How to Measure End-User Experience Metrics for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

The shift from physical desktops to virtual desktops is not an easy task and the IT sector must ensure the most effective performance of the virtual desktops. To ensure the most desired performance of the virtual desktops, the administrators of an organization should rely on performance metrics. In today’s world, organizations are realizing and giving more importance to IT end-user experience metrics than raw performance metrics.

Performance Metrics:

In some situations, although performance metrics show healthy data, end users may complain about the slow performance of the systems. On the other hand, sometimes users may experience good performance, but the performance metrics may show different indications. These two situations reflect that you are not examining the metrics correctly.

Solution for Performance Metrics:

If you want to have correct metrics monitoring for your VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure, you need to work out how to improve your VDI monitoring software for a better end-user experience instead of spending time and effort examining a series of raw performance metrics. Therefore, you need to follow three things, such as

• You need to evaluate which type of end-user activities are likely to be reported for slow performance.
• Then, you need to assess what CPU, storage, memory, and network sources are engaged in those activities. In simple words, you have to understand what OS and hardware are working on to complete the activities.
• Once you have understood which resources are responsible for different activities, you can now concentrate on monitoring the user experience metrics to find out the configuration issues of the OS, storage, network, or server that result in performance issues for the users.

VDI End-User Experience Metrics:

What a user sees or feels when using a system determines his or her perception of its performance. The major VDI user experience metrics are:

1. App Load Time:

When users launch an application, the loading process should not take a long time. Instant loading is essential to satisfy users.

2. Logon Duration:

Logon duration refers to the time taken by users to log into a system. After the login, the user should be able to access the desktop immediately.

3. App Response Time:

This is a difficult end-user metric to measure. However, the basic idea is that the users should not wait or have to stop for further catch-up of the application while using it.

4. Graphics Quality and Responsiveness:

Graphics quality and responsiveness metrics reflect that an end-user should be able to experience the same graphical quality in a virtual desktop environment that he or she could have experienced on physical desktops.

5. Session Response Time:

Session response time reflects how an operating system responds to the input of its users. The session response time should be very minimal, and the users should not wait to perform an activity.

End-User Problems:

From the above discussion of the end-user metrics, we can get an idea of the problems that the users may face. The common problems that most users face are high app load time, app response time, session response time, slow logon, and bad graphic performance. Therefore, you need to monitor the VDI end-user experience metrics effectively to provide a better user experience.