregation

Figure 2 : Enabling the Metric Aggregation capability

Once the Metric Aggregation capability is enabled, the Performance Rating capability will be available in the eG Admin user interface as shown in Figure 3.

Menu Sequence for Accessing Performance Rating Page

Figure 3 : The Performance Rating capability in the eG administrative interface

Note:

A separate eG agent is not required for collecting metrics of the Performance Rating tests. The same eG agent (internal or remote) that monitors the component to which the Performance Rating test is associated, can be used.