Application Access - OS Test

Applications hosted on the system communicate within the system environment and may also interact with external entities such as public APIs, internet resources, or remote users. One of the key factors influencing the responsiveness of these applications is the latency experienced while handling internal and external communications. Prolonged response times often lead to delays, degraded user experience, system instability, and potential application timeouts. To ensure a seamless user experience, administrators need to quickly identify which applications are slow to respond, determine the source of the delay, and understand whether the latency is due to internal system communication or interaction with external resources.

This test helps achieve this by auto-discovering the applications running on the system and reporting metrics such as average and maximum latency, TCP connection counts, data sent/received, and total application traffic. For each application, the test also reveals the PID, connection type, and the direction of communication. This helps pinpoint applications with performance issues and assists in troubleshooting slow or unresponsive applications on the system.

Target of the test : A Citrix Hypervisor/ Citrix Hypervisor VDI

Agent executing the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each connection type:application on the target system.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the specified host listens. By default, this is NULL.
Xen User, Xen Password and Confirm Password	To enable the eG agent to connect to the XenServer API for collecting statistics of interest, this test should login to the target hypervisor as a root user. Provide the name of the root user in the Xen User text box. Root user privileges are mandatory when monitoring a XenServer 5.5 (or below). However, if you are monitoring XenServer 5.6 (or above) and you prefer not to expose the credentials of the root user, then, you have the option of configuring a user with pool-admin privileges as the Xen User. If you do not want to expose the credentials of a root/pool-admin user, then you can configure the tests with the credentials of a Xen User with Read-only privileges to the XenServer. However, if this is done, then the Xen Uptime test will not run, and the Xen CPU and Xen Memory tests will not be able to report metrics for the control domain descriptor. To avoid such an outcome, do the following before attempting to configure the eG tests with a Xen User who has Read-only privileges to the Citrix Hypervisor: Modify the target hypervisor's configuration in the eG Enterprise. For this, follow the Infrastructure -> Components -> Add/Modify menu sequence, pick Citrix Hypervisor as the Component type, and click the Modify button corresponding to the target hypervisor. In the MODIFY COMPONENT DETAILS page that then appears, make sure that the os is set to Xen and the Mode is set to SSH. Then, in the same page, proceed to provide the User and Password of a user who has the right to connect to the XenServer console via SSH. Then, click the Update button to save the changes. Once this is done, you can configure the eG tests with the credentials of a Xen User with Read-only privileges. The password of the specified Xen User needs to be mentioned in the Xen Password text box. Then, confirm the Xen Password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.
SSL	By default, the Citrix Hypervisor is not SSL-enabled. This indicates that by default, the eG agent communicates with the target hypervisor using HTTP. Accordingly, the SSL flag is set to No by default. If you configure the target hypervisor to use SSL, then make sure that the SSL flag is set to Yes, so that the eG agent communicates with the target hypervisor using HTTPS. Note that a default SSL certificate comes bundled with every Citrix Hypervisor installation. If you want the eG agent to use this default certificate for communicating with an SSL-enabled Citrix Hypervisor, then no additional configuration is required. However, if you do not want to use the default certificate, then you can generate a self-signed certificate for use by the target hypervisor. In such a case, you need to explicitly follow the broad steps given below to enable the eG agent to communicate with the target hypervisor via HTTPS: Obtain the server-certificate for the Citrix Hypervisor Import the server-certificate into the local certificate store of the eG agent For a detailed discussion on each of these steps, refer to the Troubleshooting section of this document.
Monitor Latency For	Select the application processes to be monitored from the Monitor Latency For drop-down list. By default, All Processes will be selected, which means the test will report measurements for all application processes running on the system. If you want to monitor only whitelisted processes, choose the Whitelisted Processes option, this will configure the eG agent to monitor only those processes that have been predefined as whitelisted. By default, eG Enterprise offers a comma separated list of pre-defined applications specified against the WhiteListProcesses option in the [EXCLUDE_APPLICATIONS] section of the eg_tests.ini file available in the <eG_INSTALL_DIR>/manager/config folder. If administrators wish to add or remove one or more applications to/from this pre-defined list, then, they can do so by specifying the applications against the WhiteListProcesses option. To monitor specific processes, select the Selected Processes option from the drop-down, and then provide the list of process names in the Application Processes for Latency Monitoring parameter.
Application Processes For Latency Monitoring	By default, the value of this measure is set to none. However, if you configure the Monitor Latency For parameter to Selected Processes, you must provide a comma-separated list of the application processes you wish to monitor. The list can be specified in any of the following formats: processName1, processName2 processName1@remoteIPAddress,processName2@remoteIPAddress processName1@remoteIPAddress;port,processName2@remoteIPAddress;port
Inside View Using	By default, this test obtains the “inside view” of VMs using the eG VM Agent. Accordingly, the Inside view using flag is set to eG VM Agent by default. The eG VM Agent is a piece of software, which should be installed on every VM on a hypervisor. Every time the eG agent runs this test, it uses the eG VM Agent to pull relevant 'inside view' metrics from each VM. Once the metrics are collected, the eG agent then communicates with each VM agent and pulls these metrics, without requiring administrator privileges. Refer to Configuring the Remote Agent to Obtain the Inside View of VMs for more details on the eG VM Agent.
Domain, Admin User, and Admin Password, and Confirm Password	By default, these parameters are set to none. This is because, by default, the eG agent collects 'inside view' metrics using the eG VM agent on each VM. Domain administrator privileges need not be granted to the eG agent if it uses this default approach to obtain the 'inside view' of Windows VMs.
Ignore VMs Inside View	Administrators of some high security XenServer environments might not have permissions to internally monitor one/more VMs. The eG agent can be configured to not obtain the 'inside view' of such ‘inaccessible’ VMs using the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW parameter. Against this parameter, you can provide a comma-separated list of VM names, or VM name patterns, for which the inside view need not be obtained. For instance, your IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside view of all VMs on a Citrix Hypervisor host by default. Note: While performing VM discovery, the eG agent will not discover the operating system of the VMs configured in the IGNORE VMS INSIDE VIEW text box.
Exclude VMs	Administrators of some virtualized environments may not want to monitor some of their less-critical VMs - for instance, VM templates - both from 'outside' and from 'inside'. The eG agent in this case can be configured to completely exclude such VMs from its monitoring purview. To achieve this, provide a comma-separated list of VMs to be excluded from monitoring in the EXCLUDE VMS text box. Instead of VMs, VM name patterns can also be provided here in a comma-separated list. For example, your EXCLUDE VMS specification can be: xp,lin,win,vista. Here, the * (asterisk) is used to denote leading and trailing spaces (as the case may be). By default, this parameter is set to none indicating that the eG agent obtains the inside and outside views of all VMs on a virtual host by default. By providing a comma-separated list of VMs/VM name patterns in the EXCLUDE VMS text box, you can make sure the eG agent stops collecting 'inside' and 'outside' view metrics for a configured set of VMs.
Ignore Winnt	By default, the eG agent does not support the inside view for VMs executing on Windows NT operating systems. Accordingly, the IGNORE WINNT flag is set to Yes by default.
Webport	By default, in most virtualized environments, the target hypervisor listens on port 80 (if not SSL-enabled) or on port 443 (if SSL-enabled). This implies that while monitoring an SSL-enabled Citrix hypervisor, the eG agent, by default, connects to port 443 of the server to pull out metrics, and while monitoring a non-SSL-enabled Citrix hypervisor, the eG agent connects to port 80. Accordingly, the webport parameter is set to 80 or 443 depending upon the status of the ssl flag. In some environments however, the default ports 80 or 443 might not apply. In such a case, against the webport parameter, you can specify the exact port at which the target hypervisor in your environment listens so that the eG agent communicates with that port.
Report by User	While monitoring a Citrix hypervisor, the REPORT BY USER flag is set to No by default, indicating that by default, the guest operating systems on the target hypervisor are identified using the host name specified in the operating system. On the other hand, while monitoring a Citrix hypervisor-VDI, this flag is set to Yes by default; this implies that in case of the Citrix hypervisor-VDI model, by default, the desktops will be identified using the login of the user who is accessing them. In other words, in VDI environments, this test will, by default, report measures for every username_on_virtualmachinename.
Report Powered OS	This flag becomes relevant only if the report by user flag is set to ‘Yes’. If the report powered os flag is set to Yes (which is the default setting), then this test will report measures for even those VMs that do not have any users logged in currently. Such guests will be identified by their virtualmachine name and not by the username_on_virtualmachinename. On the other hand, if the report powered os flag is set to No, then this test will not report measures for those VMs to which no users are logged in currently.
Exclude IP	Typically, when performing VM discovery, the eG agent automatically discovers the operating system on which every VM runs, and all the IP addresses that each VM supports. If two are more VMs on a target server are in a VM cluster, then the eG agent will also auto-discover the cluster IP address. Since the cluster IP address is shared by all VMs in the cluster, this IP address will be in the discovery list of every VM in the cluster. In this case, if the eG agent attempts to obtain the 'inside view' of each VM in a cluster using their cluster IP address, incorrect metrics may be reported sometimes. To avoid this, you may want to instruct the eG agent to not use the cluster IP address when collecting 'inside view' metrics. For this, specify a comma-separated list of cluster IP addresses to be excluded in the EXCLUDE IP text box.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD FREQUENCY.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Process instances	Indicates the number of process instances of this application currently running on the target host.	Number
TCP connections	Indicates the number of TCP connections established by the processes of this application.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure reveals PID of each application process that established the TCP connection, local and remote IP addresses and ports used by each TCP connection, the rate at which the data was transmitted and received through each connection, the total amount of data transmitted and received through each connection per second, and the latency experienced by each connection in seconds.
Avg latency	Indicates the average latency experienced by the processes of this application while responding to user requests. The value reported is the average of latencies experienced by all processes of an application.	Seconds	A consistently high latency may be indicative of poor responsiveness of applications which adversely impacts user experience with the target multi-session host. Possible reasons for an increase in latency could be increased network delays, network congestion, server slow-down, too many simultaneous users on the server etc. Comparing the value of this measure across applications will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify applications that are experiencing higher latency when delivering services to users.
Max latency	Indicates the maximum latency experienced by the processes of this application while responding to user requests. The value reported is the maximum latency experienced by one of the processes of this application.	Seconds
Data transmitted	Indicates the rate at which the data was transmitted by the processes of this application.	KB/sec
Data received	Indicates the rate at which the data was received by the processes of this application.	KB/sec
Total application traffic	Indicates the total volume of network traffic handled by this application process, calculated as the sum of data transmitted and data received.	KB/sec	A high value may indicate that the application process is actively handling a large number of requests or data-heavy operations. A sudden spike might suggest abnormal activity or heavy usage.