Blast Session - OS Test

The BLAST Session protocol allows files on a remote computer to be manipulated - i.e., to be deleted, renamed, or printed on the remote. Owing to the improved remote file management capabilities that Blast offers, many hypervisors like VMware support the Blast protocol too for user communication with virtual desktops. Because of this, there is a need to know which users have connected to virtual desktops via Blast and how the experience of each user is. This is why, the Blast Session - OS test auto-discovers the users who are connected to virtual desktops via the Blast protocol, and measures the bandwidth usage, frames processing ability, throughput, and time taken to establish each user's session. In the process, bandwidth-hungry, latent sessions can be accurately isolated.

Target of the test : A Windows virtual desktop on the cloud

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every user who is connected to a Windows virtual desktop via the Blast protocol

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The nick name of the Cloud Desktops component for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Refers to the port at which the specified host listens to. By default, this is NULL.
Inside View Using	To obtain the 'inside view' of performance of the cloud-hosted Windows desktops - i.e., to measure the internal performance of the Windows virtual desktops - this test uses a light-weight eG VM Agent software deployed on each of the desktops. Accordingly, this parameter is by default set to eG VM Agent (Windows).
Report Powered OS	This flag is relevant only for those tests that are mapped to the Inside View of Desktops layer. If this flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then the 'inside view' tests will report measures for even those Windows virtual desktops that do not have any users logged in currently. Such desktops will be identified by their name and not by the username_on_virtualdesktopname. On the other hand, if this flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those Windows virtual desktops to which no users are logged in currently.
Is Cloud VMs	Since this test runs for a 'Cloud Desktops' component, this flag is set to Yes by default.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Round trip time	Indicates the round trip latency between the virtual desktop and this user terminal.	Seconds	Comparing the value of this measure across users will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify users who are experiencing higher latency when connecting to a virtual desktop. via Blast.
Bandwidth	Indicates the bandwidth usage of all sessions of this user.	Kbps	Compare the value of this measure across users to know which user is consuming the maximum bandwidth.
Frame rate	Indicates the rate at which frames are processed during this user's sessions.	Frames/Sec	FPS is how fast your graphics card can output individual frames each second. It is the most time-tested and ideal measure of performance of a GPU. Higher the value of this measure, healthier is the GPU.
Throughput	Indicates the network throughput of this user's sessions.	Kbps	A poor network throughput could cause latencies in network communication.