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Dell DVS Simplified Appliance Reference Architecture
7
Performance and Testing
7.1
Load Generation and Monitoring
7.1.1
Login VSI – Login Consultants
The Login VSI tool (developed by Login Consultants) was used to generate the desktop
workloads. It is a widely-used tool for testing VDI environments and server-based
computing / terminal services environments. It installs a standard collection of desktop
application software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) on each VDI
desktop, it then uses launcher systems to connect a specified number of users to available
desktops within the environment.
Once the user is connected the workload is started via a logon script which starts the test
script once the user environment is configured by the login script. Each launcher system
can launch connections to a number of ―target‖ machines (i.e. VDI desktops) the launchers
are managed via a Microsoft Management Console which is used to configure where the
sessions are launched in parallel (sessions are created from each launcher in a round
robin mechanism) or sequential (all sessions to be connected from each launcher are
connected before the next launcher is used).
7.1.2
Liquidware Labs Stratusphere UX
Stratusphere UX was used during each test run to gather data relating to User Experience
and desktop performance. Data was gathered at the Host and Virtual Machine layers and
reported back to a central server (Stratusphere Hub). The hub was then used to create a
series of “Comma Separated Values” (.csv) reports which have then been used to generate
graphs and summary tables of key information. In addition the Stratusphere Hub
generates a magic quadrate style scatter plot showing the Machine and IO experience of
the sessions. The Stratusphere hub was deployed onto the core network therefore its
monitoring did not impact the servers being tested. This core network represents an
existing customer environment and also includes the following services;
●
Active Directory
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DNS
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DHCP
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Anti-Virus
Stratusphere UX calculates the User Experience by monitoring key metrics within the
Virtual Desktop environment, the metrics and their thresholds are shown in the following
screen shot;
