Virtualization Strategies for the CIODesktop virtualization promises to save enterprises from rising data center costs and management headaches. IT administrators, however, have had to contend with immature technology, inconsistent terminology and executive and user reluctance. Fortunately, you can get the most out of virtualization by assembling a toolbox of assorted technologies.
Performance monitoring
The performance monitoring landscape is pretty overwhelming. There are dozens of tools to help you
get a grip on your virtual desktop environment. Some tools do very specific things, while others
are broad, complex solutions that monitor just about everything. Choosing the right one can be
tough, but there are some questions to ask before considering a VDI performance monitoring tool that can help you narrow down the options.
What do you want to monitor?
Because performance monitoring can be so many things, you need to choose exactly what you want to
monitor. It could be only a few things or it could be everything, so pick something that meets
those needs without going overboard or falling short.If you're looking for something that monitors
everything in your organization, products from Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, CA, BMC Software and
other vendors in the enterprise space offer products that do it all.
Other
Requires Free Membership to View
When you register, you’ll also receive targeted alerts from my team of editorial writers and independent industry experts with the latest news, tips, and advice to help you do your job more efficiently and effectively. Our goal is to keep you informed on the hottest topics and biggest challenges faced by IT professionals today working with desktop virtualization technology.
Margie Semilof, Editorial Director
products that offer broad insight but don't reach down into back-end data center
components, such as storage and networking, are available from eG Innovations, Liquidware Labs and
Lakeside Software. These tools deal specifically with desktops.
It's possible to get a high-level overview of your environment without going overboard, too. Companies such as Xangati can provide views of a virtualized infrastructure from the endpoint to the hypervisor. You can get a holistic view of the environment -- including a neat "health index" score with Xangati -- but you have to trade off granular detail of the endpoint and the VM to get it.
If you're looking for a point solution, the companies mentioned above can certainly help, but something less complex and more focused on a single aspect of your environment might be better. VMware, Citrix and Quest Software all have in-the-box utilities in addition to tools from networking, storage and hardware-focused vendors.
Why do you need performance monitoring?
There are many different reasons to use a performance monitoring package. Lots of organizations try to get by without
monitoring (or only use built-in features) until they need to find the root cause of a performance
problem. This is what's called "reactive performance monitoring" and it's where people make the
biggest mistakes because they don't consider all the factors that they should when choosing a
product.
The opposite of reactive monitoring is proactive monitoring. With proactive monitoring, you keep an eye on your environment before it gets out of control, at which point, many people could be affected, as opposed to just a few. While there's usually only one reason for reactive performance monitoring -- failure, crazy applications, bad configurations, etc. -- proactive performance monitoring can have one or several catalysts.
One reason to proactively buy a performance monitoring system is to make the move to VDI as smooth as possible. When migrating to virtual desktops, capacity planning, load testing and user-experience testing are important capabilities to have. In the next and final installment of our virtual desktop toolbox series, we'll look at those capabilities.
Unfortunately, there's no definitive answer on which performance monitoring tool to use. Before choosing a product, look at why you want to monitor performance and what exactly you want to monitor. Do you need visibility into the VM or the endpoint? Do you need to monitor storage or network components? Answering these questions will help you decide which product you need and help keep you from under- or overspending on a performance monitoring tool.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gabe Knuth is an independent industry analyst and blogger, known throughout the
world as "the other guy" at BrianMadden.com. He has been in the application delivery space for over 12
years and has seen the industry evolve from the one-trick pony of terminal services to the
application and desktop virtualization of today. Gabe's focus tends to lean more toward practical,
real-world technology in the industry, essentially boiling off the hype and reducing solutions to
their usefulness in today's corporate environments.
This was first published in October 2011
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation