Innovation is happening so rapidly in the virtual desktop space. It is exciting to see how many great products are out there, but you are right - it is becoming a noisy marketplace that can often confuse the decision maker. So many customers are trying PoCs right now that products like Xangati may not even be on their radar for another 6 - 18 months.
Michael Fox
Author, DeMystifying the Virtual Desktop
Xangati launched a highly scalable dashboard that allows IT administrators to see what’s happening in a virtual desktop infrastructure environment. The goal is to break through the operational silos to allow administrators to see what’s really happening for every client, desktop, network link, host, VDI protocol and IT server.
Here’s what Xangati has to say about Xangati VDI Dashboard
Real-time Performance Health Engine
The cornerstone of the Xangati VDI Dashboard is its patent-pending performance health engine that analyzes the health of VDI in an unprecedented four microseconds. Relying on Xangati’s memory-driven architecture, the performance health of the VDI is being continuously monitored across a broad spectrum of performance metrics to the unrivaled scale of 250,000 objects (which can include desktops and clients). In contrast, other performance management architectures are database-driven and unable to keep apace of dynamic interactions to scale that are fundamental to VDI.
The output of Xangati’s performance health engine is a real-time health index that is linked to the health of every client, desktop, network link, host, VDI protocol and IT server that can impact VDI end–user experience. In real-time – as an object’s health shifts – the health index changes to reflect the urgency of the performance issue. Moreover, the performance shift will trigger a real-time alert, which is uniquely paired with a DVR-recording.
The DVR-recording will show exactly where the performance problem stems from and present contextual insights about what is driving the sub-optimal performance. For instance, a specific user community is seeing obvious delays in screen presentation due to a high latency network link. These DVR recordings capture issues that are often outside of a VDI vendor’s software framework and can be passed to the appropriate IT function, e.g. to the storage team when storage latency is at the heart of the performance issue.
All VDI Operations in a Single Pane of Glass
For the very first time, a VDI team can see in one pane of glass all the critical components that sustain the VDI, as well as the desktops and their clients. Through this structure, the Xangati solution is the only purpose-built dashboard framed to replicate how a VDI administrator seeks to run their operations. Additionally, the VDI dashboard incorporates Xangati’s visual trouble ticketing model that allows end-users to initiate DVR recordings when they are experiencing issues. In this manner, the VDI administrator can see, for example, that a user’s poor VDI experience on an iPAD is due to a highly congested WiFi network.
In contrast to other solutions marketed as VDI-focused, the Xangati solution can populate itself with incredibly rich data without requiring guest software agents. It is this agent-free model that allows Xangati to be deployed rapidly, even during proof of concept phases, as well as when an enterprise wishes to scale their virtual desktops into the thousands or tens of thousands.
Snapshot analysis
The adoption of VDI is still in its early stages. One of the inhibitors to broad adoption has always been the underlying complexity. That complexity makes it difficult for IT staff to really understand what is happening at all times.
Rather than dealing with a software stack hosted on a physical PC, IT administrators had to manage thin client hardware, PCs or Laptops; access virtualization protocols; virtual machine management; virtual machine provisioning software; virtual machine management software; operating systems; applications, frameworks for centralized applications and a whole host of other things.
Xangati, among others, look at the problem and came up with a graphical, easy to understand and use, way to look at what was happening and provide IT administrators with the tools to manage all of that complexity and get right to the heart of performance issues.
Xangati, a relative newcomer to the party, has an interesting solution, but still needs to get the word out in a noisy marketplace. BMC, Citrix, Microsoft, VMware and quite a few others are vying for the same customers. Xangati’s ease of use and graphical user interface will allow the company to grab some attention. The company will really need to focus its attention on reaching out, generating awareness, creating interest and making customers understand the competitive differences of its dashboard.
