eG Citrix Monitor

Server-based Computing Environments

Citrix® environments are growing in popularity as cost-effective, efficient modes of accessing a variety of heterogeneous applications on-demand. In order to be an effective alternative for desktop applications, Citrix environments must deliver the same quality of service that users have come to expect from local applications.

Monitoring Citrix Server Farms

Typically, Citrix environments involve multiple tiers of software. A front-end web interface server is used to support web-based accesses to the server farm. Domain servers in the target infrastructure handle authentication of users. Authenticated requests are passed to the Citrix MetaFrame servers that host a number of applications. In turn, the applications may use backend databases, printers, etc., for different functionalities. Owing to the multi-tier nature of Citrix environments, a slow-down in one tier (e.g., the authentication server) can cause a slow-down of the entire service. When a slow-down occurs, an administrator of the Citrix farm has to quickly determine what the source of the problem could be - i.e., Is it the network? Or the web interface server? Or the authentication server? Or the Citrix MetaFrame server? Or the backend database? Accurate, fast diagnosis of problems helps reduce downtime and improve customer satisfaction.

Citrix monitoring and management, performance reporting

Monitoring a Citrix server farm using the eG suite

The eG Citrix Monitor

The eG suite offers 100% web-based monitoring of Citrix MetaFrame server farms. The eG suite includes extensive, pre-defined, customized models of the different applications in the Citrix farm including Citrix Presentation Server, MetaFrame XP™ and 1.8 servers, the farm servers, Windows domain controllers, infrastructure servers like DNS, LDAP, Active Directory, and other network devices. These models define key metrics that are needed to track the different applications, analysis methodologies for these metrics, and correlation models that are used to customize eG's patented single click root-cause technology for Citrix environments.

Citrix reports; 100% web-based; Executive and Performance reports on the Citrix infrastructure

eG's Performance reports of your Citrix infrastructure

What the eG Citrix Monitor Reveals

MetaFrame Server Monitoring	Are the Citrix servers available to service user requests? Are there sporadic disconnects from the Citrix server? At what times do peak usage of the servers happen and is the server capacity adequate? Is the user load being balanced across all the servers? Is the data store available? What are the access rates to the data store, the dynamic store, and the local host cache? How much IMA traffic is happening between servers?
User Monitoring	What is the average response time that critical users are seeing when connecting to a MetaFrame server? How many users are logged in to each server in the Citrix farm? What is the resource usage (CPU and memory) for each user?
Operating System Monitoring	What is the average CPU and memory usage on all the servers in the farm? Is any unusual memory scanning/paging activity happening on the systems? Are the critical MetaFrame and IMA processes up? What is their resource consumption?
Published Applications Monitoring	What are the published applications on a MetaFrame server? Who is using each application? What is the resource usage for each published application?
License Monitoring	How many product and connection licenses are available in the farm and what is their usage? Are there enough licenses available for each of the published applications?
Infrastructure Services Monitoring	Is the web interface server forwarding requests to the MetaFrame server? Are the backend databases working? What is the resource usage of the databases? Are users able to login to the server farm? How long is the login process taking? What is the usage of the Microsoft Windows Domain Controller?

Benefits of the eG Citrix Monitor

Provides proactive, and powerful insights to Citrix administrators by collecting and analyzing hundreds of key network, server, and application metrics
Ensures high uptime through fast and accurate problem identification and isolation using eG's patented single-click correlation and root-cause diagnosis technology
Enables anytime, anywhere monitoring of the response time for Citrix applications using just a web browser
Facilitates effective capacity planning by providing critical insights into performance and usage trends of a Citrix infrastructure