In this quick walkthrough, we will show you how to remotely manage and monitor desktops. You can access session related user metrics and perform additional analysis, which aids in disaster recovery and continuity of operations.
Before You Begin
- Ensure you have a valid account in the TestDrive environments. If you do not yet have an account you can sign up at portal.vmtestdrive.com.
- This walkthrough can be performed using a PC or Mac. We suggest using the enrollment instructions for your platform found at the following links: Windows 10, MacOS
VMware Compliance and Cyber Risk Solutions delivers the ability for customers to confidently and quickly secure mission critical virtualized workloads in many critical industries. We do this by providing both guidance in the form of the VMware Compliance Reference Architecture Framework and the Secure and Compliance Capable platform which enables the customer to be consistently compliant against their regulation requirements.
VMware vRealize Operations Manager
Let's start by launching Workspace ONE from a web browser on a PC or Mac. Navigate to https://testdrive.vidmpreview.com/
Next we will launch the virtual Windows 7 Desktop by clicking on AMER-WIN7. This can be opened in the Horizon Client or in the browser.
On the desktop, launch vROps for Horizon, by double-clicking the desktop shortcut
If you get an error message, click on Advanced and then Proceed.
Make sure the domain in the top line is VMWDEMO, then log in with your user credentials
Navigate to Dashboards > Horizon Help Desk. This dashboard shows all connected desktop sessions.
If you navigate to the widget labeled Horizon Connected Sessions, you can click on the desktop you want to troubleshoot. You can also search for the AD credentials (by first unhiding the toolbar), then entering in vmwtd.com\username in the search field and hitting return.
This pulls up specific info for this user; all widgets update to reflect the chosen user session, and all widgets update with user-specific information.
Let's take a look at some of the specific metrics we can view for this user.
Horizon Connected Sessions: shows user versions, protocol, etc. Here the user is connecting using BLAST Protocol.
Selected User Session Alerts: shows the user has 3 critical session alerts – two regarding high memory usage, and another saying VM Memory performance has degraded
Session Related Metrics: scoreboard widgets into the overall performance and health of the user session. Shows same 3 critical alerts pointed out on upper left, time to log on (could be important for healthcare and government workers), latency effects performance looks good. Existing bandwidth etc. As they trend from good to bad to worst – the color changes according to best practice metrics.
VM Metrics: displays metrics such as Memory consumed and available, vCPUs utilized and vCPUs recommended, IOPS, etc.
Performing Additional Analysis
Now let's scroll down to the Session Processes widget, expand it by clicking the icon with two down arrows, and unhide the toolbar by clicking the eye icon.
Make sure Choose Action is set to Get Desktop. Select Go and hit OK. This will query the virtual machine and update the widget with all available running processes. This may take some time depending on how busy the virtual machine is, and its ability to send the data back to the virtual appliance and update the dashboard. Once metrics are returned, you can sort the processes and see which process is causing problems.
In addition to virtual machine metrics, we also provide host metrics as well. Expand the Host Metrics widget. This shows metrics such as host health, CPU performance, contention, overall workload, total IOPs, disk latency, etc.
If additional metrics are required you can use the related objects widget to drill down into the root cause; if objects are experiencing alerts the color will change accordingly. Then see the correlated objects for users session – colors change depending on the numbers of alerts being generated, the selection of object and related metrics are reflected in the session related metrics.
Next, let's select the user's virtual desktop session from the Selected Session Related Objects widget, and then Badge: Health from widget toolbar, and navigate to Horizon Root Cause Analysis
This brings us to the Horizon Root Cause Analysis Dashboard, which has helpful tips in the top right corner of the page.
VMware Compliance and Cyber Risk Solutions (CCRS) delivers technologies and guidance which directly address the challenges of security and compliance in highly regulated environments.