Server-based Computing Environments

Citrix® environments have grown in popularity as cost-effective, efficient modes of accessing a variety of heterogeneous applications on-demand. In order to be an effective alternative for desktop applications, Citrix environments must deliver the same quality of service that users have come to expect from local applications.

Monitoring Citrix Server Farms

Typically, Citrix server farms include multiple tiers of software. A front-end web interface (Nfuse) server is used to support web-based accesses to the server farm. Active directory servers handle user authentication and rights association, while user profiles are loaded from profile servers. The authenticated requests are passed to the Citrix XenApp (Presentation) servers that host a number of applications. In turn, the applications may use backend databases, printers, etc., for different functionalities. Owing to the multi-tier nature of Citrix environments, a slow-down in one tier (e.g., the authentication server) can cause a slow-down of the entire service. When a slow-down occurs, an administrator of the Citrix farm has to quickly determine what the source of the problem could be - i.e., Is it the network? Or the web interface server? Or the Active Directory server? Or the profile server? Or the Citrix XenApp server? Or the backend database? Accurate, fast diagnosis of problems helps reduce downtime and improve customer satisfaction.

XenApp Monitor, XenApp Monitoring, Citrix monitoring and management, performance reporting

Monitoring a Citrix server farm using the eG Enterprise Suite

The eG Citrix Monitor

The eG Enterprise suite offers 100% web-based monitoring of Citrix XenApp server farms. The eG Enterprise suite includes extensive, pre-defined, customized models of the different applications in the Citrix farm including Citrix XenApp Server, Citrix Presentation Server, MetaFrame XP™ and 1.8 servers, the farm servers, Windows domain controllers, infrastructure servers like DNS, LDAP, Active Directory, and other network devices. These models define key metrics that are needed to track the different applications, analysis methodologies for these metrics, and correlation models that are used to customize eG Enterprise's patented single click root-cause technology for Citrix environments.

XenApp Monitor, XenApp Monitoring, Citrix reports; 100% web-based; Executive and Performance reports on the Citrix infrastructure

eG Enterprise's Performance reports of your Citrix infrastructure

What the eG Citrix Monitor Reveals

XenApp Server Monitoring	Are the Citrix XenApp servers available to service user requests? Are there sporadic disconnects from the Citrix XenApp server? At what times do peak usage of the servers happen and is the server capacity adequate? Is the user load being balanced across all the servers? Is the data store available? What are the access rates to the data store, the dynamic store, and the local host cache? How much IMA traffic is happening between servers?
User Monitoring	What is the average response time that critical users are seeing when connecting to a XenApp server? How many users are logged in to each server in the Citrix farm? What is the resource usage (CPU and memory) for each user? Are specific user profiles too large?
Operating System Monitoring	What is the average CPU and memory usage on all the servers in the farm? Is any unusual memory scanning/paging activity happening on the systems? Are the critical XenApp server and IMA processes up? What is their resource consumption?
Published Applications Monitoring	What are the published applications on a XenApp server? Who is using each application? What is the resource usage for each published application?
License Monitoring	How many product and connection licenses are available in the farm and what is their usage? Are there enough licenses available for each of the published applications?
Infrastructure Services Monitoring	Is the web interface server forwarding requests to the XenApp server? Are the backend databases working? What is the resource usage of the databases? Are users able to login to the server farm? How long is the login process taking? What is the usage of the Microsoft Windows Domain Controller?

Benefits of the eG Citrix Monitor

Provides proactive, and powerful insights to Citrix administrators by collecting and analyzing hundreds of key network, server, and application metrics

Ensures high uptime through fast and accurate problem identification and isolation using eG Enterprise's patented single-click correlation and root-cause diagnosis technology

Enables anytime, anywhere monitoring of the response time for Citrix applications using just a web browser

Facilitates effective capacity planning by providing critical insights into performance and usage trends of a Citrix infrastructure

eG Citrix Monitor Voted Winner of MSTerminalServices.org Readers’ Choice Award

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