In this walkthrough, you will learn how to navigate and use ControlUp SOLVE to solve issues that can impact EUC users and environments. SOLVE is ControlUp’s new real-time, cloud-based console that lets you monitor your EUC environment from anywhere. Since it runs in the cloud, it can handle extremely large environments—such as NOCs—with the same precision and speed as smaller environments.
Read more about ControlUp SOLVE
Since this is a high-level overview, we will not be going into all the sections or explore all the features of SOLVE, but because TestDrive is a true sandbox, you can experiment, and work with ControlUp SOLVE to discover how it can assist in monitoring a Horizon environment.
NOTE: In this walkthrough, actions (e.g. clicking, right-clicking, etc.) you need to perform are featured in bold and indicated in screen captures with boxes with thick red lines. Information that should be observed/noted is in boxes with thin red lines.
Overview
Section 1: Accessing ControlUp on VMware TestDrive
Section 2: Access ControlUp SOLVE on VMware TestDrive
Section 3: Discover the Root Cause of a Poor User Experience
Section 4: Discover the Root Cause of Host’s Resource Being Over-Consumed
Section 5: Examine the Health of an EUC Environment
Section 6: Discover the Root Cause of an Issue Affecting the Host Using the Organizational Tree
Section 7: Finding Disk Space for a New Application
Section 8: Monitoring a Specific Users Resource Usage
Before you Begin
To complete this product walkthrough, please make sure you have the following:
- A valid account in the VMware TestDrive environment, sign up here if you do not have one.
- TCP & UDP ports 80, 443, 8443; and if using PCoIP, both TCP & UDP 4172
- Latest Horizon Client installed, available via direct download here.
- A ControlUp user account on TestDrive. See this article for information on how to access ControlUp on TestDrive and create an account.
- Although not needed, you might find it handy to have a copy of the ControlUp User Guide.
Section 1: Accessing ControlUp on VMware TestDrive
Log into the ControlUp Console. See this article for info on how to access ControlUp on TestDrive.
Section 2: Accessing ControlUp SOLVE on VMware TestDrive
You can access SOLVE directly from a URL in a web browser or from the ControlUp Console. In this walkthrough, we will access it using the ControlUp console.
First, click the SolVE tab at the top of the ControlUp Realtime Console. Next, in the upper left, click on the SolVE icon.
This will launch a web browser and log you in to SOLVE.
You may wish to maximize your browser.
ControlUp SOLVE has different navigation features and sections, as highlighted below.
The top portion of the dashboard shows the overall health of the environment, the middle portion shows the top consumers of the resources, while the bottom shows the aggregate averages for critical metrics.
Scroll down the page to view the overall health of your environment.
If you don’t interact with ControlUp SOLVE for ten minutes, you will be automatically logged out.
If you have been timed out, go back to the ControlUp console and click the SolVE tab to be logged back in.
Section 3: Discover the Root Cause of a Poor User Experience
EUC users can have less-than-ideal experiences. ControlUp SOLVE can help locate their root causes.
Select User Experience from the View drop-down menu.
Scroll down the dashboard and verify that it displays information regarding user sessions, including average logon duration, slow logons, and average protocol throughput.
ControlUp SOLVE enables you to drill down and investigate specific metrics and events. Point at the top row in the Slowest Logons widget to verify that the exact value of the bar chart is displayed.
Click the top row in the Slowest Logons widget. This will display information regarding slow logons for users.
The dashboard consists of different sections regarding slow logins. The topography view is on the top, the aggregate view in the middle and the data grid dashboard at the bottom. The columns on the lower views vary according to the object highlighted in the topology view in this case it is User Sessions (All).
The column labels in the data grid dashboard display information regarding the metric. Point at the column label in the Logon Duration column (you may need to scroll to the right side to show this column) and read about it in the popup window.
The columns in the data grid dashboard are sortable. Click the column label Logon Duration to sort in in ascending order; click it again to sort it in descending order.
You can limit what information is displayed in the data grid dashboard to specific items. Enter ctrluser2 in the Search Grid textbox (verify that only ctrluser2 is shown under the Users column).
Scroll to the right to view what metrics are displayed. If you have more than one user, verify that they have different values in the Branch Name and Client IP columns. This indicates that the user ID ctrluser2 is logged in to two different locations.
SOLVE can drill down on a specific user. Click the cell in the top row under the Logon Duration column.
Verify that the topography view now has VMWTD\ctrluser2 highlighted.
Point to the Logon Duration widget and verify that the displayed information in the pop-up shows that the majority of the logon time was spent in Group Policy Load Time.
In the upper right, click X esc.
Using SOLVE, we were able to identify which users had lengthy logon duration and then see they were caused by group policy load time.
Section 3: Discover the Root Cause of Host’s Resource Being Over-Consumed
The Resources dashboard displays information concerning the real time health of the machines in an environment. In this section we will use SOLVE to find the root cause of a host resource being over-consumed.
In the upper left, click Dashboard.
Select Resources from the View drop-down menu.
Verify that the dashboard displays information regarding the infrastructure, including storage, memory, and CPU usage.
Scroll down the page to verify that the information in the widgets is for physical and virtual systems.
The Resource Health widget shows that a percentage of the hosts are in different states. See more information by clicking the widget. Click the Hosts (outer circle) in the Resources Health widget.
Verify that Hosts are highlighted in the topography view. The stress level is a configurable health measure calculated as a sum of weights assigned to different metrics. Sort the Stress Level column in descending order. Point to the red ball in the cell in the top row of the Stress Level column and verify the Disk Read Latency is a major contributor to the critical stress level.
Scroll to the right and verify that the datastore metrics (highlighted in red) are exceedingly high.
You can examine the metrics for a single host to further investigate the root cause of an issue. Click the cell in the first row in the Name column.
Verify that the topography view has the host that you selected highlighted. Click Machines in the topography view. The data grid dashboard now displays all the virtual machines running on the host.
Sort by the Stress Level in descending order. Scroll right and verify that Virtual Disk Read Latency is high. Point to the cell in the first row in the Name column. The pop-up shows that the object has the ControlUp and Horizon agent installed and is a virtual machine. Click the cell in the first row in the Name column.
Verify that the topography view has the machine that you selected highlighted. Click Processes in the topography view. The data grid dashboard now displays all the processes running on the virtual machines running on the host.
Sort the I/O Read Operations/sec column in descending order. The name of the process (Dynamo) causing the heavy disk activity is shown in the top row. The process is also shown in the Top 5 Process by CPU Usage and Top 5 Process by Disk Usage widgets.
In the upper right click X esc.
ControlUp SOLVE was able to identify that a disk on a host had heavy usage and then discover the root cause (Dynamo.exe) of the problem with just a few clicks.
Section 4: Examine the Health of an EUC Environment
In this section, we will use the organizational tree to examine the health of an EUC environment.
Click the Organizational Tree Expander on the left of the dashboard.
Click Focus to view the contents of the EUC Environment folder.
Scroll down and examine the information shown.
Click Focus for the Dallas Horizon folder and examine what information is shown in the topography, aggregate and data grid dashboard.
Click Focus for Dallas Horizon > Connection Servers folder and verify that neither of the connection servers is stressed.
Click Focus for Dallas Horizon > Desktop Pools folder and verify that number of machines, Desktop Pools and User Session are shown in the topography view.
The objects in the topography view can also be used to navigate. Select User Sessions (All) in the topography view. Verify that user sessions are displayed in the data grid dashboard.
ControlUp SOLVE is a powerful tool that lets you examine the overall health of the objects that make up an EUC environment.
Section 5: Discover the Root Cause of an Issue Affecting a Host Using the Organizational Tree
The organization tree displays objects in folders. Virtual machines and other objects can be placed in folders using the ControlUp console. These folders can be used to quickly drill down and find the root cause of an issue.
In the Organizational Tree, on the left of the dashboard, Focus on the ControlUp-Demo-Targets folder.
By default, sessions are displayed. Verify that User Sessions is highlighted in the topology view.
In the topology view, click Machines to verify that information in the aggregate view and data grid dashboard displays machine, rather than session, information.
Click User Sessions in the topology view.
Quick navigation links can be used to quick key in and display information in the data grid dashboard. In the row of the user that has a Critical stress level click the Quick Navigation link in the Stress Level column.
The top of the topology view displays what you are investigating.
Sort the Stress Level column in descending order and verify the process (Dynamo.exe) that is stressing the system (this is also shown in other widgets).
In the upper right, click X esc.
Using the organizational tree, we were able to quickly identify a process (Dynamo.exe) that was stressing the system.
Section 6: Finding Disk Space for a New Application
The data grid dashboard is a powerful tool to examine system information. This data grid dashboard can be configured in a number of ways to make it easier to obtain actionable information by limiting (filtering) the information that is shown on it.
In this section, we will find a server with enough free disk space to deploy an application on it.
In the Organizational Tree on the left of the dashboard, Focus on the TestDrive-vmwtd.com. Select Machines (all) in the topography view.
From the Choose Grid View (three vertical dots) drop-down menu, select Compact and view how the data grid dashboard changes. ControlUp power users like the compact view because it gives better data density.
The information in the data grid dashboard can be filtered to display specific information. We will create filters to display only machines running Windows Server with at least 100 GB of free disk space.
Click the filter for the Operating System column, enter Server in the Value text box and click Filter. Verify that only operating systems with Server in their name are shown in the data grid dashboard .
The metrics displayed in the data grid dashboard are configurable. Click the Grid column picker, enter Max in the Search text box, and then select Max Free Space Drive (if it doesn’t have a checkmark by it). Click Apply or Cancel.
Click the filter for the Max Free Space Drive column (you may need to scroll to the far right) and configure the filter for greater than 100 GB of free disk space. Click Filter.
Examine the machines that are displayed. The machines listed in the data grid dashboard are candidates for the new applications.
Click Clear all Filters.
We were able to customize the data grid dashboard to add new metrics and use filters to identify machines that had enough free disk space to host a new application.
Section 7: Monitoring a Specific Users Resource Usage
Users often call support when they are having issues with their systems. You can use the data grid dashboard to display information about a user and track down the root cause of any issues they are having.
In the Organizational Tree on the left of the dashboard, Focus on the EUC Environments > Dallas Horizon. Click Users Session (All) in the topography view. In the Search Grid textbox, enter Ctrluser1.
Click Quick Navigate in the machine column for the ctrluser1 user.
Sort the Stress Level column in descending order. The name of the process (Dynamo) causing heavy disk activity is shown in the top row. The process is also shown in the Top 5 Process by CPU Usage and Top 5 Process by Disk Usage widgets.
Using ControlUp SOLVE, we were able to see that the disk on a host was being heavily utilized and then discover the root cause of the problem with just a few clicks.
In the upper right click X esc.
Close the web browser to log off SOLVE.
Once you have learned how to navigate using ControlUp SOLVE, you will find it an intuitive and powerful way to monitor and troubleshoot your VDI environment. Refer to the ControlUp SOLVE user guide for more information about any aspect about the ControlUp console.
Have more questions? Submit a request.