I'm convinced XenDesktop is the most powerful VDI solution on the market. I am not completely convinced Citrix has the performance monitoring solution to match. If it was my deployment, I would deploy evaluation versions of most, if not all, of the monitoring tools, and pick and choose which one(s) would work best for the implementation. Some tools require purchasing, others are free and if you are a CLI jockey like me, the free CLI tools are undoubtedly the fastest and most useful.
A key metric that is often looked at in XenDesktop deployments is the ICA Session Round Trip Time (RTT) which is an indication of usability. ICA RTT is the time interval measured at the client between the first step (the user action) and the last step (the graphical response displayed). ICA RTT is a good measurement of the screen lag that a user experiences while interacting with the desktop or application. ICA RTT is different from, and always higher than network RTT, which is a measure of...