Citrix XML Access Test

This verifies the interactions between the web interface, the XML service, and the IMA service. A typical web interface interaction is composed of the following:

Client device users utilize a Web browser to view the Log in page and enter their user credentials.
The Web Interface reads users' information and uses the Web Interface's classes to forward the information to the Citrix XML Service; this service can execute on the Web Interface or on each of the Presentation servers in a server farm. If this service executes on a XenApp server, then the designated server acts as a broker between the web interface server and the Presentation servers in a farm.
The Citrix XML Service then retrieves a list of applications from the servers that users can access. These applications comprise the user's application set. The Citrix XML Service retrieves the application set from the Independent Management Architecture (IMA) system and Program Neighborhood Service, respectively
The Citrix XML Service then returns the user's application set information to the Web Interface's classes.
The user then clicks on the application of interest to him/her to access it.

This test executes on a Citrix Web Interface, and can be optionally enabled to execute on a Citrix XenApp server. This test emulates a user accessing the XML service port and requesting for a list of applications available to him/her. By emulating a request, this test checks that the entire login and application enumeration process using the the XML service and IMA service of Citrix is functioning properly.

Target of the test : A Citrix Delivery Controller 7.x

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Delivery Controller that is being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Refers to the port at which the host listens to. By default, this is 80.
Username	In order to monitor the target Delivery Controller 7, eG requires a special user with the following privileges; The All scope and read-only privileges The Allow log on locally security privilege on the Delivery Controller host The steps for assigning such privileges to a user are discussed in the Pre-requisites for monitoring the Citrix Delivery Controller 7.x. Specify the name of such a user, here.
Password	Specify the password for the user specified in the Username text box, here.
Confirm Password	Confirm the Password by retyping it here.
SSL	The web interface through which these tests are executing may be configured for HTTP or HTTPS access. If HTTPS access is configured, then this parameter should be set to Yes.
No Of Tries and Sleep Time	In environments where network connections are normally fuzzy and latencies are to be expected, the availability and response time checks performed by this test, may not always report accurate results. False alarms may hence be generated. In such environments therefore, you may want the test to try connecting to the XML service a few more times before reporting the availability and responsiveness of the service. To instruct the test to do so, you can use the No Of Tries and Sleep Time parameters. In the No Of Tries text box, indicate the number of times the test should try reconnecting to the XML service, and in the Sleep Time text box, specify how long (in seconds) the test should wait for a response from the service before attempting to reconnect. Both these parameters are set to 1 by default.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) for which the test needs to wait for a response from the server. At the end of this duration, the test will timeout. The default is 30 seconds.
Encoding Format	By default, the Encoding Format is set to UTF-8, for providing code compatibility when the test is executed in different language platforms.
NFUSE Protocol Version	Specify the version of the NFUSE Protocol. By default the version is set to 5.1.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Connection availability	This metric tracks if the Citrix XML service is available to handle any requests.	Percent	If the TCP connection to the XML service port fails, this metric has a value of 0. Otherwise, it has a value of 100.
Authentication status	This metric indicates if the user authentication succeeded	Percent	It has a value of 100 if the user was authenticated, and a value of 0 if the authentication failed. If the user login is valid, yet authentication fails, the problem then lies with the Citrix IMA service's communication with the domain controller/active directory server.
Application enumeration status	This metric indicates if the Citrix web interface was able to enumerate the applications available for the user logging in.	Percent	A value of 0 indicates that application enumeration failed, while a value of 100 denotes that the application enumeration operation succeeded. If authentication succeeds but application enumeration fails, then the problem is most likely to be in the Citrix XML service, its interaction with the IMA service, or with the IMA service itself.
TCP connection time	The time taken to establish a TCP connection to the Citrix XML service port	Seconds	If this value is significantly high, it could probably be because the network latency is high or the Citrix web interface host is overloaded.
Total response time	This metric represents the total time taken for a user to login to the Citrix web interface and enumerate all the applications.	Seconds	The value of this metric indicates the responsiveness of the Citrix web interface and its connectivity to the XML service.