Configuration of VmgWinSvcStatusTest

This test does not only reveal the availability of services, that have been configured for monitoring, on each virtual desktop but also reports the count of available services based on their startup types. This helps administrators to know if the automatic services have started and are running on the virtual desktop as configured. If not, administrators can rapidly initiate the remedial measures to start the services quickly before it impacts overall performance of the virtual desktop and the user experience on the virtual desktop. Furthermore, administrators can use the detailed diagnosis provided by this test to know the details of the configured services that are present and inactive on each Windows virtual desktop.

The default parameters associated with this test are as follows:

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• In the HOST text box, the host for which the test is to be configured has to be specified.

• In the PORT text box, enter the port number at which the target host being monitored listens. By default, this is NULL.

• If the eG manager had discovered the target Nutanix Acropolis server by connecting to the Nutanix Prism, then the IP address of the Nutanix Prism server used for discovering this Nutanix Acropolis server would be automatically displayed against the PRISM IP parameter; similarly, the PRISM USER and PRISM PASSWORD text boxes will be automatically populated with the Prism user credentials, using which Nutanix Acropolis discovery was performed.

  If this Nutanix Acropolis server has not been discovered using the Nutanix Prism, but you still want to monitor the Nutanix Acropolis server via the Prism, then select the IP address of the Prism server that you wish to use for monitoring the Nutanix Acropolis server from the PRISM IP list. By default, this list is populated with the IP address of all Nutanix Prism hosts that were added to the eG Enterprise system at the time of discovery. Upon selection, the PRISM USER and PRISM PASSWORD that were pre-configured for that Nutanix Prism will be automatically displayed against the respective text boxes.

  On the other hand, if the IP address of the Prism server of interest to you is not available in the list, then, you can add the details of the Prism server on-the-fly, by selecting the Other option from the PRISM IP list. This will invoke the MANAGER DISCOVERY - VIRTUAL PLATFORM SETTINGS page. Refer to Monitoring Nutanix Acropolis document on how to use this page.

• Confirm the PRISM PASSWORD by retyping it in CONFIRM PASSWORD textbox.

• By default, the Nutanix Prism server is SSL-enabled. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. This indicates that the eG agent will communicate with the Prism server via HTTPS by default.

• By default, the WEBPORT value is set to 9440 on which the Nutanix Prism server listens. This implies that while monitoring a Nutanix Acropolis server via the Prism server, the eG agent connects to port 9440.

• Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from ‘outside view’ and from ‘inside view’. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the EXCLUDE VMS text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your EXCLUDE VMS specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the EXCLUDE VMS text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting ‘outside view’ and from ‘inside view’ metrics for a configured set of VMs.

• Administrators of some high security Nutanix environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the ‘inside view’ of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW specification can be: *xp,*lin*,win*,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Nutanix Acropolis server by default.

  Note:
  While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW text box.

• By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the IGNORE WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.

• By default, this test communicates with every VM remotely and extracts “inside view” metrics. Therefore, by default, the INSIDE VIEW USING flag is set to Remote connection to VM (Windows).

  Typically, to establish this remote connection with Windows VMs in particular, eG Enterprise requires that the eG agent be configured with domain administrator privileges. In high-security environments, where the IT staff might have reservations about exposing the credentials of their domain administrators, this approach to extracting “inside view” metrics might not be preferred. In such environments therefore, eG Enterprise provides administrators the option to deploy a piece of software called the eG VM Agent on every Windows VM; this VM agent allows the eG agent to collect “inside view” metrics from the Windows VMs without domain administrator rights. Refer to Monitoring Nutanix Acropolis document to collect current Hardware Status Metrics for more details on the eG VM Agent. To ensure that the “inside view” of Windows VMs is obtained using the eG VM Agent, set the INSIDE VIEW USING flag to eG VM Agent (Windows). Once this is done, you can set the DOMAIN, ADMIN USER, and ADMIN PASSWORD parameters to none.

• By default, this test connects to each virtual guest remotely and attempts to collect “inside view” metrics. In order to obtain a remote connection, the test must be configured with user privileges that allow remote communication with the virtual guests. The first step towards this is to specify the DOMAIN within which the virtual guests reside. The ADMIN USER and ADMIN PASSWORD will change according to the DOMAIN specification. Discussed below are the different values that the DOMAIN parameter can take, and how they impact the ADMIN USER and ADMIN PASSWORD specifications:

  • If the VMs belong to a single domain : If the guests belong to a specific domain, then specify the name of that domain against the DOMAIN parameter. In this case, any administrative user in that domain will have remote access to all the virtual guests. Therefore, an administrator account in the given domain can be provided in the ADMIN USER field and the corresponding password in the ADMIN PASSWORD field. Confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

  • If the guests do not belong to any domain (as in the case of Linux guests) : In this case, specify “none” in the DOMAIN field, and specify a local administrator account name in the ADMIN USER below.

    Prior to this, you need to ensure that the same local administrator account is available or is explicitly created on each of the virtual machines to be monitored. Then, proceed to provide the password of the ADMIN USER against ADMIN PASSWORD, and confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

    If key-based authentication is implemented between the eG agent and the SSH daemon of a Linux guest, then, in the ADMIN USER text box, enter the name of the user whose <USER_HOME_DIR> (on that Linux guest) contains a .ssh directory with the public key file named authorized_keys. The ADMIN PASSWORD in this case will be the passphrase of the public key; the default public key file that is bundled with the eG agent takes the password eginnovations. Specify this as the ADMIN PASSWORD if you are using the default private/public key pair that is bundled with the eG agent to implement key-based authentication. On the other hand, if you are generating a new public/private key pair for this purpose, then use the passphrase that you provide while generating the pair. For the detailed procedure on Implementing Key-based Authentication, refer to Monitoring Nutanix Acropolis document.

  • If the guests belong to different domains - In this case, you might want to provide multiple domain names. If this is done, then, to access the guests in every configured domain, the test should be configured with the required user privileges; this implies that along with multiple DOMAIN names, multiple ADMIN USER names and ADMIN PASSWORDs would also have to be provided. To help administrators provide these user details quickly and easily, the eG administrative interface embeds a special configuration page.

  To access this page, simply click on the Click here hyperlink that appears just above the parameters of this test in the test configuration page. To know how to use the special page, refer to Monitoring Nutanix Acropolis document.

  • If the INSIDE VIEW USING flag is set to ‘eG VM Agent (Windows)’ -In this case, the inside view can be obtained without domain administrator privileges. Therefore, set the domain, admin user, and admin password parameters to none.

• While monitoring a Nutanix Acropolis server, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the Acropolis server are identified using the hostname specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring Acropolis desktop environments, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of VDI servers, by default, the guests will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing the guest OS. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.

• REPORT POWERED OS flag becomes relevant only if the REPORT BY USER flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the REPORT POWERED OS flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the report powered os flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.

• Provide a comma-separated list of services that need to be monitored by this test in SERVICES textbox. When configuring a service name to exclude, make sure that you specify the Display Name of the service, and not the service Name you see in the SERVICES window on your Windows virtual desktop. For example, Citrix Desktop Service,Citrix Encryption Service,Citrix Device Redirector Service,Client License Service (ClipSVC).

• DD FREQUENCY refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated everytime this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD FREQUENCY.

• To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, eG embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test, by default, for a particular server, choose the On option against DETAILED DIAGNOSIS. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

  The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

  • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability.

  • Both the bad and normal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

• If multiple components of the same component type are awaiting configuration, then an APPLY TO OTHER COMPONENTS check box will appear in this page. Clicking on this check box will allow you to apply the configuration to all/selected components of that type.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the UPDATE button will register the changes made.

When changing the configuration for specific servers, a “*” beside the text box corresponding to the parameter signifies that these values have to be manually configured by the user. The parameter values that require to be configured will typically be prefixed with a “$” or contain a series of “*”. A value of “none” in the parameter value indicates that the corresponding parameter value can be changed if required.