User Profile Management - OS Test

User logon is a complex and resource intensive process in a VDI environment, and is a key determinant of the quality of a user’s experience with the VDI service. This process is initiated when a desktop broker’s load balancing algorithm selects the virtual desktop where a published application or desktop, which a user has selected, will be started and ends when the application or desktop is running and the user is able to interact with it.

Delays in the user logon process can therefore serve as key spoilers of a user’s experience with the desktop service, causing significant loss of revenue and reputation in mission-critical VDI environments.

One of the common causes for delays in user logons is a delay in the loading of user profiles. To reduce the time taken to load profiles and thus minimize the user logon time, VDI environments where user connections are brokered through the Citrix XenDesktop Broker, use the Citrix Profile Management solution. Citrix Profile Management is a profile type that supersedes all other profiles for the user.

During logon, the Profile management service manages the user settings in a user profile. This service helps minimize the user logon time by enabling administrators to exclude (and include) certain files and folders in order to prevent extraneous settings from needlessly being copied with the profile. For example, some applications may create folders and files that account for tens or hundreds of megabytes - data that is really not required. By excluding these items, the profile is thus smaller, and smaller profiles load faster. Alternatively, you could elect to only include specific files and folders, thus keeping to a minimum the amount of profile data being managed within the user‘s profile.

Also, upon logoff, the Profile management service merges back only changed user settings to the centrally stored user settings (user‘s store).

In environments where the Citrix Profile Management service is utilized therefore, the user experience with the VDI service greatly depends upon how efficient the service is.

Note:

This test is relevant only where the Citrix XenDesktop Broker is used to broker connections between the user and the desktops.

To ascertain the efficiency of the Citrix Profile Management service, VDI administrators may have to periodically track the logon/logoff duration and profile size of each user to the virtual desktops operating on a target virtual host. Doing so will enable these administrators to determine whether/not the Profile management service has succeeded in minimizing both user logon times and profile sizes. The User Profile Management - OS test helps administrators perform this check at pre-configured intervals. The ‘per-user’ performance results reported by this test will not only enable administrators to judge the effectiveness of the Profile management service in its entirety, but will also shed light on those user logons/logoffs that are still experiencing delays; this provides insights into how the service can be fine-tuned to enhance the VDI experience of such users.

This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence: Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick Nutanix AHV or Nutanix AHV VDI as the Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose this test from the disabled tests list, and click on the >> button to move the test to the enabled tests list.

Target of the test : A Nutanix AHV server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every user who is connected to a virtual desktop via ICA.

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.
Port	The port at which the specified host listens. By default, this is NULL
Prism IP	If the eG manager had discovered the target Nutanix AHV server by connecting to the Nutanix Prism, then the IP address of the Nutanix Prism server used for discovering this Nutanix AHV server would be automatically displayed against the Prism IP parameter; similarly, the Prism User and Prism Password text boxes will be automatically populated with the Prism user credentials, using which Nutanix AHV discovery was performed. If this Nutanix AHV server has not been discovered using the Nutanix Prism, but you still want to monitor the Nutanix AHV server via the Prism, then select the IP address of the Prism server that you wish to use for monitoring the Nutanix AHV server from the Prism IP list. By default, this list is populated with the IP address of all Nutanix Prism hosts that were added to the eG Enterprise system at the time of discovery. Upon selection, the Prism user and Prism Password that were pre-configured for that Nutanix Prism will be automatically displayed against the respective text boxes. On the other hand, if the IP address of the Prism server of interest to you is not available in the list, then, you can add the details of the Prism server on-the-fly, by selecting the Other option from the Prism IP list. This will invoke the MANAGER DISCOVERY - VIRTUAL PLATFORM SETTINGS page. Refer to the Configuring eG Enterprise to Monitor Nutanix AHV topic for details on how to use this page.
Prism User, Prism Password and Confirm Password	If the eG manager had discovered the target Nutanix AHV server by connecting to the Nutanix Prism, then the IP address of the Nutanix Prism server used for discovering this Nutanix AHV server would be automatically displayed against thePrism IP parameter; similarly, the Prism User and Prism Password text boxes will be automatically populated with the Prism user credentials, using which Nutanix AHV discovery was performed. If this Nutanix AHV server has not been discovered using the Nutanix Prism, but you still want to monitor the Nutanix AHV server via the Prism, then select the IP address of the Prism server that you wish to use for monitoring the Nutanix AHV server from the Prism IP list. By default, this list is populated with the IP address of all Nutanix Prism hosts that were added to the eG Enterprise system at the time of discovery. Upon selection, the Prism User and Prism Password that were pre-configured for that Prism server will be automatically displayed against the respective text boxes. On the other hand, if the IP address of the Prism server of interest to you is not available in the list, then, you can add the details of the Prism server on-the-fly, by selecting the Other option from the Prism IP list. This will invoke the MANAGER DISCOVERY - VIRTUAL PLATFORM SETTINGS page. Refer to the Configuring eG Enterprise to Monitor Nutanix AHV topic for details on how to use this page.
SSL	By default, the Nutanix Prism server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the Prism server via HTTPS by default.
WebPort	By default, the Nutanix Prism server listens on port 9440. This implies that while monitoring a Nutanix AHV server via the Prism server, the eG agent connects to port 9440.
Exclude VMs	Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the Exclude VMs text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your Exclude VMs specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the Exclude VMs text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs.
Ignore VMs Inside View	Administrators of some high security Hyper-V environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the Ignore VMs Inside View parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your Ignore VMs Inside View specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Hyper-V host by default. Note: While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the Ignore VMs Inside View text box.
Ignore WINNT	By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the Ignore WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.
Inside View Using	By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the Inside View Using flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows). Typically, to establish this remote connection with Windows VMs in particular, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent (Windows) on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer toConfiguring the eG Agent to Collect Current Hardware Status Metrics for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set theInside View Using flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password parameters to none.
Domain, Admin User, Admin Password, and Confirm Password	By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. In order to obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with user privileges that allow remote communication with the virtual guests. The first step towards this is to specify the DOMAIN within which the virtual guests reside. The Admin User and Admin Password will change according to the domain specification. Discussed below are the different values that the domain parameter can take, and how they impact the admin user and admin password specifications: If the VMs belong to a single domain: If the guests belong to a specific domain, then specify the name of that domain against the Domain parameter. In this case, any administrative user in that domain will have remote access to all the virtual guests. Therefore, an administrator account in the given domain can be provided in the Admin User field and the corresponding password in the Admin Password field. Confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. If the guests do not belong to any domain (as in the case of Linux/Solaris guests) : In this case, specify “none” in the Domain field, and specify a local administrator account name in the Admin User below. Prior to this, you need to ensure that the same local administrator account is available or is explicitly created on each of the virtual machines to be monitored. Then, proceed to provide the password of the Admin User against Admin Password, and confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box. If key-based authentication is implemented between the eG agent and the SSH daemon of a Linux guest, then, in the Admin User text box, enter the name of the user whose <user_home_dir> (on that Linux guest) contains a .ssh directory with the public key file named authorized_keys. The Admin Password in this case will be the passphrase of the public key; the default public key file that is bundled with the eG agent takes the password eginnovations. Specify this as the Admin Password if you are using the default private/public key pair that is bundled with the eG agent to implement key-based authentication. On the other hand, if you are generating a new public/private key pair for this purpose, then use the passphrase that you provide while generating the pair. For the detailed procedure on Implementing Key-based Authentication refer to Troubleshooting the Failure of the eG Remote Agent to Connect to or Report Measures for Linux Guests. If the guests belong to different domains - In this case, you might want to provide multiple domain names. If this is done, then, to access the guests in every configured domain, the test should be configured with the required user privileges; this implies that along with multiple DOMAIN names, multiple Admin User names and Admin Paswords would also have to be provided. To help administrators provide these user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page. To access this page, simply click on the Click here hyperlink that appears just above the parameters of this test in the test configuration page. To know how to use the special page, refer to Configuring Users for VM Monitoring. If the inside view using flag is set to ‘eG VM Agent (Windows)’ - In this case, the inside view can be obtained without domain administrator privileges. Therefore, set the Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password parameters to none.
Report By User	While monitoring a Nutanix AHV server, the Report By Userflag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the AHV server are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring AHV desktop environments, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of VDI servers, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.
Report Powered OS	This flag becomes relevant only if thereport by user flagis set to ‘Yes’. If the Report Powered OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the Report Powered OS flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Logon Duration:	Indicates the duration of logon processing for this user.	Secs	This value helps to measure the reduction in logon times when the Profile Management service ‘streams’ the profile. Ideally therefore, this value should be low. A high value or a consistent increase in the value of this measure could indicate that profile loading still takes a lot of time at logon - this could be owing to a large profile size. You can then check the value reported by the Logon Bytes measure to know the profile size at logon. If profile sizes continue to grow at logon despite the use of Profile management, it is indicative of the ineffectiveness of profile management. You may then have to fine-tune the feature to further reduce the profile size by excluding more unnecessary files from the profile, or you may have to explore other options such as roaming profiles, mandatory profiles, etc.
Logon Bytes:	Indicates the size of this user’s profile when it is retrieved from the user’s store at logon.	MB	Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. A low profile size could result in faster profile loading at logon, lesser time to login, and consequently, a richer user experience with the VDI service. If profile sizes continue to grow despite the use of Profile management, it is indicative of the ineffectiveness of profile management. You may then have to fine-tune the feature to further reduce the profile size by excluding more unnecessary files from the profile.
Logoff Duration:	Indicates the duration of logoff processing for this user.	Secs	A low value is desired for this measure. A high value could indicate that the profile management service takes too long to update the user’s store with changes in the user settings. This could be because of a bad network connection between the virtual desktop and the user’s store, or because too many changes are waiting to be written to the user store.
Logoff Bytes:	Indicates the size of this user’s profile when it is copied to the user store at logoff.	MB	This measure provides a fair idea of the volume of changes that were copied to the user’s store at logoff.
Local Profile Setup Duration:	Indicates the time taken to create or prepare this user’s profile on the local computer.	Secs	A low value is desired for these measures. If a user complaints of delays during logon, you can use the value of these measures to determine where the VDI service is spending too much time - is it when setting up the local profile? or is it when deleting the local profile?
Delete Local Profile Duration:	Indicates the time spent deleting this user’s local profiles during the initial migration.	Secs
Processed Logon Files - Under 1KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size of 1KB.	Number	All the Processed Logon Files measures help VDI administrators to understand whether/not ‘profile streaming’ (performed by the Profile Management service) has helped in reducing the number of locally copied files during logon. All the Processed Logoff Files measures help VDI administrators to understand how many files changed when the user session was in progress.
Processed Logoff Files - Under 1KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied file for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size of 1KB.	Number
Processed Logon Files from 1KB to 10KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size ranging from 1KB to 10KB.	Number
Processed Logoff Files from 1KB to 10KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size ranging from 1KB to 10KB.	Number
Processed Logon Files from 10KB to 100KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size ranging from 10KB to 100KB.	Number
Processed Logoff Files from 10KB to 100KB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size ranging from 1KB to 10KB.	Number	All the Processed Logon Files measures help VDI administrators to understand whether/not ‘profile streaming’ (performed by the Profile Management service) has helped in reducing the number of locally copied files during logon. All the Processed Logoff Files measures help VDI administrators to understand how many files changed when the user session was in progress.
Processed Logon Files from 100KB to 1MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size ranging from 100KB to 1MB.	Number
Processed Logoff Files from 100KB to 1MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size ranging from 100KB to 1MB.	Number
Processed Logon Files from 1MB to 5MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size ranging from 1MB to 5MB.	Number
Processed Logoff Files from 1MB to 5MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size ranging from 1MB to 5MB.	Number	All the Processed Logon Files measures help VDI administrators to understand whether/not ‘profile streaming’ (performed by the Profile Management service) has helped in reducing the number of locally copied files during logon. All the Processed Logoff Files measures help VDI administrators to understand how many files changed when the user session was in progress.
Processed Logon Files Above 5MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logon and categorized by the file size above 5MB.	Number
Processed Logoff Files Above 5MB:	Indicates the number of locally copied files for this user’s profile that are synchronized during logoff and categorized by the file size above 5MB.	Number