Virtual desktop environments are very complex and present many new management challenges to IT organizations. The virtual desktop delivery chain leverages many technologies and systems including endpoint devices, enterprise directories and session brokers along with virtual infrastructures. These are in addition to traditional desktop management tools and systems used for patching, software distribution, and inventory.

When there are operational issues with virtual desktops, the problem determination process can involve many tools, have multiple steps and potentially take a long time to determine the root cause and resolve the problem. When the root cause is the result of incorrect settings or software versions, determining other systems that have the same exposure can be very challenging.

EVM provides essential capabilities for effectively managing virtual desktop environments leveraging its unique, agent-free, real-time discovery, tracking, analysis and monitoring to provide comprehensive visibility to all of the components supporting virtual desktops. From the user and endpoint device to the session broker, the virtual infrastructure and into the VMs, EVM features for Virtual Desktop operations and support teams include:

• End-to-end correlation of users with VMs through the infrastructure and relationships for rapid problem determination.
• Identification, control and management of critical VM settings that affect performance, reliability, and security.
• Enhanced security and compliance by enforcing virtual desktop application and patch levels.
• Proactive resource management through identification of over-allocation (waste) as well as near-capacity VMs to avoid unplanned outages.
• Enhanced security and identity management activities by correlating VMs against Active Directory users to ensure VMs are retired appropriately.
• Usage tracking and chargeback by user, department, cost center, line of business or other classifications.
• Enables on-demand virtual desktop provisioning from web-based portal and service catalogs.
• Tracks VM genealogy, baselining, and performs ad hoc comparisons.
• Heterogeneous support includes Citrix Xen Desktop or VMware View session brokers running on VMware infrastructures.

• User access patterns, endpoint device, broker, and connect time
• Virtual Infrastructure including VM, Host, cluster, session broker, and datastore
• Performance information including utilization, free space, and bottlenecks
• VM Guest configurations including software, settings, accounts, and patches
• User information from Active Directory
• Broker information including vendor, address, farm, session type, connect time
• Endpoint device including make, model, and OS levels and configuration settings
• Relationships between all the above
• Cross reference of applications, patches, virtual desktop settings, and drivers to VMs and users

• Baselining, Drift, Change detection
• Resource Problems and Bottlenecks
• Alerting, Future Bottlenecks, and Trending
• VM restart and thin-client device reset from single console (Identified as top responses to virtual desktop problems.)