Remote Object Viewer
Xangati Remote Object Viewer (ROV) provides live and continuous visibility into performance and activity of an individual object tracked by the Xangati Management Dashboard (XMD) Product Suite. Xangati ROV enables administrators and other users to have live views into the continuous activity of a remote object (server, application, desktop, datastore and network) without providing access to a full XMD product.
Live visibility into a remote object enables its user to:
- See what the remote object is doing—right now and historically
- Trigger DVR recordings of activity for visual troubleshooting
- See network latency to a location of their choosing
Xangati Remote Object Viewer
- The Xangati ROV is an optional separate, simple, thin client that talks to a XMD product offering live views and historical reporting on a specific object.
- For other IT administrators, ROVs display all the dynamic interactions and resource usage for a specific remote object without the need to give complete access to a Xangati VI or VDI Dashboard. In this manner, a server owner, a storage admin or a network administrator can see how their resources are affecting the performance of the VI/VDI and vice-versa.
- This information is presented through a dedicated single-object login which has live and continuous visibility, DVR recording capabilities and rich historical reporting. In this manner, a storage administrator as an example can see what VM is driving too many IOPS to a given datastore thereby driving up its latency. Or a server owner can see that it is a back-up process that is running in the middle of the day that is affecting is users’ performance and not the virtual infrastructure itself.
- Additionally, the ROV license is required for the cross-silo sharing of Xangati’s renowned DVR recordings. For instance, if a VDI admin identifies that a specific network link is responsible for the latency affecting a large community of VDI users—he can forward that recording to the network administrator. To view that recording the Xangati customer needs to purchase a ROV license.
Features
- Live and continuous visibility into activity and resource usage of a specific object including: VMs, hypervisors/hosts, applications, network interfaces and datastores
- DVR record and replay of activity to document incidents and aid in later analysis and problem resolution
- Specific dedicated views without requiring access to vCenter or a Xangati VI or VDI dashboard
- Rich historical reporting of the specific object
- Customizable UI to adjust which top ten and trend views need to be investigated at any moment in time.
- Runs in any browser, extremely lightweight
Xangati Remote Object Viewer FAQs
Is there a limit to the number of Remote Object Viewers (ROVs) I can use/deploy?
No—you can deploy as few or as many as you like.
Do I need a Management Dashboard or can I use an ROV with a Xangati for ESX?
You must have a XMD to license and use ROVs.
Why wouldn’t I just give everybody Management Dashboard access?
Giving Management Dashboard access gives full access to everything a dashboard can see—which is typically a lot. An ROV gives visibility into only one object—meaning you do not have any drill down capability, your reporting options are limited to the remote object, and no training is required because the end user cannot navigate away from the questionable information. ROV makes it easy to give application or VM owners visibility into their piece of IT so they can see what is happening. If there is a problem, they can look at the ROV first and create a DVR recording. This makes it easier to sign up application owners to virtualize their applications because they will gain visibility instead of losing it.
Why is the latency information useful?
The latency information is extremely valuable for VDI pilots and implementations where there is no way to check latency to the virtual desktop running in a VM on a server in the data center. ROV provides this visibility into “slow” end-user perceived performance so that it can be objectively measured and quantified while assessing if the end user is running any applications that could be causing their performance problems.
The ROV shows all application activity on the remote object. How is this possible?
Xangati defines applications by the protocols, ports, and IPs used by the application. Hundreds of applications are delivered automatically and custom applications can be defined in a few minutes. ROVs use the same definitions as present on their master Management Dashboard and so display application names when possible instead of ports/protocols which end users may or may not understand.
Xangati Remote Object Viewer Screen Shot
Click to enlarge
Deployment
Xangati Remote Object Viewers (ROV) are deployed by Xangati Management Dashboard administrators. The process is simple and can be completed in less than one minute. To do so, the administrator pulls up the remote object in Xangati, selects “config”, and then enters a customer login name and email address. Xangati then sends an email to the user with a link to the ROV, explaining that a prompt will appear to change their password upon login.
For large deployments where hundreds or thousands of ROVs are desired, a bulk load option is recommended. All that is needed is a notepad file with three entries per user: the identity of the remote object, user login name and user email. An ROV manager screen displays all active ROVs for easy maintenance of who has access to what.
