Solution Brief
Virtual Desktop Management
BENEFITS
Understand the factors that determine VMware View end user experience and how they
interrelate
Quickly diagnose user problems
Improve end user experience and productivity
Perform historical analysis to understand how a problem developed
Monitor application performance and resource utilization
Discover and diagnose poorly performing applications/systems
Detailed application audit trail
Reduce unused hardware & software
Quantify resource utilization to accurately plan capacity changes
Lockdown desktops, laptops and/or users
Produce chargeback billing reports based on actual application usage
Sustain superior user experience with real time health and availability monitoring
IT Executives are under constant pressure to cost-effectively
optimize the end user experience. In order to better manage their
VMware View user environments and realize experience gains and
cost savings, they need to deeply understand the user environment
and take the necessary actions to drive improvement.
SysTrack provides deep insight into the end user environment, giving IT
clear understanding of usage patterns and resource utilization. SysTrack
also provides actionable intelligence, giving IT the specific data needed to
make implementation decisions that will better utilize IT resources and
deliver superior user experience.
Comprehensive Business Intelligence for IT
SysTrack provides all of the data to enable IT to effectively implement the following user-centric desktop management projects:
▪ User auditing ▪ End user metrics
▪ Application resource analysis ▪ Event log auditing
▪ Capacity planning/auditing ▪ Asset auditing & change management
▪ Forensics and historical reporting ▪ Problem diagnostics ▪ Dependency & latency mapping ▪ End user health scoring
▪ Chargeback ▪ Application monitoring
▪ System and user security ▪ Software licensing and rationalization
▪ Application fault detection Intuitive & Flexible Interface
SysTrack delivers extensive desktop environment data through an intuitively clear interface. SysTrack offers multiple analytical representations from which IT can select the preferred presentation format.
User Auditing
View detailed information about any user’s application or web usage, including frequency and duration of usage.
SysTrack provides detailed statistics on what applications the user has run and what web site he/she has visited. Benefits:
Detailed data helpful in problem diagnosis.
Quantify user access times for employee productivity analysis.
System or User Focus
SysTrack enables you to perform desktop analysis by specifying either a user or a system. If you select by user, SysTrack will compile data for that user across all systems. If you select by system, SysTrack will compile data for all users on that system.
Session History
SysTrack can identify precisely when a user logged in and out, which system(s) they were logged in to, and what applications they ran.
Application Tracking
SysTrack can identify all of the applications run on a system or by a user, and provide the start and stop time for each usage of an application. Helpfully, SysTrack identifies not just the executable name but also the allocation to which the executable belongs.
Statistics Compilation
SysTrack compiles statistics on sessions and application usage, enabling administrators to develop higher-level insight into user behavior and system usage.
Web Site Monitoring
For each user or system, SysTrack shows what have been visited and when, which websites have been most visited and which web pages were the most visited. This data is also compiled so administrators can understand larger usage patterns.
User & System Analysis
End User Metrics
Generate a comprehensive, detailed perspective of every aspect of an end user’s desktop experience.
SysTrack provides actionable data to help IT understand the user experience and how to improve it.
Benefits:
Quantitative understanding of the user experience.
Improved end user productivity and satisfaction.
More efficient utilization of IT infrastructure. Develops a Deeper Experience Understanding SysTrack provides the data to answer key user experience questions such as:
• Is the user receiving a “good” computing experience?
• What applications are the users utilizing?
• Should this user be moved back to a physical device?
• What websites are my users using?
• What is the health of the users’ desktop experience?
• What is the daily usage pattern of this user?
• What applications do my users need to be productive?
Extensive User Audit Data
User Health Analysis
Productivity Impact Report
Application Resource Analysis
Access actual resource utilization data for desktop applications.
SysTrack collects and presents detailed data on application resource utilization.
Benefits:
Perform accurate capacity planning forecasts based on real data.
Develop right-sized roll-out plans for new applications.
Detailed Resource Data
For any application specified by IT, SysTrack provides the following data:
Data on CPU utilization including breakout data for user mode and kernel mode.
Data on memory utilization including breakout data for working set, page file usage and page faults.
Data for I/O utilization, including read and write data by amount of data transferred and number of
operations.
Data for which users accessed the application, and how many times.
Data identifying on which systems the application was executed, and how many times.
Data to perform version analysis.
SysTrack can filter the data by application version number, by application type (32-bit or 64-bit), by system or by user.
Statistical Analysis
For all of the resource utilization data, SysTrack provides weighted average, average, minimum, maximum, standard deviation and variance calculations.
Application Resource Analysis
Event Log Auditing
Set up alarms to track occurrences and frequency of specified events.
SysTrack provides a single dashboard to monitor and record selected desktop events in your user community. Benefits:
Perform security audits by reporting on event IDs generated in the environment.
Know when problems are happening so they can be addressed promptly.
Detect patterns across multiple desktops. Centralized Dashboard Reporting
Monitor one desktop or all desktops
Monitor application faults, software changes, disk I/O parameters (e.g. fragmented %, free % and transfer rate), memory leaks, services behavior, system faults, user response times and any number of customer parameters.
Define refresh interval or auto-refresh.
Alarm Management
Capacity Planning & Auditing
Understand and document desktop resource utilization with built-in capacity planning reports.
SysTrack provides visibility into user system capacity with built-in capacity planning reports that helps to right-size hardware decisions.
Benefits:
Accurately forecast system upgrades and forecast budgets with three years of data pertaining to system utilization.
Comprehensive Data Collection & Analysis
SysTrack tracks and evaluates over 50 different metrics including CPU, memory, I/O, and session resource consumption data to develop accurate forecasting. Fact, Not Fiction
SysTrack accurately quantifies the usage of system resources and provides a methodology for profiling associated user and application behavior, eliminating the
guessing at hardware expenditures to support a user base.
Graphical System Analysis
Asset Auditing & Change Management
Identify desktop hardware and software allocation and associated changes.
SysTrack enables IT to know exactly what hardware and software assets existing on each desktop, and track and record any changes to the configuration.
Benefits:
Allows help desk personnel to have visibility into users' hardware/software configurations.
Provides detailed data for asset management initiatives.
Provides the data necessary to understand asset allocation
Provides visibility into system changes even when the asset is not on the network.
Asset Auditing
SysTrack provides out-of-the-box functionality details on over 4000 hardware inventory items. SysTrack also reports on all loaded software, including service pack and hotfix information.
Change Management
SysTrack identifies any change, hardware or software related (e.g. USB drive insertion). SysTrack reports time of change, what the value changed from, and the new value for quick root cause analysis.
Detailed Desktop Change Management
Forensics and Historical Auditing
Gain historical insight into desktop system stability problems and quickly resolve complex issues.
SysTrack provides a performance and historical forensic playback facility that can be used to improve end user experience and resolve complex operational issues for View systems, and regardless of locations.
Benefits:
Understand how complex problems developed
Reduce time spent troubleshooting by 40%
Resolve problems quickly and improve end user experience and productivity.
Dynamic Views
IT staff gets a detailed view of configuration and usage dynamics for the current moment in real-time, or for any point in time since a SysTrack agent was installed on the user system. SysTrack can be "run" at adjustable speeds, enabling IT to view dynamic changes in the system over time and understand how a problem developed.
Extensive System Investigation
SysTrack tracks 32 distinct system-wide parameters indicating CPU, memory, I/O, caching, pagefile usage and paging behavior. For each process on the user
system, SysTrack tracks 15 distinct behavioral
parameters. SysTrack tracks script utilization and disk
access, network access, virtual machine, power usage, performance and latency parameters.
BlackBox Historical Perspective
Problem Diagnostics
Identify and resolve desktop user experience problems before users are even aware of that they have a problem.
SysTrack provides heightened visibility into View user desktops to enable IT to quickly diagnose and resolve problems.
Benefits:
Improved IT efficiency and cost savings through reduced problem time-to-resolution
Improved quality of service (QoS) delivery through enhanced user productivity and satisfaction
Fewer Help Desk service calls
Frees senior IT staff to focus on priority tasks First Level Technician Empowerment
SysTrack empowers first level technicians to diagnose and resolve user service issues themselves. SysTrack performs heuristic differential analysis between the problem system and all View user systems or any subset to identify and learn where behavior diverges from the norm.
Rapid Problem Identification
With only the user’s name, SysTrack immediately identifies the offending system, displaying critical key performance indicators (KPIs) and highlighting KPIs out of normal range. Data is presented tabularly and graphically for easy interpretation and insight.
Continuous Automatic Monitoring
SysTrack can eliminate many service calls and resolve problems before users are aware of them. SysTrack continuously monitors literally hundreds of KPIs on every user system with a DataMine™ agent, tracking
application behavior, system performance and changes to user system configuration. Alerted as specified thresholds are exceeded, technicians can make the necessary adjustments to proactively correct the problem.
User System Visibility
System Alarm Tracking
Dependency and Latency Mapping
Identify desktop application and system dependencies and precisely measure latencies.
For any desktop, SysTrack maps the systems and application dependencies, and auto-detect latencies between systems.
Benefits:
Improve application performance
Facilitate infrastructure changes
Reduce likelihood of making system changes that negatively impact application performance Application Mapping
SysTrack can map application relationships, helping IT understand the dependencies that can impact application performance.
Latency Measurement
SysTrack identifies and color-codes by severity all latencies between the target desktop and remote systems and applications, enabling IT to quickly determine problems impacting performance. Drill-Down Capability
SysTrack provides a drill-down capability with multiple perspectives and views, enabling IT to develop deeper insight into a particular dependency or latency. Relate Application Performance and Server Status By monitoring both application performance and system status, SysTrack can show how the two relate, and identify issues with one that is causing degradation in the other.
Auto Dependency & Latency Mapping
End User Health Scoring
Precisely quantify the user experience of each and every user, or of defined groups of users, or of the entire enterprise.
SysTrack provides granular visibility with system, user, and application forensic capabilities and sophisticated reporting intelligence to deliver a best-in-class feature set for both physical and virtual systems.
Benefits:
SysTrack helps ensure the sustained delivery of high QoS by enabling IT to continuously and pro-actively
monitor user environments so adjustments can be made promptly, ideally before users are even aware they have a problem.
When groups within organizations complain about quality of service, or when IT has to quantify QoS to either internal or external customers, SysTrack provides the quantitative data to confirm service quality.
SysTrack’s precise measurement of end user
experience throughout View design, assessment and implementation helps IT design an effective
virtualization plan, show post-virtualization how virtualization has improved the user experience, and continue to ensure superior experience on an on-going basis.
Health Scoring By Groups, Line-of-Business, etc.
Chargeback
Generate precise desktop and application usage and cost data to facilitate chargeback to departments or business units.
SysTrack generates precise data detailing IT
infrastructure usage and provides that data in report format for internal billing purposes.
Benefits:
More effective use of IT services due to customers becoming more conscious of the cost associated with new hardware and software allocations
A better understanding of the TCO (total cost of ownership) for performing a business function
Prevention of business groups being charged for applications and services they rarely use
The entire IT infrastructure is taken into account (i.e. from network I/O through to storage)
Billing & Report Generation
The SysTrack billing facility provides the ability to set fees for resources consumed (CPU, memory, connect time, and other metrics) and produce reports detailing usage and application use.
SysTrack constructs reports by user, cost center, or domain that show resources used, session start time, elapsed time, applications executed, and costs. Advanced Filtering
IT administrators can filter by a specific system or systems, facilitating faster viewing and easier interpretation.
Detailed Billing Report
Application Monitoring
View current and historical usage and performance data on any desktop application and be alerted as thresholds are exceeded so corrective action can be taken.
SysTrack enables IT to monitor virtually every aspect of an application’s behavior.
Benefits:
Identify and quickly correct errant application behavior
Get applications quickly restarted or other corrective action as specified by IT
Extensive Application Data
For each desktop application, SysTrack tracks 15 distinct behavioral parameters, script utilization and disk access, network access, virtual machine, power usage,
performance and latency parameters. In addition, SysTrack tracks 32 distinct system-wide parameters
indicating CPU, memory, I/O, caching, pagefile usage and paging behavior that affect application performance. SysTrack also has a sophisticated application and service alarming tool that alerts IT when IT-defined thresholds are exceeded. IT can also set predefined corrective actions so SysTrack can automatically take corrective action.
Proactive Service and Process Alarming
System and User Security
Implement security controls by desktop or user to restrict resource and web access.
SysTrack enables IT to restrict application use and lock down an environment to only applications and websites that have been authorized by the system administrator. Benefits:
Eliminate problematic behaviors (like viruses) that can waste IT time on corrective measures
Ensure users are focused on company approved work
Prevent inappropriate web site access that saps productivity and can open the company up to liability Whitelisting and Blacklisting
For any user, applications and web sites can be blocked using either a whitelist (a list of applications that may be executed and sites that may be visited) or a blacklist (a list of applications that may not be executed and sites that may not be visited).
Effective Lockdown
IT administrators can utilize SysTrack to stabilize the system environment by halting the execution of any unapproved application or website, no matter the path taken to execution or how the application has been renamed.
This supplements the security offered by group policy, anti-virus solutions, and proxy systems, to eliminate rogue application use which impacts end user performance.
Maximum Control
The whitelist is particularly effective at controlling the environment. Unlike group policy which requires you to know the name of the executable you wish to lock down, a whitelist does not require IT to know the name of the executable. This is important because most
administrators will usually not know the name of the "virus of the day".
Automatic Actions
For applications, SysTrack can be configured to notify the user of the blocked application or to redirect the user of the blocked site. SysTrack can perform other notification events via standard SysTrack notification mechanisms, or take defined actions such as the execution of specified corrective scripts.
SysTrack SysLock & WebLock
Software Licensing and Rationalization
Know what executables and application packages are installed on users’ desktops - and which are being utilized.
SysTrack gives you the ability to track utilization of every application on every View desktop.
Benefits:
Efficient management of your software assets can reduce IT costs by ensuring you are only paying for the software licenses you need, and eliminating storage of those you don't.
Elimination of unauthorized applications can reduce IT costs by freeing up storage and processing power, improving user productivity and reducing Help Desk calls.
Deep Insight into Application Usage
SysTrack tells you exactly what applications are present on every user system.
SysTrack provides insight into associative usage patterns, helping you understand application dependencies and relations.
SysTrack provides insight into temporal usage patterns, helping you understand daily usage patterns, and distinguish between applications used infrequently but intensively, versus applications used infrequently but continually.
SysTrack provides insight into problematic usage patterns, helping you understand which applications are failing or generating calls to your Help Desk.
Data Cross-Mapping for Unprecedented Insight
Uniquely, SysTrack maps this comprehensive application behavior to display protocol traffic, system resource analysis, integrated event and fault tracking, automated backend-server detection and analysis and other data to provide you with unprecedented insight into the
dynamics of the end-user environment.
Software Package Usage Reports
Application Fault Detection
Know when and why applications on desktop systems are faulting.
SysTrack instantly detects and reports application faults in monitored desktops, and provides detailed supporting data.
Benefits:
Decipher between application and system problems.
With immediate and detailed fault analysis, problems can be quickly identified and resolved.
Increase user desktop up-time and user productivity. Comprehensive Fault Data
SysTrack doesn’t just tell you a fault has occurred; it tells you all of the information you need to understand why it occurred so you can do something about it. SysTrack identifies the offending desktop, application and application module by name and version number, identifies whether the fault is an error or a hang, at what address the fault occurred, when the fault first occurred, when it last occurred, and how many times it has occurred.
High Level Overview or Micro Focus
You can view faults for one desktop system or for all of them together. And SysTrack enables you to focus your attention by enabling filtering by any of the above parameters. So it’s easy to see which desktops are experiencing similar faults, or which desktops are experiencing the most faults, and why.
Application Fault Analysis
In Conclusion
One solution for all of your desktop monitoring and management needs.
In today’s ever-changing user-centric community IT professionals need intimate insight into these users’ desktop experiences. Whether users’ desktops are virtual, laptop, remote or mobile, a common way of managing the users is essential and necessary.
SysTrack provides the visibility necessary to support a VMware View environment exactly when you need it most. Auditing and monitoring of any Windows-based device can be easily accomplished with SysTrack to ensure a better level of IT service is delivered to the end user community at a lower overall cost.
©Lakeside Software, Inc. 1997-2012. Lakeside Software, SysTrack, SysTrack Enterprise Visualizer, SysTrack Site Visualizer, SysTrack SysLock, SysTrack WebLock, SysTrack BlackBox and SysTrack DataMine are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Lakeside Software, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Lakeside Software is a leading provider of business intelligence solutions for IT professionals. SysTrack® solutions for User Experience Scoring,
End-to-End Monitoring, Problem Diagnostics, Power Management, VDI Assessment and Planning, and Windows 7 Migration empower IT with the knowledge to dramatically improve productivity and reduce costs.
SysTrack’s patented and massively scalable DataMine™ distributed database architecture aggregates node-level data unmatched in depth and quality, enabling SysTrack’s sophisticated reporting intelligence to deliver an unprecedented level of insight into
