2023年6月23日发(作者：)

VIRTUAL DESKTOP MONITOR

USER MANUAL

ZAGREB, 4/26/11

acceleratio

Gradiscanskih Hrvata 24

21000 Split, Croatia sales@

+385 21 272 413 About Virtual Desktop Monitor ......................................................................................................... 4

Virtual Desktop Monitor Reports ..................................................................................................... 5

User reports .......................................................................................................................................... 5

User Activity by State .................................................................................................................... 5

Users count per day ....................................................................................................................... 6

Session Log on/off for all 7

Most Active Users by State .......................................................................................................... 8

Gantt Charts ...................................................................................................................................... 9

Monthly Activity ........................................................................................................................... 10

Daily Activity .................................................................................................................................. 11

Application Reports ........................................................................................................................ 12

Most used Applications by User ............................................................................................. 12

User - Application Summary .................................................................................................... 13

Application Audit ......................................................................................................................... 14

Application license compliance reports .............................................................................. 15

Client License Compliance Reports ....................................................................................... 16

Citrix Concurrent License Reports ........................................................................................ 17

Virtual Desktop Monitor Installation ........................................................................................... 18

Preparing your Active Directory domain ............................................................................... 18

Create a service user ................................................................................................................... 19

Adding a service user to the local Administrators group ............................................. 21

Adding Service User to local Administrators Group manually ............................ 22

2 Adding Service User to local Administrators Group via Group Policy .............. 23

Set “Log on as a service user” for Virtual Desktop Monitor service user ............... 25

Preparing SQL server ..................................................................................................................... 26

Windows integrated authentication ..................................................................................... 27

SQL Server authentication ........................................................................................................ 28

Installing Virtual Desktop Monitor ........................................................................................... 29

Installing software admin console on the server ............................................................ 30

Installing software admin console on clients .................................................................... 35

Installing software on static or persistent clients ........................................................... 36

Generating Transformation file ....................................................................................... 37

Deploying client files using group policy software installation .......................... 40

Deploying client files by Installing on the golden image ........................................ 44

3 Virtual Desktop Monitor is a VDI monitoring application that allows you to easily

monitor user activities on virtual desktops on your Microsoft Windows VDI

Technology, Citrix XenDesktop, Quest vWorkspace or VMware View.

Software will provide you with reports such as:

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Users Activity Monitoring

Applications Monitoring

Subscribe to reports via email

License compliance monitoring

Concurrent usage reports

Custom reports & real-time alerts

The software supports:

 a static or persistent virtual desktop

 a dynamic or non-persistent one

 future offline VDI scenarios

The software runs in client – server scenario to minimize the impact on your

environment and support all the VDI environments that we know today. The client

collects data in the local database on the VDI client and then syncs with central SQL

server. This way not all clients’ need to be on the network as they will sync

eventually when they connect to the enterprise managed network.

4 USER REPORTS

The set of Virtual Desktop Monitor User Reports provides administrators with

valuable information about activities of remote users. Information displayed in

these reports is based on the time users spend connected to Virtual Desktops. Data

provided can be used for time tracking for billing purposes or employee auditing.

You can generate reports for your Virtual Desktop usage, monitor employee log

on/log off times, monitor active/idle sessions, do time tracking for each user on the

server or farm and determine total active hours for subcontractors.

USER ACTIVITY BY STATE

The User Activity by State Report summarizes activities for all users, displaying

information about how long users were active (total time), idle, or disconnected. Use

this report to determine the ratio of active / idle / disconnected activities. The

report is presented as a simple pie chart and data table.

If you are paying your employees or subcontractors by the hour, you can use this

report to see the total time a user was connected to your server in Active or Idle

time.

5 USERS COUNT PER DAY

Shows the number of unique users connected to a server in a selected time span.

Use it to monitor the overall usage and utilization of your Terminal Services farm or

a particular server or TS User CALs. Filters allow you to customize the report to

analyze user behavior or server usage.

6 SESSION LOG ON/OFF FOR ALL THE USERS

This report gives you a list of all sessions and users that connected to your server in

a selected time span. It provides you with the session name, start time, end time, and

duration of each session. Duration is divided into active, idle, and disconnected time

for each session. Use it to analyze user activities and session duration.

7 MOST ACTIVE USERS BY STATE

The Most Active Users by State Report displays the most active users by activity

state (Active / Idle / Disconnected / Remote Control). The report provides you with

a column chart, including a list of the most active users and a data table with all the

details. Use the report to identify the most active user or a user who was idle during

their entire remote desktop session.

8 GANTT CHARTS

Two Gantt chart reports show user activities during one day as a Gantt chart. Both

reports allow administrators to easily track what a user is doing during a workday.

In farm environments, reports summarize activities across all servers and show a

unique chart for each user, and it can be valuable to identify unexpectedly long

periods of user's inactivity.

9 MONTHLY ACTIVITY

This report provides you with the summarized usage of your servers for one month.

Use this report to check utilization for your servers day-by-day, and by applying

various filters you can see activities for a particular user or server in the selected

period.

10 DAILY ACTIVITY

In order to be able to optimize resource usage on your Terminal Services / Citrix

server farm you need to identify a time frame when the server is heavily used. The

Daily Activity Report provides you with valuable information about server usage

during the day. All activities are broken down by the hour so you can easily

configure your backups and other system activities to run while your server is idle.

11 APPLICATION REPORTS

Application reports provide administrators with important audit information about

applications being used on a Terminal Server or Citrix server. These reports can be

used to pinpoint the most heavily used applications for a given user. Administrators

can use the provided data to generate various compliance reports (SOX, HIPAA,

GLBA, PCI DSS, FISMA) or monitor Citrix published applications.

MOST USED APPLICATIONS BY USER

This report shows a list of frequently used applications on a server. It summarizes

the time users have spent using each application. By using filters you can easily

create custom reports to find the most used application by an individual user. You

can also export or print information provided by this report.

12 USER - APPLICATION SUMMARY

Summarizes data about applications opened on a Terminal Server. It allows you to

monitor:

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Number of application instances

Time spent (using each application)

Average time spent (using each application)

Average time an application was active

Average time an application was idle

13 APPLICATION AUDIT

The Process Audit report provides you with valuable information about processes

on your server, which allows you to comply with various compliance requirements

such as SOX. It provides information about usage duration and the precise time

when it was used for each user in the selected period.

14 License Reports

With all the applications installed on a Remote Terminal Server or Citrix server it is

hard to track all the available and used licenses. License Compliance Reports is a set

of reports that helps you track all licenses being used on your server, or across all

servers in your server farm. These reports help you track 5 different types of CALs

(Client Access Licenses): Remote Desktop Services CALs (User and Device), Citrix

Concurrent User licenses and per-user and per-device licenses for all the

applications running on your server. Administrators can use these reports to check

if you are license compliant and to plan further license needs and license contract

renewals

APPLICATION LICENSE COMPLIANCE REPORTS

Terminal Services Log shows you the number of software licenses used on a server

or in a server farm. You can use license reports to verify if you satisfy license

compliance requirements or to check if you need to purchase additional licenses for

published applications. This report can save you a lot of money by detecting if there

are any unused software licenses. This report can also help you avoid possible

penalties for using software without appropriate licenses.

15 CLIENT LICENSE COMPLIANCE REPORTS

With Farm License Compliance Reports you can easily monitor the number of used

Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) CALs and Citrix licenses across the entire

server farm. These reports allow administrators to easily track the number of Name

or Device licenses being used.

The feature was designed to help administrators determine if the number of licenses

purchased matches the current usage and to optimize the costs associated with

these. You can easily mix all license types.

16 CITRIX CONCURRENT LICENSE REPORTS

Terminal Services Log shows you the number of Citrix concurrent licenses used on a

Citrix farm. Reports include monthly average use, with the ability to drill down on

the per day use report and to see the particular users that are consuming your

licenses.

17 PREPARING YOUR ACTIVE DIRECTORY DOMAIN

Before installing the application we need to setup a domain for VDM installation,

which means creating a new user that will have local admin account on all the

virtual desktops.

This user needs to be the local admin on the virtual desktops because it will be used

to read all the user related data and will be used for storing data in the central SQL

server database.

Please note: In test environments, to speed up testing, you can use Existing Domain

Admin user but for production environments we strongly recommend creating

dedicated service user.

18 CREATE A SERVICE USER

1. Virtual Desktop Monitor needs a service user that will run the VDM service.

2. Login on the domain controller and open Active directory users and

computers in Administrative tools.

3. Right click on the domain name and select New > User.

4. Fill in the First name and User logon name fields vdmuser (or

another name of your choice). This user will be used as the Virtual Desktop

Monitor service account.

19 5. In the next window type the password, and choose the User cannot change

password and Password never expires options.

Important: It is important to check Password never expires option,

otherwise your password might expire causing Virtual Desktop Monitor

service will stop collecting data. We recommend using a strong password!

Please use 7 or more characters with letters, numbers and special characters.

Service might fail to start in case of a weak password.

20 ADDING A SERVICE USER TO THE LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS GROUP

The Service user you created needs administrative privileges on each virtual

desktop you plan to monitor. You will need to add the service user to the local

Administrators security group. There are two ways to accomplish this:

 Adding Service User to local Administrators Group manually (recommended

only for dynamic or non-persistent desktops where you can configure one

golden image to be shared across all users that will share the image)

 Adding Service User to local Administrators Group via Group Policy

(recommended for most environments, static or persistent virtual one-to-one

desktops )

21 ADDING SERVICE USER TO LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS GROUP MANUALLY

Us this scenario only for dynamic or non-persistent desktops where you can

configure one golden image to be shared across all users, otherwise we recommend

the second way of using group policy.

1. Logon to the server you plan to monitor.

2. Open Computer management in Administrative tools.

3. Select Local user and groups and then Groups. Double click on

the Administrators security group.

4. Add VDM service user by simply clicking Add and typing the name of your

VDM service user (usually vdmuser).

5. Please note: You need to repeat this procedure for every golden image or

desktop you plan to monitor with Virtual Desktop Monitor.

22 ADDING SERVICE USER TO LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS GROUP VIA GROUP POLICY

Use this to add the Virtual Desktop Monitor Service User to local Administrators

group on each virtual desktop you plan to monitor via Group Policy.

In case you have many one-to-one virtual desktops you plan to monitor it is much

easier to configure service user permissions via Group Policy. By adding our service

user to Restricted groups, you will define his privileges across your domain. You can

fine tune administrative privileges via Organizational Units.

1. Open Group policy management in the Administrative tools on your domain

controller.

2. Click on the OU where the virtual desktops are located and select to create a

new policy.

3. Name it, for example, vdmuser add 2 local admins.

4. Right click on it and select to edit policy.

5. Find the policy setting Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows

settings > Security setting > Restricted groups.

6. Right click on the Restricted groups and select Add group.

7. In the group name type Administrators (make sure you did not make a typo.

In case you mistype group policy update will fail!).

23 8. In the members of this group type:

 Administrator

 YOUR_DOMAINAdministrator

 YOUR_DOMAINDomain admins

 YOUR_DOMAINvdmuser

Please note: If you have other users that you need to add to admin group please

define them here as this policy will overwrite local admin group settings on

each virtual desktop

24 SET “LOG ON AS A SERVICE USER” FOR VIRTUAL DESKTOP MONITOR SERVICE

USER

It is important to define a Domain group policy that is going to allow the service

user to “Log on as a service user”.

You can use the same group policy that we used before, or you can create a new one.

Find the policy setting Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows settings >

Security setting > Local Policies > User rights assignments > Logon as a service

and add the service user that you have created before.

25 PREPARING SQL SERVER

During installation you will be prompted to select the authentication type for SQL

Server.

You can choose between:

 Windows integrated authentication or

 SQL server authentication

In case you are running Virtual Desktop Monitor in a domain environment we

strongly recommend using Windows authentication. SQL Server authentication

should only be used in Workgroup environments or in case of security restrictions

in your domain.

26 WINDOWS INTEGRATED AUTHENTICATION

In case you plan to use Windows authentication we recommend using our

Configuration Wizard to create and configure the Virtual Desktop Monitor database.

Service User running the configuration wizard needs to have Security

administrator and dbcreator privileges on SQL Server to create and configure the

database.

(Please note: In case you already have a user that you use to connect to your

databases, you can skip this step)

In case you want to add an existing domain user to SQL Server follow this:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Open SQL Management Studio.

Expand Your SQLServer > Security Logins.

Right click on the logins and select new login.

Type in your_domainvdmuser as the login name.

Open Server Roles tab on the left, and check dbcreator and security admin

(alternatively in test environments you can use sysadmin role).

27 SQL SERVER AUTHENTICATION

SQL Server authentication is used in environments without Active Directory

domain, or if SQL Server is outside the domain or simply if you have a security

policy that requires you to use SQL Server authentication. Before installing Virtual

Desktop Monitor with SQL Server authentication you need to perform additional

steps and create a SQL user that will be used to connect to the database.

(Please note: In case you already have a user that you use to connect to your databases

you can skip this step)

1. In SQL Server Management Studio, open Object Explorer and expand the

folders of the server instance in which you plan to create a new database.

2. Right-click on the Security folder, point to New, and then click Login.

3. On the General page, enter a Login name (e.g. tsluser).

4. Select SQL Server Authentication.

5. Enter a password for the login.

6. Uncheck the Enforce password policy, enforce password expiration and

user must change password at next login

7. Click Server Roles page and check dbcreator role (you can uncheck this

option once installation is finished)

8. Click OK and confirm wizard

28 INSTALLING VIRTUAL DESKTOP MONITOR

Finally we will deploy the software in the virtual desktop and console on to the

admin server.

Installation of the Virtual Desktop Monitor consists of two steps:

1. Installing software admin console

2. Deploying client service on the virtual desktops

Software admin console, the so called Virtual Desktop Monitor Console, is the

application that you will use to view reports from clients, schedule email reports to

be sent to managers, and control clients’ installations on virtual desktops.

VDI client installation is a small footprint installation that is deployed directly on the

client that collects the data to the local Microsoft SQL compact database and then

syncs the local data with the central SQL server.

This way client is not dependent on the server and can be used in future

deployments for the offline VDI clients. In other words, sync will occur only when

client connects to the corporate network.

29 INSTALLING SOFTWARE ADMIN CONSOLE ON THE SERVER

Software admin console is used to view the reports from the clients, schedule email

reports and enable/disable virtual desktops.

In the file you have downloaded you need to execute to install the

software on the server.

1. During installation you will be prompted to choose the installation folder.

We recommend installing Virtual Desktop Monitor with the Just me option

to prevent other users from using it. You can modify security later and

delegate permissions to other users.

2. Once the installation is completed the Virtual Desktop Monitor

Configuration Wizard will start (if the wizard does not start automatically

after installation you can run it manually from: Start > Programs > Virtual

Desktop Monitor > Virtual Desktop Monitor Console).

30 3. Choose Environment > Stand-alone server in order to deploy the software

console on only one server.

4. For Database Type Create a new SQL Server database. This option will

create a new SQL Server database for the data.

*Please note (for SQL Server Deployments): In case you already have a Virtual Desktop

Monitor database or your DBA created a database manually choose Use existing SQL

Server database.

5. Click Next > to proceed.

31 6. You need to specify Farm database server (SQL server), database name

and authentication that will be used.

Once you enter correct database information click Test Connection to verify the

information you have entered. Click Next > to proceed.

32 7. You need to enter information about the user account that will be used for

running Virtual Desktop Monitor Service. This is the account that we created

before that has local admin permissions on each virtual desktop.

Select Custom account

Enter Username in the following format DOMAINUSERNAME and password.

Click Validate Account to check the credentials

Click Next > to finish the Configuration Wizard.

Application now will create and initiate database on the SQL Server.

33 In a minute, the application will open and you will see the following interface. Please

note there is no data in the database as the client service still has not been deployed.

34 INSTALLING SOFTWARE ADMIN CONSOLE ON CLIENTS

As mentioned before, client service can be deployed on any VDI environment.

The software supports:

 a static or persistent virtual desktop and

 a dynamic or non-persistent one

 future offline VDI scenarios

35 INSTALLING SOFTWARE ON STATIC OR PERSISTENT CLIENTS

In static mode, there is a one-to-one mapping of VMs to users. Each user is assigned

with a designated VM.

For this scenario we need to deploy VDM service via group policy using software

installation settings.

First we will prepare client installation. Client installation is in the zip file that you

downloaded and is called

36 GENERATING TRANSFORMATION FILE

Transformation file is added to client installation that specifies the service user and

SQL Server database. It is required in order to connect the client installation to the

central SQL Server and to specify user which will be used to connect to the database

and credentials to run the service.

You need to download Orca Msi editior from

/downloads/ to generate the transformation

file.

Once you have download the Orca and installed it somewhere, use it to open

.

37 Now we will generate transformations that need to be applied to the MSI file on the

installation.

1. Choose new transform in transform on menu

2. Scroll down Tables to find the Property field.

3. In the right window scroll down to 5 properties (all written with capital

letters) that we need to edit.

38 4. Properties are:

 SERVICESTARTMODE - service start mode

 SERVICEACCOUNTTYPE – in case you use windows authentication then

we will use here service User, otherwise LocalSystem for SQL

authentication will be used

 SERVICEUSERNAME – username of the service user that we created

previously vdmuser

 SERVICEPASSWORD – password of the service user that you setup for

vdmuser

 CONNECTIONSTRING – connection string for the SQL server (using the

same database that was created with Virtual Desktop Monitor console)

Configure properties as follows for recommended Windows authentication:

SERVICESTARTMODE - Automatic

SERVICEACCOUNTTYPE – User

SERVICEUSERNAME – DOMAINvdmuser

SERVICEPASSWORD – P4$$w0rd4VD1

CONNECTIONSTRING –

Server=SQLserverSQLInstance;Database=VirtualDesktopMonitor;Trusted_Connection=yes; Asynchronous Processing=true;

5. To generate Transform file in menu Transform select Generate Transform.

Save the file as acceleratio_, for instance.

39 DEPLOYING CLIENT FILES USING GROUP POLICY SOFTWARE INSTALLATION

First, we need to copy msi and mst file to the network share where all the Virtual

Desktops will have access. For example, we will use file_serverVDMshare

Now that we have msi and mst file for group policy, we will deploy the client to the

virtual desktops. To do this we must create new group policy for the virtual

desktops that will install the software.

1. Logon to Domain Controller and open Group Policy Management.

2. Locate Organization unit where your virtual desktops are or use the same

that we used before for logon as a service and restricted groups.

3. Right click on the OU and select to create a GPO and link it here.

4. Name the policy “deploy VDM clients remotely”, for example.

5. Right click on the newly created policy and Edit .

6. When the Management editor opens, expand Computer Configuration >

Policies > Software Settings > Software Installation.

7. Right click on Software Installation and choose New > Package.

40 8. You need to select file on the file share where we initially

copied the file. In this example we will choose a file from

file_serverVDMshare

9. Click open and to deploy the software in next window choose Advanced

because we will need to specify the transformation file.

41 10. Group policy will now take up to 30 seconds to locate and verify the file, let’s

wait for that to finish and then we will have Properties of the MSI file.

11. The tab that is interesting for us is Modifications, where we are going to

select the previously generated transformation MST file from the same file

share file_serverVDMshare

12. Click OK and Windows will prepare the software installation MSI file to be

deployed on the remote clients.

42 On the next restart, the software will be deployed to all virtual desktops and

slowly you will start to see data in the Virtual Desktop Monitor console that we

configured before.

43 DEPLOYING CLIENT FILES BY INSTALLING ON THE GOLDEN IMAGE

The second way to deploy Virtual Desktop Monitor is to install the monitoring

files directly on the golden image that is used for non-persistent desktops where

one image is shared between numerous users.

Before moving on, take a look at the Generating Transformation File chapter

where it is explained how to generate Transformation file, needed in order to

configure clients to find the central SQL Server.

Depending on whether you are using Microsoft, Citrix, Quest or VMware

solution, you need to edit the golden image and deploy the software installation

directly there.

Installation is really simple as everything you need to do is to execute MSI

installation with MST transformation file parameter.

The command is:

msiexec /i "" TRANSFORMS="acceleratio_" /qn

Save the golden image and return it to the pool where is it accessible for booting.

Every time a user logs on to the pooled desktop, the application will start inside

the virtualized machine, log the user data and eventually it will sync with the

central SQL Server.

44