New York State Agency Solves Hidden Desktop Problems with Stratusphere UX
A migration to Office 365 caused unexpected problems for virtual desktop users at a New York State government agency. Users were experiencing application crashes and other performance issues. Some users reported that their virtual desktops ran slower or faster -- based on location -- but with no obvious pattern. Unfortunately, none of these issues had come up in early testing and, even worse, the organization didn't have the slightest clue as to why they were happening because they lacked visibility into the environment. Early attempts to resolve issues by adding CPU to base images were fruitless. CPU load was reduced but this did not stop the problems.
The agency's IT team went in search of a solution and found Liquidware Labs Stratusphere UX, which provided network and application-level visibility at the individual desktop and group levels. The solution provided the deep-dive metrics the team needed. They ran the solution on virtual desktops in a test pool and saw the problem wasn't the CPU load but CPU queue. This insight helped them troubleshoot the problem quickly. On further testing, they also discovered network latency issues that would account for the uneven desktop performance based on location.
Today, with the pressing issues behind them, the State Agency uses Stratusphere UX routinely to prevent issues, but more importantly to optimize the desktops for superior performance. The solution allows them to be proactive and work on the environment before the situation becomes problematic.