One of the cool freebies from the vExpert award is a non commercial license for Login VSI - something I have been meaning to get a hold off. You can use Login VSI to bench mark your VDI estate. The following will illustrate the installation process and a basic benchmark on Horizon View the results will be posted in another post. This can be used to benchmark a new solution or changes to an existing environment, for instance changing Office products and what performance affect this will have before going live.

Details about Login VSI can be found here and if you are a vExpert get signed up!

You will need

• File share / server
• Server to run the management console
• Desktop machine to run the connections to your View connection server
• Service account that has permissions to create AD accounts

First download the installation files and license. Create a share on the file server \\fileserver\LoginVSI and run through the Dataserver Setup. I have the share on the same server that is running the management console.

Run through the setup and point to the newly created file share

Once complete open the management console. We start by adding the AD information. Add the base DN where new AD accounts will be created. Add the domain information and Login VSI share. Finally choose the amount of users you want to create and Save to PS1. This will create a powershell script

Copy this powershell script to your Domain Controller and run it. All being well you will have 50 new users created in AD as well as new OUs. You will need to move the target computer accounts under the newly created computers OU. I am using Linked Clones so my desktop pool points to this computer OU

Add the newly create AD group LoginVSI to the \\fileserver\LoginVSI share created previously for both share and NTFS permissions

Now go back to the management console and add a Launcher. A Launcher can be a PC that is running the View client - it is used to connect to the View desktops. I have a dedicated Windows 7 VM. It is recommended to have 2 vCPUs. Run the wizard and add machine, you can add multiple machines if you wish

Add the machine by hostname. Once added you can test connectivity by running a ping or RDP connection

Now you need to install the Login VSI package on the target. Since im using Linked Clones that has to be the gold image. Connect to the gold image and use the installation files downloaded previously. This time choose Target Setup. If any of the software is already installed on the target machine de select it in the wizard

Once installed go back to the management console. Im not adding much more then the default so for me I now go to Settings. Change the Office version to match the target machine

Now move down to Test Setup and start the connection wizard. This builds the connection details to the View environment. Choose VMware View

If you are using Horizon 6 change this path the where the client is installed on the launcher machine. Add the user details used to connect to View, these are the accounts previously created. The add the connection server details. If using Linked Clones change the Desktop Name to the display name of the pool with ” marks surrounding it.

Now your ready to start the test, before running the test connect to the launcher machine. From the launcher machine browse to the \\fileserver\LoginVSI share and run Login VSI Launcher Agent.

Now jump back to the management console - Start Test.

Choose to log users off once finished and give the test a name

You can choose to add the launcher account previously created and weather to run any pre / post scripts

At this point the wizard will check if the Session Monitor is running. Browse to the \\fileserver\LoginVSI share and run Login VSI SessionMonitor on the server. Once running the wizard will pick this up and allow you to continue

The wizard now check the launcher is ready and the agent is running from the previous step

Finish the wizard and run the test. The launcher machine will now run the benchmark - connecting to View via the client and running live sessions. If you connect to the launcher machine by the console you can see the session as if it was a live session. From here Office products are opened and closed, Outlook is used to send mail, web pages are loaded and closed, presentations are opened and edited whilst pauses are put in to simulate a real worker. This will run depending how many times you set - I set 10 so it will create 10 sessions 1 at a time

Monitor the progress from the management console.

Once complete the results can be analysed. My next post will be going over the results.