Citrix Broker Agent Test

A broker agent lies at the heart of any VDI deployment, and is the key component for assigning resources to end users. The Citrix broker is what the client talks to in order to know what VM it is allowed to access. It is the middle component between desktops in the data center and the client and its waits for connections. When someone logs in, the Citrix broker is the one that checks with Active Directory to make sure the user is authorized. Then it checks its own DB to figure out what desktop this user has access to and finally allows the user access to the list of desktops and eventually hands that off. It also allows you to manage the Desktop sessions and Application sessions etc.

By keeping an eye on the Citrix Broker Agent, you can understand the current session load on the broker, the clients contributing to the load, and the nature of the sessions. This is exactly what the Citrix Broker Agent Test does. This test monitors the Citrix broker agent and reports the count of clients registered with the Citrix broker, the session load imposed by these clients on the Citrix server, and the nature of this load - – i.e., are they application sessions? or are they desktop sessions?

Target of the test : Citrix Virtual Apps server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the Citrix Virtual Apps server that is to be monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed. By default, this is 5 minutes.

Host

The host for which the test is to be configured.

Port

The port number at which the specified host listens to. By default, this is 1494.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Registrations

Indicates the number of times this Virtual Apps server registered with the broker agent during the last measurement period.

Number

 

Deregistrations

Indicates the number of times this Virtual Apps server deregistered from the broker agent during the last measurement period.

Number

The value 1 for this measure indicates that the Virtual Apps server is disconnected from the broker. This can hurt user access to desktops/applications on the Virtual Apps server. You may want to investigate and ascertain the reason for the disconnect/deregistration and clear the bottleneck quickly, so that user-server communication is not disrupted.

Total application sessions

Indicates the number of application sessions running on the Citrix server during the last measurement period.

Number

If the value of the Total sessions measure increases continuously, it may indicate a probable overload on the Virtual Apps server. In such a situation, you can compare the value of this measure with that of the Total desktop sessions measure to know what type of sessions are contributing the most to the overload.

Total desktop sessions

Indicates the number of desktop sessions running on the Citrix server during the last measurement period.

Number

If the value of the Total sessions measure increases continuously, it may indicate a probable overload on the Virtual Apps server. In such a situation, you can compare the value of this measure with that of the Total application sessions measure to know what type of sessions are contributing the most to the overload.

Total sessions

Indicates the total number of sessions on the Citrix server during the last measurement period.

Number

This is a good indicator of the load on the XenAp server.