VMware Horizon Monitoring End-to-End

VMware Horizon monitoring refers to tracking the health, usage and performance of the virtual application and virtual desktop service delivered using the VMware Horizon suite of solutions. Organizations use VMware Horizon to support employees, partners and remote workers accessing corporate applications and desktops. You need to use VMware Horizon monitoring tools to monitor the end-to-end environment because if this service is slow or not functioning, it will result in loss of productivity and ultimately, business revenue. Using VMware Horizon monitoring capabilities, IT admins can proactively know of problems that impact user productivity. VMware Horizon monitoring tools also provide insight into where performance bottlenecks and problems lie, so IT admins can quickly diagnose and fix issues with the VMware Horizon service.

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) is the monitoring tool built into the VMware stack. vROps for Horizon has capabilities to monitor the different tiers included in a VMware Horizon deployment. For customers that need additional insight into the virtual desktops and user sessions, VMware licenses ControlUp.

Aria Ops for Horizon does provide visibility into some aspects of a VMware Horizon deployment. But it lacks complete visibility into the virtual desktops and user sessions. To effectively monitor VMware Horizon deployments, customers need synthetic monitoring of user accesses from multiple locations. Synthetic monitoring is often complemented with monitoring of real user activity and sessions. At the same time, monitoring of every layer and every tier of a VMware Horizon deployment (vSphere servers, vCenter, AppVolumes, UAG, Connection servers, PODs, RDSH servers, virtual desktops, etc.) is required. Finally, IT admins also need pre-built dashboards and reports that answer most of the key questions they have. Third party tools like eG Enterprise offer all these capabilities from a single pane of glass and are easier to install and license than Aria Ops. For a detailed analysis of how eG Enterprise value-adds to Aria Ops, see here.

There are thousands of metrics to track in a VMware Horizon environment – so, it is difficult to enumerate every one of them. The most important ones relate to user experience, because after all the success of any VDI deployment is related to how good the user experience is. The most important user experience metrics include logon times (and their breakdown into different stages), network throughput and latency (especially if your employees are working from home), user input delay, and network quality (as measured by packet losses).

Typically, monitoring of a VMware Horizon deployment is based on a combination of agent and agentless monitoring. Monitoring of network devices (routers, F5 load balancers, UAGs, etc.), virtualization platforms (vSphere servers, vCenters), storage devices, AppVolume managers, etc. is agentless. Agents are required on the Connection Broker and the RDSH servers. In the case of VDI, a thin agent (VM agent) is required when using third-party monitoring tools like eG Enterprise.

The best VMware Horizon monitoring tool depends on your requirements. If you want to rely on the VDI vendor, you can use vROps for Horizon, but you may need to add-on third party tools to provide session visibility. If you prefer to use a single console for all your monitoring needs, and need a monitoring tool that is simple to deploy, operate and license, you can look at a monitoring tool like
eG Enterprise.