The document discusses best practices for deploying client virtualization, emphasizing the need to avoid common pitfalls such as improper resource allocation, lack of a profile strategy, and network impact calculations. It highlights the importance of performance monitoring, recommending a structured project approach and emphasizing the necessity of optimizing the virtual desktop environment to enhance user experience and ROI. Success stories illustrate how effective performance management tools can resolve issues and improve scalability across various organizations.

1. VDI Best Practices
How to Ensure a Great
Customer Experience
When Deploying Client
Virtualization
Presenters
Roy Francis (FusionStorm)
Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)
Rick Ruskin (eG Innovations)

2. Today’s Discussion
 Avoid client virtualization pitfalls
 Overcome user challenges
 Migration considerations
 Address performance and scalability
considerations
 Success stories
 Next steps

3. Client Virtualization: Challenges and Solutions
Roy Francis
VDI Service Architect
FusionStorm
rfrancis@fusionstorm.com

4. Client Virtualization: Top 10 Mistakes
10: Not Calculating Network Impact
– Virtual desktops require more bandwidth
– Virtual apps may not
9: No Profile Strategy
– When organizations do not properly plan the profile strategy they are asking
for failure
– Especially true for Client Virtualization
8: Lack of Application Virtualization Strategy
– Primary factor that often dictates the need for additional desktop images are
application sets
7: Improper Resource Allocation
– Fine line between maximizing the number of users a single server can support
and providing the user with a good virtual desktop computing experience
6: Not Optimizing Antivirus
– Simply adding AV to the virtual desktop can cause severe performance issues

5. Client Virtualization: Top 10 Mistakes
5: Not Managing Boot Storms
– A virtual desktop startup has the single largest impact to any virtual
desktop implementation
4: Ignoring Virtual Desktop Optimizations
– However, when delivering an operating system into a virtual desktop,
many organizations do not go far enough to optimize the desktop for
the virtualized environment
3: Not Enough Cache
– Simply adding more RAM to the Server won’t solve the problem
2: Default Settings Used on Management Server
1: Improper Storage Design
– Without a properly designed storage subsystem, a user’s virtual desktop
will slow down to the point of becoming unusable because storage
becomes a bottleneck

6. ROI Review
Savings on IT budgets, as reported by
20% businesses that have implemented
desktop virtualization and are
tracking ROI.
How did they get there?

7. Performance Monitoring
~70%
What does that mean? First, not all
customers have performance monitoring in
their environment – but those that do; ~70%
of the savings in IT budgets was created and
reported through proper performance
monitoring and management.
Most of the Top-10 mistakes made
couldn’t have been reported without
proper performance monitoring in
place.

8. Best Practices

9. Recommended Process
Approach a CV project like any other major project
Conduct Manage &
Assess Plan Design Pilot Implement
POC Support
•Understand Business •Define Architecture •Develop detailed •Validate the •Migrate users in •Roll-out to Target •Manage and Monitor
& End-User •Define staffing and design and technology Target Pilot Group Users user experience
Requirements education operational plans •Ensure •Conduct multiple through best of
•Identify investment requirements •Develop support plan feature/functionality pilots to validate breed tools
requirements •Define Support plan exists solution readiness •Support end users
through proper help
desk training and
incident
management &
response
Most customers skip these key steps and
move directly to a pilot.

10. What to Expect from the Roadmap Design?

11. Understand Desktop Virtualization Solutions

12. Infrastructure Costs

13. Application Integration
& User Workspace Design
 Security Policies on what users can do
 Single Desktop Image Design
 Is Application Streaming viable?
 What else in the user environment needs to be
controlled, managed and automated?

14. Validated Networking Design
 Core Switching and Routing
 Advanced Networking Components
o Application Load Balancing
o Site Load Balancing
o Branch Site WAN Optimization
o Datacenter WAN Optimization

15. What We Hear in the Field
 “Client Virtualization is just like Server
Virtualization”
– Beyond the possibility of using a server virtualization
platform, this is a whole different ballgame
 “You can use your existing desktop licenses
for virtual desktop deployment”
– If you have Software Assurance, VDA is a benefit
– If you don’t have SA, VDA is $100/device/year
(subscription based on licensing agreement)
 “VDI can be rolled out in a month”
– Most organizations take 6-12 months to assess,
plan, design and pilot their solution

16. What We Hear In The Field
 “Presentation Virtualization or Terminal Services is
‘old school’ technology”
– We continue to see customers adopt Microsoft RDS and Citrix
XenApp since it is mature and proven technology.
– CDW has deployed 5,000 seats of XenApp 6 + NetScaler
 “There is no ROI in Client Virtualization technology”
– This is actually somewhat true. Calculating an accurate ROI
first requires starting with an accurate TCO; something which
is fairly difficult to calculate. This should include:
• Desktop refresh costs
• Desktop OS costs (including SA)
• Help Desk/Service Desk costs
• Desktop/Application administrative and break/fix personnel
costs
– A Client Virtualization solution, just like Server Virtualization
requires significant upfront investments, but due to the lack of
major power/cooling benefits, the ROI takes longer to
achieve, and is usually 3-6 years out.

17. VDI Performance Pain
50% of all desktop
virtualization projects
stall or fail for 2 reasons:
1) Unacceptable End
User Performance
2) Cost Overruns
“Traditional management tools and
desktop assessments are failing to
deliver VDI performance, user
acceptance and scalability.”

18. Audience Poll
 What is your biggest client virtualization
pain?
– User experience / performance
– Cost control / ROI
– Deployment complexity
– Lack of client virtualization management tools
– Client virtualization expertise

19. VDI Best Practices
Bala Vaidhinathan
CTO
eG Innovations
Bala@eginnovations.com

20. VDI Performance Assurance
Performance
management for VDI is
extremely unique as you
need a solution that
combines multiple
Virtualization different performance
management
methodologies
Brokers VDI
and
Desktop
Support
Systems

21. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

22. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

23. 
Monitor the VDI Service, Not Silos Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
Users care about the “service” IT operations teams focus
on infrastructure silos
VDI is slow The DNS servers are
responding well to
queries.
VDI is not
working The User / IT Management
Disconnect
VDI freezes The CPU usage of
often the VMware servers
is ok.
This disconnect is a threat to the success of transformational IT
initiatives & the promise of agility, scalability, and cost savings!

24. 
Monitor the VDI Service, Not Silos Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
Know when
user access is
slowing

25. 
Get 360o Visibility Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
Know which tiers
are working and
which are not.
Virtual Server Monitoring Solutions cannot give you 360 o visibility.
They focus on the virtualization platform only.

26. 
Monitor Every Layer, Every Tier Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
There is an alert indicating
The issue looks fine. vCenter
an VMs within the virtual
desktop.
does not show any alert.
The hypervisor looks fine.

27. 
Monitor Every Layer, Every Tier Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
Oops – there is 26%
retransmission from
the virtual desktop

28. 
Automatic Root-Cause Diagnosis Monitor
VDI Service,
not Silos
Root-cause
The effect of the problem
Deep visibility into every layer, every tier, & service-based
correlation enable rapid/accurate diagnosis of performance issues.

29. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

30. 
Plan Based on Usage Report Right-Size
for Great
ROI
Top users, Top applications
Know usage patterns and trends for effective capacity planning
and load distribution.

31. 
Get More Out of Your Investment Right-Size
for Great
ROI
Track user sessions on each server
A few of the servers
are handling most of
the sessions

32. 
Know How to Invest Widely Right-Size
for Great
Find your VDI bottlenecks ROI

33. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

34. 
Preemptive Detection & Alerting Preemptive
Detection
It is important to have the right metrics & Alerting
Broad Coverage Deep Insights
- LUN queue length
Storage Application Virtual - VM CPU Ready
Physical
Cloud - TCP Retransmissions
Database
Network - Memory leaks
- Profile sizes
Look for domain expertise in VDI, collect the right metrics.
Virtualization
Otherwise, it will be a case of “Garbage in, Garbage out”!

35. 
Auto-Baseline Key Metrics Preemptive
Detection
• Auto-compute time-of-day baselines & Alerting
• Alert administrators when metrics violate baselines
Preemptive detection & alerting lets administrators
see and fix problems before users notice

36. A Preemptive Alerting Example 
Real-World Scenario Preemptive
Detection
& Alerting
The domain server goes down, pulling down the VDI service. Why?
Event history provides a clue …
The domain
5 hours earlier, a pro-
server has failed
active alert about
and rebooted.
memory leak!

37. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

38. 
Monitor Users, Not Just VMs Monitor
Users, not
just VMs
• Workload of the VM is user-dependent
• When a user complains, need to know which
physical server and VM they are on
• Need to know who the top users are for
capacity planning
• User information required for billing, capacity
planning
Poor user experience impacts VDI success.
So focus on monitoring users, not just VMs!

39. 
Monitor Users, Not Just VMs Monitor
Users, not
just VMs
When a user calls,
search for the user
Know which ESX/Xen server
he/she is logged on to

40. 
Monitor Users, Not Just VMs Monitor
Users, not
just VMs
See all the other users
logged on to the same
ESX/Xen host.
See performance issues at the user level so you can fix
and right-size your VDI environment for user satisfaction.

41. VDI Performance Assurance


Monitor   Deep
Visibility
Monitor
VDI Service, Right-Size  Users, into
not Silos for Great Sessions
Preemptive Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

42. 
Deep Visibility Into Sessions Deep
Visibility
into
Sessions
CPU usage inside a
virtual desktop is high

43. 
Deep Visibility Into Sessions Deep
Visibility
into
Sessions
The top CPU process is
Windows Media Player.
The user is watching a
movie 
Accelerate problem resolution
by understanding why a VM is consuming resources.

44. VDI Performance Assurance
 
Monitor
  Deep
VDI Visibility
Monitor
Service, not Right-Size  Users, into
Silos for Great Preemptive Sessions
Not Just
ROI Detection VMs
& Alerting

45. VDI Performance Assurance Benefits
User Satisfaction
IT Productivity
“Dramatically simplify and
Higher
accelerate VDI performance VDI
management. service
Performance
Deliver peak performance, Assurance uptime
user satisfaction and ROI.”
Simplicity
Cost control & ROI

46. Delivering Great Customer Experiences
Success Stories
Rick Ruskin
Vice President Sales
eG Innovations
Rick.Ruskin@eginnovations.com

47. Leading Financial Software Vendor
Boosts VDI Scalability and ROI
 Challenge: VDI Scalability
– 15,000 Citrix VDI users experienced declining user productivity due
to application performance issues (“slow applications”)
– Legacy tools ineffective in diagnosing problem
 Solution: eG Performance Management
– Rapid resolution of performance issues minimizes downtime and
user frustration
– Automate diagnosis, remove guesswork and boost IT productivity
– Efficient analytics remove bottlenecks to scalability
– Eliminate unnecessary resource expenditures and boost ROI

48. Major Hospital Chain
Virtualizes Citrix XenApp
 Challenge: Virtualizing XenApp for the first time
– No visibility to see and assess performance problems
– In reality “other” VM’s were consuming the resources allocated
to the Hypervisor (not Citrix XenApp)
 Solution: eG Performance Management
– Correlate views between the Hypervisor (ESX) and XenApp to
uncover the real cause of slow performance
– Deep visibility into XenApp user profiles enable higher VM
density and better hardware utilization
– Achieve 25% more users per server and significant cost savings
across the infrastructure

49. Major Media & Cable Company
Gets Performance Assurance
 Challenge: How to scale from ZERO to 10,000 VDI users
in less than one year
– Requires VDI performance platform that instantaneously shows
root cause and remediates issues quickly, before users are
impacted
 Solution: eG Performance Management
– Immediate visibility to the root cause of user experience issues
– Real-time identification of database, application, and network
challenges
– VDI user scale out proceeds seamlessly

50. Big System Integrator Solves
Tough Performance Problem
 Challenge: Worldwide VDI user performance is
inconsistent across regions
– Extreme latency assumed to be a network problem
– Significant money spent to build up the network bandwidth…yet
problems persisted
 Solution: eG Performance Management
– Identify conflicts between virtual desktops that consume large
resources across different times of the day
– Quickly find root cause of issue by correlating between the
users, applications, VDI sessions, and infrastructure

51. &

52. Next Steps
 More Details
www.fusionstorm.com
www.eginnovations.com
 Call Us
FusionStorm +1 800-228-TECH
eG Innovations (US) +1 732-794-1259