User Profile Test

User profiles are the heart of the Citrix environment. User profiles contain the configuration settings, which bring the user desktop alive. One of the major problems in a server-based computing environment like Citrix is that the user's login process takes more time to open the user's desktop. This happens if the user profile size is huge. The User Profile test monitors the size of the Citrix user profiles and raises an alarm if the profile size exceeds the profile quota size.

Target of the test : Any Citrix server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every user profile on the Citrix server monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. TEST PERIOD – How often should the test be executed
  2. Host – The host for which the test is to be configured
  3. Port – Refers to the port used by the Citrix server
  4. profilesizelimit - Specify the profile quota size (in MB). The default value is 50 MB.
  5. exclude - Provide a comma-separated list of users who need to be excluded from the analysis. By default, this parameter is set to All_Users, indicating that, by default, the test will not monitor the All_Users profile.
  6. currentusersonly - If this is set to true, then the profile sizes of only those users who are currently logged into the server will be monitored. If this is set to false, eG Enterprise will perform profile monitoring for all the users to the server.
  7. filesizelimit - Takes the file quota size (in KB). The default size is 10000 KB.
  8. exclude folders – By default, when this test computes the size of a profile, it automatically excludes the following folders and their sub-folders from the computation: AppData\Local,AppData\LocalLow,Recycle.Bin,SkyDrive,WorkFolders. If need be, you can choose to include one/more of these default folders when computing the profile size; for this, all you need to do is remove those specific folders from the default exclude folders specification. For example, to include the SkyDrive and WorkFolders folders, simply remove them from the default specification above. Also, if required, you can exclude more folders from the profile size computation, by appending the corresponding folder names / folder name patterns to this default list. For instance, your specification can be: AppData\Local,AppData\LocalLow,Recycle.Bin,SkyDrive,WorkFolders,*Backup*,Favo*,*Desktop. In the case of this sample specification, in addition to the default list of excluded folders, all folders with names that embed the string Backup, with names that begin with the strin Favo, and with names that end with the string Desktop, will be excluded from size computation. Moreover, all sub-folders within these folders will also be ignored during size computation.
  9. report by domain – By default, this flag is set to Yes. This implies that by default, this test will report metrics for every domainname\username to the server. This way, administrators will be able to quickly determine which user belongs to which domain. If you want the test to report metrics for every username alone, then set this flag to No. 
  10. user profile dir – By default, this parameter is set to none. This implies that for  Virtual Apps/Microsoft RDS servers operating on Windows 2012 platforms, the test will, by default, check the C:\Users directory for the user profile files. In some environments, the user profile-related files and folders may exist in a different directory. In such environments, you will have to specify the exact directory in which the user profiles exist, against the user profile dir parameter.  

  11. DETAILED DIAGNOSIS - To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the 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

Is user profile exceeding quota?:

Indicates whether the profile size exceeds the profile quota size by comparing the current profile size with the configured PROFILESIZELIMIT parameter.

Boolean

If this measure shows 0, it indicates that the current profile size has not exceeded the quota size. The value 1 indicates that the current profile size has exceeded the quota size.

Current profile size:

Indicates the current profile size.

MB

 

Number of files in user’s profile:

Indicates the number of files available in the user profile.

Number

 

Large files in user’s profile:

The number of files in the user profile, which exceed the allowable FILESIZELIMIT parameter.

Number

The detailed diagnosis of this measure, if enabled, lists all the files that have exceeded the configured filesizelimit.

Use the detailed diagnosis of the Large files in user’s profile measure to know which files have exceeded the configured filesizelimit. If a profile takes too long to load, then using these diagnositics, administrators can identify the exact file in the profile that could be contributing to loading delay.

Figure 1 : The detailed diagnosis of the Large files in user’s profile measure