VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator - VMware

VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator FA Q S

VMware View 5 Evaluator’s Guide

/

VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator

FA Q S / 2

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Frequently Asked Questions – About RAWC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Frequently Asked Questions – Running RAWC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Best Practices for Running RAWC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12


FA Q S / 3

Introduction

The Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator, better known as RAWC, was first released on December 17, 2009. Since then, there have been two additional releases with the latest release on August 18, 2010, supporting Windows 7 (32- and 64-bit) and Office 2007. This document is comprised of questions and comments from the RAWC support alias. RAWC is a fairly stable workload and the majority of issues that arise are due to operator error during the initial setup of RAWC. This document will be updated periodically as new information and best practices become available.


FA Q S / 4

Frequently Asked Questions – About RAWC

Q. What is VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC)?

A. RAWC is a desktop workload tool that generates a realistic, adjustable workload with various applications in the desktop virtual machine. The results gathered regarding CPU usage, memory utilization, storage and network can be analyzed to identify appropriateness and readiness of a given environment to run virtual desktops.

Q. How does RAWC work?

A. The RAWC workload runs on a Windows 7, XP, or Windows Server 2008 R2 guest operating system and is executed on each desktop virtual machine on one or more ESX hosts. The RAWC workload has a set of functions that performs operations on common desktop applications including Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, McAfee Virus Scan, Windows Media Player, Java, and 7-Zip. The applications are called randomly and perform operations that mimic those of a typical desktop user, including open, save, close, minimize and maximize windows, view a html page, insert text, insert random words and numbers, conduct a slideshow, view a video, run a virus scan, send and receive email, and compress a number of files.

The RAWC workload uses a configuration file that is created via the RAWC GUI and writes application open/close times and any errors to log files in a shared network folder. Various test variables can be configured via the RAWC GUI, including a start delay for creating ‘boot storms,’ and density (delay between application operations) resulting in applications under test to be run together faster, increasing the number of emails created and sent and typing speed.

Frequently Asked Questions – Running RAWC

Q. Does RAWC run in View 5?

A. Yes. Here are a couple points to keep in mind. If you are using View 5 with a self-generated SSL certificate on the connection/security server, then you will need to Import it in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store. Repeat this on all the launcher VMs.

Q. Why can’t RAWC write to the shared network folder?

A1. Connection to the Network Drive has been lost. On the VM, log in to the Network Drive, then restart RAWC.

A2. The RAWC code is already running from a prior session (flashing icon in the task bar). Kill or exit both RAWC processes and rerun the test.

Q. Why do some of the session-to-session launchers never authenticate and then time out?

A. Check the screen saver setting. Either disable the screen saver or set it to 24 hours. If the randomized launch delay is long enough so that the session goes to a screen saver, this will break the rest of the execution of the RAWC script. Kill the RAWC process and rerun the test.


FA Q S / 5

Q. The RAWC workload application launches, but never launches an application. I have deployed the RAWC components, and configured the workload in the RAWC UI. I am able to successfully launch the session launcher from the UI and my session launcher successfully connects to my RAWC desktops. I have attempted many configurations and still no success. What do I do now?

A. There are several things to look at.

•Checkthestarted directory on the network share to see that the IPAddress.txt file is present. This means that the RAWC script has started on that VM. RAWC will then copy the Config7D.NA.txt over to C:\Temp\ on the VM.

•IfyouareusingActiveDirectory,reviewtheC:\Temp\ directory on the VM

- Check to see if the Groups.txt file was copied over to C:\Temp\. If it was, open this file to review the group names for that test. These group names come from the RAWC Controller. Do they match the group names in your Active Directory? If not, correct your Active Directory or change the group name in the RAWC Controller UI and set the workload as Active. Restart the session launcher.

- Check to see if the MyGroupName.txt file exists in C:\Temp\ and open it. The name in the MyGroupName.txt file should match exactly (case sensitive) a name in the Groups.txt file. If there is an exact match, RAWC will then copy over the Config7D.<GroupName>.txt file from the network share to C:\Temp\ and begin the test. If there is no match, check Active Directory again and make sure that the group names are not nested. If they are, RAWC (AutoIt) at the time the code was written was unable to traverse the tree. Remove any nested groups. Restart the session launcher.

•AssumingtheConfig7D…. file has been copied over to C:\Temp\, check to see if the Log.TimingLog.IPAddress.txt and the Log.ErrorLog.IPAddress.txt exist in C:\Temp\. If not, check the Config7D… file. Are there any line wraps? Shorten the Test Description in the RAWC Controller UI to 50 characters or so. Set the workload as Active and restart the session launcher.

Q. The RAWC workload script never executes on the target VM and I am using Active Directory Groups. What am I doing wrong?

A. There are a couple of items to check to try and resolve this issue.

1. Confirm that the workload configured (in the RAWC Controller UI) is for the AD user group of the user logged into the RAWC desktop and that the workload has been set to Active.

2. In the VM, check two files under C:\Temp directory. See Figure 1.

a. File 1: Groups.txt contains a list of AD Groups with ‘Active’ workloads. If the AD Group name is not present, go back to the RAWC controller UI and set the workload to Active. Then relaunch the sessions.

b. File 2: MyGroupName.txt contains the AD group name of the user logged in, and this should match the group name in the Groups.txt file. If you are logged in as a different user (that from configured for workload), then the workload will not kick off.


FA Q S / 6

Figure 1. Checking Groups .txt and MyGroupName .txt files in C:\Temp

Q. The desktop applications do not launch. What should I look for?

A1. If the user (used to log in to the desktop) is not configured with any workload, then no apps will be launched. Make sure you have configured a workload (from the RAWC Controller) for that user or the Active Directory (AD) group that belongs to that user. You do this by setting the workload as Active. This action creates a config file in the Log Folder share that the workload scripts look at to know what workload to execute for the user session.

Figure 2. RAWC Controller UI: Setting the Workload as Active

A2. If you are using the AD group for workload configuration, then make sure the spelling (and case) of the group name in the RAWC Controller exactly matches the actual group name and also make sure the user is in the right AD group. This can be verified by checking to see if the C:\Temp\Groups.txt file (in the desktop machine) contains the correct group name after the user is logged in to the desktop. In my test install, my user belongs to the AD group name rawc1dot1-qa and I have a workload configured for that user, so it starts the workload when the user logs in.


FA Q S / 7

Figure 3. Checking the Groups .txt file in C:\Temp

Alternatively you can use the Non-AD group for configuring workload. This will cause workload apps to start for any user that logs in.

The Config7D.NA.txt file is copied from the RAWC Controller share folder to the local machine when the script is started. This contains all the information required for running the workloads.

Q. I get the following warning messages while running the Java application. Is this okay?

Note: Some input files use unchecked or unsafe operations.

Note: Recompile with –Xlint: unchecked for details.

A. Yes. These warnings can be safely ignored. These messages indicate that the java code we are compiling uses some unsafe type conversions.

Q. When running Adobe Reader, I sometimes see the page number entered with a prefix of “gp.” For example, if it were trying to go to page 32, the tool would enter gp32. Why is this happening?

A. This is sometimes due to load. The “gp” doesn’t hurt anything, and simply means ‘goto page.’

Review the VMs per core and the VM desktop configuration.

Q. Why does the RAWC MSI installer pop up and run through the RAWC setup every time a user logs in? We’re using RAWC 1.2 on a Win 7 64-bit VM. Every time a user logs in, the RAWC MSI installer pops up and runs through the RAWC setup again, asking for the log share and the credentials to access it. When we clicked OK, it finished successfully. But the next time the user logged in, the MSI installer ran again.

A. This behavior is typically observed when a file installed by the RAWC Installer gets deleted. RAWC uses files that are installed in the C:\Temp\ directory and some files that are created by RAWC are created in the C:\Tmp\ directory. Make sure that files in these directories are not inadvertently deleted.


FA Q S / 8

Q. I sometimes get an AutoIt Error message saying “Line -1: Error: The requested action with this object has failed.” I don’t see any errors in the Error Log and when I look at the corresponding Timing Log, the last entry is MSExcel-Open. Is this a problem?

A. It depends on how many of these errors you get. This error is typically due to load. So check the number of VMs per core as well as the configuration of the VM against the workload you are running. You can’t expect to have eight applications open and running on Windows 7 with only 512MB of memory, for example. What is happening is that there are not enough resources for AutoIt to execute a particular command, like to copy/paste a formula in Excel (at that particular moment). If a human were on the desktop, we’d simply try again. If this error occurs within the first few minutes of the workload starting, and to a majority of desktops, then try increasing ‘The number of VMs under test’ in the RAWC Controller UI. This will increase the start delay of the RAWC script. You can also try increasing the ‘Delay between Applications,’ as this will spread out the running of the applications.

Figure 4. AutoIt Error Message Box

Q. I am getting the following message from the VMware View Client:

“All available desktop sources for this desktop are currently busy. Please try connecting to this desktop again later, or contact your system administrator.”

A. Try increasing the delay between session launches. From the RAWC Controller, try increasing the delay between View sessions from 15 to 30 or 45 seconds to give enough time for View Server to respond to connection requests.

Figure 5. Changing the Session Launch Delay via the RAWC UI


FA Q S / 9

Note: You can also change this setting by directly modifying the config file found under the Session_Launcher_Share folder (the folder name may be different in your case):

Figure 6. Changing the Session Launch Delay Directly

Q. RAWC fails to launch desktop sessions from the Session Launcher. When launching desktop sessions manually from the session launcher, I get an error:

“The configured domain “mydomain.com” is not valid for view connection server.”

If I start View Clients and connect, the connection server works fine with “connectionserverhostname.mydomain.com.” Connection server is part of the domain and the domain name is resolved correctly. What do I need to do to correct this?

A. It appears that the session launcher is not configured properly with the correct connection server name. All that the session launcher does is open VMware View Client (or RDP) from a command line instead of a user opening the View Client.

The connection server name you enter in the following screen should match exactly the actual FQDN of the connection server.

Figure 7. View Connection Server Name in the RAWC UI


FA Q S / 1 0

Figure 8. Connection Server Name in the View Client

Once the Session Launcher opens the end desktop, there is no data being sent from the Session Launcher to the desktop. All the workload simulations are done inside the end desktop by the workload script.

Q. I have set up two VMware clusters with 6 hosts each. I want to load test them with 500 VMs each. I’ve created a Pool for each cluster with 500 VMs and on a separate set of hosts deployed 50 Session Launcher VMs. With a single Session Controller, is it possible to launch the session manager and configure two sets of tests using the same share? I’m looking for a way to test all 1,000 VMs across both pools at the same time. Can this be done?

A. Yes. Create two sets of Session Launchers – say 20 of them – for Pool1 and another 20 for Pool2.

For Pool1, users 1 through 500:

Figure 9. Session Launcher for Pool 1, Users 1 Through 500


FA Q S / 1 1

For Pool2, users 501 through 1000:

Figure 10. Session Launcher for Pool2, Users 501 Through 1000


VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www .vmware .comCopyright © 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed athttp://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: VMW-FAQ-RAWC-11Q3-USLET-WEB

Best Practices for Running RAWC

1. Read the Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator (RAWC) Installation and User Guide. This guide is documented and should be your first reference for any questions.

2. Be sure to turn off the screen saver. The screen saver will kill the RAWC script if the test has not started due to the start delay being used.

3. After you install Office in the base image, you should open every program to make sure that no run-on-first-use messages are popping up. Then you will need to copy that profile to the default user profile so that subsequent user logins are not prompted unnecessarily for run-on-first-use messages. Once you have done that, you can then deploy the pool and run the Outlook setup workload, by itself, before running subsequent workload tests.

4. Run a small pretest of one to five VMs.

a. Ensure that test completes with no errors.

b. Review the Error and Timing log files and make sure data is being written to the files.

c. Run ESXTop for CPU, memory, disk and network system resource data. In later tests, if you should have a number of failures you will be looking at this data to determine whether you were overloading the server or not.

About the Author

Fred Schimscheimer is a Senior Technical Marketing Manager at VMware. In this role, he works as part of the product marketing team as an expert in storage and workloads for virtual desktop solutions. Fred is the architect and developer of the RAWC Workload.

References

Workload Considerations for Virtual Desktop Reference Architectures http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-WP-WorkloadConsiderations-WP-EN.pdf

Interpreting esxtop Statistics http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-WP-WorkloadConsiderations-WP-EN.pdf

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9279

VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator - VMware

Documents

Transcript of VMware Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Simulator - VMware