Proactively monitor performance with an IDC MarketScape Leader Citrix named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape for virtual client computing. See how Citrix ensures the best possible user experience by proactively analyzing and addressing performance concerns before they impact end-users. Monitoring the Citrix Cloud Site eG Enterprise provides a specialized Citrix Cloud Site monitoring model to capture the metrics and report the state of a managed cloud site. Figure 1: Layer model of the Citrix Cloud Site.
Monitoring the Citrix Cloud Site
eG Enterprise provides a specialized Citrix Cloud Site monitoring model to capture the metrics and report the state of a managed cloud site.
EG Enterprise delivers best-of-breed performance monitoring for Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.x environments. Get the best Citrix monitoring software at a very affordable price – monthly charge per user is less than the price of a cup of coffee. On-premises and SaaS deployments Agent-based and agentless monitoring. In order to access the monitoring data from Citrix Cloud, we need to authenticate ourselves. Citrix uses token-based authentication for this purpose. So, the first thing we need is to request a so-called bearer token. We can utilize PowerShell and the Citrix Cloud APIs to request the token.
Figure 1 : Layer model of the Citrix Cloud Site
Citrix Cloud Desktop
Each layer of Figure 1 above is mapped to tests that measure in real-time the availability and operational efficiency of the cloud delivery controller. Using these metrics, administrators can find quick and accurate answers for the following performance queries:
- How many controllers are operating in the site? Is any controller in the Failed state? If so, which one is it? Which machines are registered with the failed controller?
- Is the license for the site in the grace period currently?
- Are the broker server and configuration service up and running on the controller?
- Has any slowness been detected in the functioning of the Citrix XML service? At which step of the login and application enumeration process did this slowness originate?
- How many delivery groups are managed by the controller? Which ones are unavailable now?
- Is any delivery group running out of free machines?
- Are any machines disconnected from a delivery group? Which delivery group is it and which machines are disconnected?
- Are there any machines that are consuming CPU excessively in a delivery group?
- Are there any latent machines in a delivery group?
- Have any errors been detected in the machines in a delivery group?
- Which delivery group consumes the highest CPU, memory, disk space?
- Is the controller overloaded with sessions? What type of sessions (HDX or RDP) are contributing to the load? Which delivery group is handling the most number of sessions?
- Are any sessions reconnecting?
- Which are the applications published on the machines registered with the controller? Which of these applications are enabled? Which application receives the highest priority in terms of CPU?
Each of the layers of Figure 1 are dealt with elaborately
With most of the world on lockdown due to the COVID-19 virus, many aspects of IT services and digital transformation have been put into the fast lane. There are reports of massive surges in the use of tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Office 365, etc. in order to communicate and collaborate. At the same time organizations are required to scale up access to their internal applications. We automatically think of technologies like VPN to provide network connectivity to corporate networks from a remote location such as our home offices.
The digital workspace platform Citrix has been particularly popular, not only for its ability to deliver applications and content within internal networks but also to securely and efficiently deliver apps and content to remote devices/locations. Recently I have seen organizations massively scale up capacity of their Citrix environments in order to accommodate an increase in their user base due to remote access requirements to company resources via Citrix. With an increasing need to work remotely and to fast track the transformation of how we work, these services and technologies become business-critical, hence an increased importance for monitoring and observing them.
Questions? Answers!
How do you start onboarding data from your Citrix environment? How can Splunk as the as it is meant to be customized for your environment. As with all things Splunk, there are many options to adapt, expand, and to go above and beyond.
Going the Extra Mile
You may notice that both add-ons also use PowerShell scripts to collect data from Citrix components. The Universal Forwarder then sends the output of these scripts to Splunk. Hence, there is the possibility to customize as much as you want with your own PowerShell scripts. As you may know, you are able to get any piece of information about your Citrix environment via SDKs and APIs.
The other layers of ‘Hosts’ and ‘Management’ can also be integrated into Splunk to give you a complete picture of your entire stack from end-to-end. Given that ‘Hosts’ could be anything from bare metal to hypervisors or private or public cloud, this would go beyond the scope of this blog post. Have a browse on our app store to find add-ons and apps for other shared Infrastructure of your IT environment on splunkbase.com and discover for yourself that Splunk is, in fact, the Data-to-Everything Platform.
uberAgent for an OOB Experience
Citrix Cloud Services
On Splunkbase you will discover that users in the Splunk community, as well as technology partners, publish their own apps and add-ons. An app that I would like to mention is the uberAgent from “vast limits GmbH”. In the context of Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop, the uberAgent helps you collect all relevant metrics and information. It also helps visualize it with their Splunk App, giving you an out-of-the-box experience and addressing the most important use cases in monitoring Citrix environments. Vast limits recently announced on their blog that they are going to provide 2 months of uberAgent for unlimited users for FREE to monitor #WFH. Visit their blog and website for more detailed information about the uberAgent and what else it can do beyond Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop monitoring. :)
Citrix Cloud Monitoring
In case you were wondering: Yes, there is going to be part 2 which will cover more of the Citrix Cloud topics, including hybrid environments.
So stay tuned and happy Splunking!
Christian
----------------------------------------------------
Thanks!
Christian Radeke