Monitor VMware Horizon View environments with ControlUp

A couple of weeks ago ControlUp released version 4.0 with support for VMware Horizon View. In this blog post I share my experience with ControlUp 4.0 monitoring VMware vSphere and VMware Horizon View.

What is ControlUp

ControlUp is a real-time performance monitor for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Citrix, and physical- and virtual server environments. ControlUp can be used to:

  • Troubleshoot performance issues in real time
  • Analyze performance trends and usage patterns
  • Compare and manage multiple computers
  • Investigate incidents and receive email alerts

The new 4.0 version of  ControlUp has added support for:

  • VMware vSphere (4.x and 5.x)
  • Citrix XenServer (6.x)
  • VMware Horizon View desktops (5.x and 6.x)

ControlUp is tested against the following lab environment:

  • VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 2
  • VMware Horizon View 6.x environment with the composer
  • The VDI desktops are part of a floating pool
  • Windows 7 64-bit as VDI desktop OS.

Installation and configuration

The installation is very simple. On a management server execute a single executable (ControlUpConsole.exe).  It’s runs in memory, so there is no installation needed. The console is the GUI for displaying data and running tasks. As prerequisites .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, Active Directory connection and a internet connection  is required. ControlUp will default enabled in Enterprise Mode. The Enterprise Mode offers features that allow you to collaborate with team members and defining user roles and delegate administrative  tasks to different ControlUp users. The other option is to use Standalone Mode. Standalone Mode does not require an active  internet connection but is limited, for example in collaboration and delegation.

After creating an account is is time to create one or more organization(s). An organization represents groups of computers managed by the same administrators. By creating additional organizations it is possible to segment your network computers into different administrative units managed by different administrators.  After this the configuration is ready.

Monitoring VMware environments

For VMware environments you need to add the vCenter Server to the ControlUp Console.  When the vCenter is added, the cluster(s), hosts and VM’s inventory is displayed in the ControlUp console. In the following example we added a vCenter server with a 1 cluster  that contains 3 ESXi hosts.

ESXI hosts

To organize the computers a folder tree is created. For ESXi hosts, counters on CPU, Memory, Networking and storage can be monitored. For every counter a specific tresholds per folder can be configured. Here is an overview of counters that can be monitored on the vSphere layer:

stresslevel

The Stress level reflects the state of the performance metric reported to the console. In the following example we stressed  the ESXi hosts memory threshold (90% >)  by powering extra VMs.

esxmon2

The stress level jumped to high (red) within seconds.  So in real time you see what is happening to the vSphere layer. In the next example we stressed the datastore latency (> 22 ms)  and free datastore space (below 500 MB).

esxmon3

In the above examples we see when a threshold is exceeded on the VMware ESXi hosts, it is displayed almost in real time in the ControlUp Console.

Monitoring VMware Horizon View VDI Desktops

To monitor VMware Horizon VDI desktops,  a lightweight ControlUp agent needs to be installed. The ControlUp agent can be installed in the Golden Image or deployed when the VDI desktop is running. It is important that firewall ports on RCP, WMI, Windows Remote Management and the ControlUp agent firewall ports are allowed. After adding the ControlUp agent, VMware View specific settings can be displayed.

view specific session settings

In the following example we have 4 Windows 7 VDI desktops. As you can see the stress level is low or medium.

View session 1

In a Windows 7 VDI desktop we installed to 3e party tool “heavyload” to generate CPU load on the VDI desktop. When starting “Heavyload” the CPU spiked to 100%.

 view sesion 2  view session 3

In the ControlUp console we looking in the Computer tab and see the Stress level after a couple of seconds changing to “High” and the CPU graph is raising to 100%.

view session 4

To see what is causing the high CPU load we opened “Processes” tab and  sort on the Stress Level to see what process is causing the CPU load. We see that the Process “HeavyLoad.exe” is causing the high load.

View session 5

On the right menu you see some actions that be performed. Here are some examples:

  • Getting a Screenshot of the desktop
  • Ending or killing the process
  • Throttle the CPU for a process

In the following example we use the tool “heavyload” again to generate memory load.  Now we see that the Stress Level is critical again and that the Memory is red.

view session monitoring memory

To see what is causing the high memory load, open the” Processes” tab and  sort on the Stress Level to see what process is causing the high memory load. And again the process “HeavyLoad.exe” is causing the high memory load.

view session memory 1

Triggers

When a service stops or a event occur it is possible to generate an alert. Using the “Incident Triggers” feature you can configure triggers to detect the following conditions:

  • Stress level
  • Windows Event
  • Computer Down
  • Process Started or Ended
  • User Logged On/User Logged Off
  • Session State changed

When a trigger occur an real time alert can be generated such as sending an email. There are pre-configured incident triggers for Horizon View services and events that occur.

incident triggers

Testing ControlUp

ControlUp has a launched an Expert Program for vExperts and recognized VMware View Consultants. To apply for the license, register here. All other VMware View admins can simply download ControlUp from the ControlUp website and enjoy the free unlimited 30 days trial.

Conclusion

Version 4 is the first version that supports VMware vSphere and Horizon View. In this blogpost I highlighted a couple of examples that shows the strength of ControlUp and how easy it is to install and use. In real time you see what is happing in your environment and drill from the hypervisor down to the Windows process level to identify what is causing the problem. This makes troubleshooting a lot easier on VMware Horizon View environments. The VMware Horizon View specific counters are a bit limited on the moment but ControlUp is asking your feedback on this. If you miss something let them know by using the “feature request” button.

ControlUp has a lot more features then showed in this blog post. Other features are for example:

  • RDP to computer
  • Remote Assistance
  • Use RunAs accounts for actions
  • Update and killing Group Policies
  • Sending messages and chatting with users
  • Multiple computers management on the file system, registry and services.

All these features makes ControlUp a powerful tool for the VMware Horizon View Administrator.

Book VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials

VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials is a new book written by Peter Björk about VMware ThinApp. VMware ThinApp 4.7 is an application virtualization solution which allows its  admins to package Windows applications so that they are portable.  "VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials" shows you how to create and deploy ThinApp packages in order to improve the portability, manageability, and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed.

6280EN_VMware ThinApp 4.7 Essentials

Book Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Application Virtualization
Chapter 2: Application Packaging
Chapter 3: Deployment of ThinApp Packages
Chapter 4: Updating and Tweaking Your ThinApp Project
Chapter 5: How to Distribute Updates
Chapter 6: Design and Implementation Considerations using ThinApp
Chapter 7: Troubleshooting
Appendix: References
Index

Chapter 1 Application Virtualization is available as sample chapter. Link

About the author

Peter Björk has many years of ThinApp experience. He started out working with Thinstall, and continued after VMware acquired the product in 2008, renaming it ThinApp. Peter supports ThinApp in the EMEA region. As a teacher, Peter has educated many ThinApp packagers around the world

Conclusion

ThinApp 4.7 Essentials is practical book that explains the hole process from building, deploying, updating and tweaking and troubleshooting ThinApp packages. The “ThinApp 4.7 Essentials”  book is a must read for everyone who want or already works with ThinApp and want to extend there knowlegde on it!

More information

ThinApp 4.7 Essentials is available as printed copy or as eBook.  More information about “ThinApp 4.7 Essentials” can be found here

Tested: PHD Virtual Backup 6.0

PHD Virtual Backup is a backup and recovery solution for VMware and Citrix environments. PHD Virtual Backup version 6 is released. We tested this new version with VMware vSphere.

What’s new in PHD Virtual Backup version 6:

PHD Virtual Backup version 6.0 contains the following major enhancements:

  • PHD Instant Recovery: Instant Recovery lets you access your backed up data right away. The VM(s) will be powered on directly from the backup storage. Instant Recovery can be used for verifying backups or when needed mission critical data immediately. 
  • Application Aware Backups: PHDVB v6.0 provides the ability to take application aware backups for any application.  Application aware backups include the ability to properly quiesce the application prior to backup, as well as perform any post-backup processes, such as automated log management (truncate, shrink, etc.).  This is done by leveraging a very small guest application called the PHD Guest Tools
  • Full and incremental backup mode: Prior to v6.0, PHDVB provides a single backup mode called the virtual full.  Virtual Full backups include source-side deduplication across all backups within a backup target.  They are very efficient for storage utilization and backup and restore speeds. There are certain configurations that are not optimized to handle the many files that the virtual full leverages.  Therefore, PHD is implementing a traditional full / incremental backup mode for those configurations such as using a CIFS share or deduplicating hardware appliance as the backup target or using 3rd party tools to copy full and incremental files off-site or to tape.
  • Email Enhancements: The enhancements include: test Email, get HTML summary reports and fewer alerts
  • Encryption: Those requiring strict requirements for backup data security can now choose to enable one of many types of industry standard encryption levels for PHD Virtual Backups.  When enabled, data will be encrypted at the file system level of the VBA to ensure that it is secure in transit to the backup target and at rest when it reaches the backup target.
  • Enhanced File Level Recovery (FLR): In PHDVB v6.0, users will now be able to select an option to use CIFS for FLR, whereby the backup will be mounted to the VBA and presented out as a CIFS share. This allows the admin to share backup data so that other users can recover files or application items.  For additional flexibility, you can also choose or ability to present backups out as an iSCSI target from the VBA so that other machines can mount the backup as a local disk.  

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