Established Sessions Report

One of the key challenges in monitoring large virtualized environments is to keep track on user sessions that are currently active on servers of the virtualized environment. To provide administrators with insights into the user sessions across their virtualized environment, and to enable them to instantly identify the user sessions that are currently active, eG Enterprise offers the Established Sessions report. This report reveals the following:

  • maximum/minimum number of user sessions that are active on the servers.
  • average number of user sessions that are active on the servers.

Using this report, administrators can clearly identify the workload of the servers in terms of the active sessions and can further plan the capacity of their environment accordingly.

In order to generate the Established Sessions report, do the following:

  1. Select the Established Sessions option from the Citrix / VDI Reports node of the REPORTS BY FUNCTION tree.

  2. Then, select a criterion for analysis from the Analysis by list box.

    Figure 1 : Specifying the criteria for the Active Sessions report

  3. Using this report, you can analyze the performance of one/more managed components, or those that are part of a zone, service or segment. The options provided by the Analysis by list box are discussed hereunder:

    • Component: Select this option to choose the component(s) from across all the managed components in the environment.
    • Zone: To generate a report for the user sessions on one/more components that are included in a zone, pick the Zone option. A Zone drop-down list will then appear, from which you would have to select the zone to which the components of interest to you belong. A Sub zone flag also appears. Indicate whether the components present within the sub-zones of the chosen zone are also to be to be considered for report generation, by setting the Sub zone flag to Yes.
    • Segment: If you want to generate a report for the user sessions on one/more chosen components that belong to a segment, select the Segment option from Analysis by list box, and then pick the Segment from the drop-down list that appears.
    • Service: If you want to generate a report for the user sessions on one/more components involved in the delivery of a service, select the Service option from Analysis by, and then pick the required Service from the drop-down list that appears.
  4. By default, the Citrix XenApp 7.x will appear in the Component Type list.
  5. The Component list will now be populated with all the components that are managed in your virtualized environment for the chosen component type. If the Components list consists of too many components, then viewing all the components and selecting the ones you need for report generation could require endless scrolling. To avoid this, you can click the button next to the Components list. A COMPONENTS pop up window will then appear using which you can view almost all the components in a single interface and Select the ones to be included in this report.

  6. Then, specify the Timeline for the graph. You can either provide a fixed time line such as 1 hour, 2 days, etc., or select the Any option from the list to provide a From and To date/time for report generation.

    Note:

    For every user registered with the eG Enterprise system, the administrator can indicate the maximum timeline for which that user can generate a report. Once the maximum timeline is set for a user, then, whenever that user logs into eG Reporter and attempts to generate a report, the Timeline list box in the report page will display options according to the maximum timeline setting of that user. For instance, if a user can generate a report for a maximum period of 3 days only, then 3 days will be the highest option displayed in the Timeline list - i.e., 3 days will be the last option in the fixed Timeline list. Similarly, if the user chooses the Any option from the Timeline list and proceeds to provide a start date and end date for report generation using the From and To specifications, eG Enterprise will first check if the user's Timeline specification conforms to his/her maximum timeline setting. If not, report generation will fail. For instance, for a user who is allowed to generate reports spanning over a maximum period of 3 days only, the difference between the From and To dates should never be over 3 days. If it is, then, upon clicking the Run Report button a message box will appear, prompting the user to change the From and To specification.

  7. In addition to the settings discussed above, this report comes with a set of default specifications. These settings are hidden by default. If you do not want to disturb these default settings, then you can proceed to generate the report by clicking the Run Report button soon after you pick one/more components for report generation. However, if you want to view and then alter these settings (if required), click on the icon. The default settings will then appear in the MORE OPTIONS drop down window (See ). The steps below discuss each of these settings and how they can be customized.

    Figure 2 : The default settings for generating the Active Sessions report

  8. If the timeline specified for the report needs to exclude the data collected during the Weekends, then set Exclude weekends to Yes. If not, select No.

    Note:

    By default, the weekend constitutes Saturday and Sunday. To override this default setting, do the following:

    • Edit the eg_report.ini file in the <EG_INSTALL_DIR>\manager\config directory.
    • In the [EXCLUDE_WEEKEND] section of the file, the Days parameter is set to Saturday,Sunday by default. You can modify this by setting the Days parameter to a comma-separated list of other days of the week - say Friday,Saturday.
    • Save the file after making the required changes.

  9. Next, indicate the report Timeperiod.

    Note:

    By default, the Timeperiod is set to 24 hours. Accordingly, the From and To parameters in the [timeframe] section of the eg_report.ini file (in the <eg_install_dir>\manager\config directory) are set to 00:00 and 24:00 respectively. If need be, you can override this default setting by configuring a different timeframe against the From and/or To parameters. 

  10. In large environments, reports generated using months of data can take a long time to complete. Administrators now have the option of generating reports on-line or in the background. When a report is scheduled for background generation, administrators can proceed with their other monitoring, diagnosis, and reporting tasks, while the eG manager is processing the report. This saves the administrator valuable time. To schedule background processing of a report, you can either select the Background Save - PDF option from the Report Generation list. In this case, a Report Name text box will appear, where you would have to provide the name with which the report is to be saved in the background. To process reports in the foreground, select the Foreground Generation - HTML option from this list.

    Note:

    • The Report Generation list will appear only if the EnableBackgroundReport flag in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file (in the {EG_INSTALL_DIR}\manager\config directory) is set to Yes.
    • The default selection in the Report Generation list will change according to the Timeline specified for the report. If the Timeline set is greater than or equal to the number of days specified against the MinDurationForReport parameter in the [BACKGROUND_PROCESS] section of the eg_report.ini file, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Background Save - PDF. On the other hand, if the Timeline set for the report is lesser than the value of the MinDurationForReport parameter, then the default selection in the Report Generation list will be Foreground. This is because, the MinDurationForReport setting governs when reports are to be processed in the background. By default, this parameter is set to 2 weeks - this indicates that by default, reports with a timeline of 2 weeks and above will be processed in the background.
  11. Finally, click the Run Report button to generate the report.

  12. If the Report type is Foreground Generation - HTML, then Figure 3 will appear as soon as you click the Run Report button.

    Figure 3 : The Active Sessions Report

  13. The Active Sessions By Time section of the report consists of a graph which reveals the variations in the user sessions across the environment during the specified time period. Using this graph, you can determine the exact time period during which the users were active on the servers and the hours during which the users were not active.
  14. The Active Sessions Summary section of this report summarizes the maximum, minimum and average user sessions on each of the chosen servers. B y merely looking at the values of each server, administrators can determine the load on the servers.
  15. From the Active Sessions Details section as shown in , for each hour in the chosen time period, you can figure out the maximum, minimum and the average number of user sessions that were active on the chosen server. This data will be helpful to easily identify the time during which there were more number of user sessions on the chosen server.
  16. On the other hand, if the Background Save - PDF option is chosen from the Report Generation list, then clicking on the Run Report button will not generate the report and display it in this page for your benefit. Instead, a message indicating that the report is being processed in the background will appear. This will be accompanied by a link that will lead you to the page that lists all the reports that are being processed in the background, and their current status. If background report generation fails for a report, you can regenerate that report using this page, or can even delete that report if need be. On the other hand, if background processing successfully completes for your report, then, you can view a PDF of the report by clicking on the icon in that page.