My good friend Jeroen van de Kamp of Login Consultants mentioned that they’ve recently released the 0.5 Beta of their platform independent performance benchmarking tool for TS/Citrix and VDI environments. What would a tool like VSI be used for? Let’s say you want to compare how many VDI sessions you can get on VMware ESX vs Citrix XenServer, or how many Terminal Server sessions you can squeeze out by tweaking your LanMan Parameters or Virus Scanner settings, etc. This is the type of benchmarking that this tool was created for. The best part, Login gives it to us for free! That’s free as in beer.
Some of the new features of the 0.5 release are:
- True platform independence (both VDI & SBC) through a powerful custom command line option within the launcher, this includes the possibility to use a CSV file with advanced connection details for each individual session;
- Randomization of user data within each user load loop, this is the most important new feature of this beta as now optimizers (either at a memory or network level) cannot optimize/cache/compress/de-duplicate in an unrealistic fashion;
- Simplified and centralized configuration of the Launcher(s) and setting-up multiple launchers (master-slaves) for large scale tests is now more straightforward;
- The installation and configuration of the target platform is now 99% automated (only Office requires a manual default installation);
- The scripted user workload is now a more realistic loop of 15 minutes (previous beta was 6 minutes). It is now also more dynamic and includes a printing to PDF.
- Many bug fixes and more robust user workload scripting suited for extreme system loads and improved platform support.
I personally have not made the free time to do a thorough testing of Login VSI myself, but if it’s anything like the other free Login tools, I’d expect nothing but the best. Login is really a great company that puts out some very good tools for all of us to use for free. You can download a copy of Login VSI by registering on their website at www.loginconsultants.com
Agree? Disagree? Let me know with a comment...