citrix edgesight user manual

The EdgeSight agent is very resilient and much has been put in place to prevent, as well as recover from behavior like this (that is, crashes). An EdgeSight for Endpoints agent maintains five-second level detail and an EdgeSight for XenApp agent maintains 15-second level detail for the most recent four hours. Data is regularly aggregated into five-minute slices. The nature of the crash affects this whole scenario (bad spot on disk, disk full, and so on). A crash may result in a missing data sample (or two), which in effect is seconds worth of data. A: The default configuration for XenApp agents is to run the Configuration Check worker once per hour. Endpoint agents run this worker once per day. A: Assuming that the EdgeSight server was installed prior to the installation of the EdgeSight agent, the agent must perform a number of steps before it performs its initial communication action. On most computers, these steps are completed within 10 minutes of the agent startup. These steps are only performed on the initial installation, not on upgrades. Depending on the phase of the startup, the agent may not yet have collected required configuration data. Any configuration of the agent the server may wish to make is based in part on the configuration the agent. An example of this type of configuration data is the version of XenApp an EdgeSight for XenApp agent is running on. This data payload contains a number of collected data items that the EdgeSight server loads into its database and effectively registers the agent to the server. If an error occurs while processing the payload, these entries are also written. The entries include potentially useful information for resolving the problem. Why? A: When the agent uploads its data, one piece of the data is the company the agent is configured with at installation time. If this company name does not match the name of the company on the EdgeSight server, the agent is listed as an unmanaged device.

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EdgeSight Active Application Monitoring (AAM) is a component that provides the ability to sample and monitor the responsiveness of virtualized applications in XenApp environments. This article contains frequently asked questions about EdgeSight 5.0, divided into following listed sections. This component does not have a 64-bit installer. For instance, you cannot operate two EdgeSight servers to use the same database. This way you can transparently recover from an EdgeSight server outage. As long as the agent data is retained (that is, not purged by the EdgeSight agent) in the various devices, no data loss occurs. Users who have upgraded from earlier releases of EdgeSight for XenApp (or EdgeSight for Presentation Server) can use the “Department Cleanup Wizard” to remove departments without devices. While the wizard is self-explanatory, read the online help on the page where you see the wizard for additional information. A: The EdgeSight 5.0 (and EdgeSight 4.5) Web server component only requires Internet Information Services (IIS) to enable (i.e. “allow”) the ASP.net 2.0 Web service extension. The IIS setting can be found in the setting for IIS Manager’s Web Service Extension. SQL Server 2008 does not ship with this object component, therefore EdgeSight users must download it from Microsoft. In particular, the current requirement is Windows XP Service Pack 2 (or later) or Windows Vista Business Edition (or above). The supported server operating systems are Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. EdgeSight provides targeted agent Windows (MSI) installers for 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. A: EdgeSight 5.0 for XenApp can be installed on any Windows server running XenApp. However, EdgeSight data is not collected until the device restarts. Do you lose the complete five-minute snapshot or just the data collected up to that point? A: No.

If an upload is attempted prior to these items being processed, the agent may not register correctly with the server, or it may receive an incorrect configuration. There is also the potential for incomplete data to be associated with the agent device. The agent is designed to monitor and report on end-user systems only. The data is persisted to a local database and periodically uploaded to the centralized EdgeSight server database. A: The agent periodically uploads a payload of data to the EdgeSight server using standard HTTP protocol. It can also be configured to use SSL. The agent can be configured to immediately send real-time alerts to the server. A: Port 9035 is used to make a remote device connection to the agent. This includes running the Dashboard, Real Time reports, Remote Workers, or using the new Device and User Troubleshooters. The XenApp agent collects performance data every 15 seconds and periodically consolidates this data into five-minute samples. The data uploaded to the EdgeSight server is consolidated into an hourly granularity. By default, this data is uploaded to the EdgeSight server once a day. The Endpoint agent typically consumes 20 to 30 megabytes (MB) of RAM. The agent for XenApp varies based on the number of concurrent connections to the server. A: The client-side database typically uses anywhere from 50 to 250 MB of disk space. A: The data payload is typically 35 to 100 kilobytes (KB). The real-time alerts are approximately 200 bytes. A: The Remote Data Viewer ActiveX control is used to connect from the browser to the remote device running the agent. ActiveX controls must be enabled in the browser. Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003, or 2007 must be installed on the console computer to view the data. Port 9035 must be opened in your firewall, inbound on the client. It is possible to set up a remote security group to allow access to a remote device.Is it in the registry, or a file?

You can then locate the agent device by name and manually assign it to the proper department. What should be verified? When it performs an upload, it is doing so using a function known as a worker. Each worker has its own log, which provides detailed information about worker execution. One of the most common issues occurs when the EdgeSight server name is not specified as a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), but the network requires FQDN, or the server must be specified using an IP address. Another common configuration problem is a proxied network where proxy configuration is automatic. The EdgeSight agent supports a fixed proxy server, if proxies are required on the network. If network changes are required, they can be made while the agent is running. The agent retries the communication every two minutes. This file is sorted in C:\Users\All Users\Application Data\Citrix\System Monitoring\Data for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. Open the file and look for the last entry for Worker 104 running with trigger 24. The entry provides a status; if it is all zeros, the communication was successful from the perspective of the agent. If it is not all zeros, the last sentence of the error message provides the most relevant information. Under certain circumstances, the message directs you to look in the script log file.Can you force an update so the agent registers right away if it has not done so? The agent automatically uploads its data within 10 minutes of the initial agent startup. Any problems with the initial upload prevent any forced upload from completing. Additionally, the initial upload has “retry upon failure” logic to ensure that uploads proceed automatically once network and configuration problems preventing uploads from occurring are resolved. The agent determines its Active Directory membership and operating environment.

Most customers are currently on the previous release, which means a simple upgrade installation from 4.5 to 5.0. As a best practice, allow 100 percent free space of the current size of the EdgeSight database. For example, if the current database is 70 gigabytes (GB) in size, have another 70 GB available. This does not include the size of the transaction logs, which can grow to more than 100 percent of the database size. In addition, back up the current database, and restart the EdgeSight server just prior to the upgrade to free any running processes from memory. You should completely uninstall the ERP server and agents and then reinstall the 4.5 RTM version. Do you need a client access license (CAL) for every agent? EdgeSight only requires a SQL license on the EdgeSight server when using the per-processor license model. The amount of full SQL licenses depends upon your implementation of SQL Server and SQL Reporting Services. If you have a single-server architecture for the EdgeSight server, a single full SQL license is required. If IIS and SQL Reporting Services are installed on one physical server and SQL Server is installed on a second physical server, two separate and full SQL licenses are required. If you use a per-device model for SQL, a CAL is needed for every agent. This is done automatically and by default if a device has not reported up to the server for 30 days or more.Does it use a Media Access Control (MAC) address, unique identifier (UID), NetBIOS, or host name. A: The client uses these device characteristics in addition to a UID to correctly identify each device. This helps to uniquely identify each device and merge duplicates if they occur. This may happen if a device is re-imaged and re-deployed. Could the Microsoft Excel Viewer or Open Office be used instead? Hence, EdgeSight requires Excel 2000 or later. Citrix EdgeSight for Endpoints 5.4 Citrix EdgeSight for XenApp 5.

The Windows registry is used to store configuration items that are machine specific and are required for successful communication with the EdgeSight server. Examples of this are the name of the company the agent belongs to, the name of the server to contact, and any proxy information required to perform the communication. All other configuration items are stored in the EdgeSight agent database or the EdgeSight.ini file. The items stored in the Windows registry are typically set once, and are supplied during the agent installation. All other configuration items are sourced from the EdgeSight server the agent is configured to communicate with, and any configuration is performed using the EdgeSight server console. By default, the EdgeSight agent obtains its initial dynamic configuration within 10 minutes of the initial run of the agent. The Configuration Check worker runs once per hour by default. A: Press the F12 key on the keyboard and it gives you an option to save reports into various formats, including Excel. Version information is located at the bottom of the page. A: It is possible to create custom reports using Microsoft Reporting Services and SQL technologies. The EdgeSight database schema and the relevant views are available in the product documentation. Custom reports can be uploaded to the EdgeSight Server using the Upload a Report page and can be viewed in the Custom Reports node in the EdgeSight Console. The maintenance and accuracy of the custom reports are the responsibility of the customer. A: Version 4.x agents work with 5.0 EdgeSight servers as expected. This has been thoroughly tested and is fully supported. The only limitation is that you cannot set up any Citrix XenApp alerts for a version 4.2 agent running on XenApp. All EdgeSight servers must be upgraded from the proper release level. You must not skip an upgrade. Here are the order of upgrades to complete: 4.1 to 4.2, 4.2 to 4.5, and lastly 4.5 to 5.0.

See Chapter 4, Using EdgeSight to Resolve Session Performance Problems, for more information on using EdgeSight to diagnose and resolve session problems. Note that the session data collected and displayed depend on the installed versions of the EdgeSight Agent, the XenApp or Presentation Server, and the ICA client. For example, end-user experience monitoring metrics are not collected for Presentation Server systems prior to version 4.5. For more information on data collection and display by EdgeSight Agent type and version, see the Citrix EdgeSight Administrator s Guide. You can use EdgeSight to display problem notifications, display what was happening on the system at the time of the problem, list recent software and hardware changes, and compare application performance across multiple systems. You can also proactively monitor critical XenApp applications using EdgeSight Active Application Monitoring. See Chapter 5, Using Citrix EdgeSight to Resolve Applications Problems for details. Resolve Network Problems EdgeSight allows you to identify, investigate and define a resolution for network problems such as network delay, high round trip times, or Web errors. EdgeSight allows you to compare current and historical network performance for one system or across multiple systems, to find systems with high network volume, and to identify network segments with slow response times. See Chapter 6, Using Citrix EdgeSight to Resolve Network Problems for details. Proactively Manage Hardware and Software Assets EdgeSight does more than just help you solve problems; it can also help you in planning and implementing improvements in your enterprise. With EdgeSight, you can perform capacity planning, rollout new applications, manage multiple versions of applications, and implement licensing and compliance policies. See Chapter 7, Using Citrix EdgeSight for Planning and Implementation for applicable scenarios.

XenApp Capacity Planning Administrators need to know when they will run out of capacity and need to add servers to their XenApp farm. Because there are many variables, including user activity level, number of applications running on the server, number of active sessions, and system resource capacity, administrators must use their judgment. For example, they may add 6 users at a time and when server capacity approaches 60 to 70 percent, they add a new server. This approach can be inefficient and does not enable active planning, such as determining how many servers should be purchased by quarter for the upcoming year. Administrators may not know what impact the new application will have on performance and the maximum number of supported concurrent users. Additionally, administrators need to know if a new application causes a compatibility issue with any other applications running on the server. Currently, they lack the granular data necessary to understand these issues. EdgeSight for XenApp allows administrators to closely monitor resource usage over time and also configure real-time alerts so that they are notified when certain usage levels are exceeded. Administrators can also focus on the performance of new applications and receive timely notification of process hangs and faults. See Chapter 7, Using Citrix EdgeSight for Planning and Implementation, for more information on using EdgeSight for capacity planning. Track Usage EdgeSight allows you to track the usage of Citrix licenses, published applications, and the duration of sessions. You can display reports with current and historical Citrix License usage information, such as total, available, and in use license counts by product family or individual product. Usage is tracked for all Citrix license types. For published applications, information is collected on application launches and on unique users. Session duration can be displayed by farm or by user group, and can be filtered for specific devices or users.

4 A printable copy of the End User License Agreement is included on your product installation media. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Companies, names, and data used in examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise noted. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Citrix Systems, Inc Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix is a registered trademark, and Citrix Presentation Server, Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, and EdgeSight are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc.All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Document Code: April 1, 2011 (MS) This document provides guidelines and scenarios for using EdgeSight to ensure that end users in your enterprise have the required application and network resources to work more productively. Citrix XenApp was formerly Citrix Presentation Server. For the purposes of this document, XenApp is used as the primary product name and, unless otherwise indicated, refers to both XenApp and Presentation Server systems. This chapter describes solutions which can be implemented using EdgeSight and lists prerequisites for effectively using this guide. This document assumes that you are working in an environment where the EdgeSight Server is installed and has been running with some alerts configured for at least one week. It is recommended that the server collect data from a minimum of 20 to 30 devices. This provides you with sufficient data to be useful in working with the scenarios. Implementing Solutions with EdgeSight Citrix EdgeSight collects and displays performance and availability information that allows you to isolate and resolve a wide range of application, device, network, and session problems. This document presents scenarios based on different types of problems and tasks.

As you use these scenarios, refer to the EdgeSight Server online help for procedures on how to use the EdgeSight Server Console and for definitions of the data displayed in reports. Before using these scenarios, review Chapter 2, Using Citrix EdgeSight Data and Reports for basic instructions on using historical and real-time reports, monitors.You can use EdgeSight to display notifications of performance anomalies, display system performance metrics over time, display hardware and software changes on systems, and display how systems are using resources such as memory, CPU, and disk. See Chapter 3, Using EdgeSight to Resolve System Performance Problems for details. Identify and Resolve Session Problems It is difficult to determine the source of a user s reported Citrix application problem because performance metrics are only currently available at the system level, not at the user session or network level. The first challenge is to locate the server accessed by the user and session. Support personnel may guess the server farm and server based on the application (applications may be grouped by server farms). Once they locate the suspected server, they do not have performance characteristics for that particular user and session. Instead, they can only assess the overall server performance, which may not reflect the problem seen by the user. If the problem is not the server, important network data is not available, such as client latency, log-in time or response time, and volume with back-end servers. In short, their ability to isolate and identify a user-reported performance problem is time-consuming and costly. Citrix EdgeSight for XenApp allows support personnel to quickly identify the server accessed by a user and session and then display relevant performance information. Also, a wide range of network-related reports are available that provide information on ICA client traffic, ICA session latency, volume, delay, and round-trip time.

All of these capabilities allow you to determine what Citrix products or published applications are being used and who is using them. See Chapter 8, Using Citrix EdgeSight to Track Usage for more information on using EdgeSight to track usage. Capture and Store Data for Long Term Use EdgeSight provides archive reports which can be transferred to long term storage for using in analysis and record keeping. By archiving or warehousing data, you can have continued access to long-term historical data while ensuring optimum performance from your EdgeSight Server. See Chapter 9, Using Citrix EdgeSight Data for Analysis and Record Keeping for guidelines on archiving and warehousing EdgeSight data. Overview EdgeSight collects performance and availability data on each device running the EdgeSight Agent. By default, 3 days of historical data is retained on the agent database (7 days for a virtual desktop). Data is retained for a longer period in the event that the agent has problems communicating with the server or the system running the agent is not connected to the network. Data stored in an EdgeSight Agent database can be accessed from the EdgeSight Server Console, as described in Accessing and Using Real-Time Data on page 16. Data is consolidated and uploaded to EdgeSight Server where it is used as the basis for reports, which display data using tables, charts, and graphs. EdgeSight provides a broad range of standard reports. In addition, custom reports can be created. For more information on using reports, see Accessing and Using Historical Reports on page 15. Each EdgeSight Agent continuously and unobtrusively compares critical performance parameters and conditions against thresholds. When an abnormal condition is detected, such as high memory usage, excessive network delay, or a process fault, the agent generates an alert. If the alert criteria match a configured alert rule, the agent sends a real-time alert to the associated server.

Alerts not matching an alert rule are uploaded with the rest of the day s data. For more information on displaying real-time alert information, see Accessing and Using Process Fault Data on page 26. Process fault alert rules enable the capture and storage of crash files. For more information on using crash files, see Accessing and Using Process Fault Data on page 26. The console provides you with a powerful and flexible tool for displaying availability and performance information about XenApp and end-user systems in your enterprise. When using the console, you browse pages supplied by a Web server which display reports generated from data stored in the Citrix EdgeSight database. A wide range of standard reports are available. After an EdgeSight Administrator adds you as a console user, you will receive an with login information. Depending on how authentication is configured for the server, your login information can be in the form of an address and password or it can be your Active Directory username and password. To display the console, bring up a browser and point it to the URL for the EdgeSight Server log on page. Log on to the console using your user name and password. The EdgeSight Server Console has the following components. Tabs Use the tabs at the top of the content area to select the type of data you want to display or operation you want to perform. The tabs are as follows: Getting Started This tab provides overview information for each tab. Click on each tab name to display descriptions of tab features. A checkbox allows you to disable the display of this tab on your subsequent logins. Monitor This tab allows you to perform real-time monitoring of performance counters on specified devices and to display information on alert conditions. Troubleshoot This tab allows you to perform real time troubleshooting using troubleshooting tools and real time reports. The real time reports display data directly from an agent database.

Plan and Manage This tab allows you to display summary reports which provide an overview of your environment. Summary Track Usage This tab allows you to display reports on usage of Citrix licenses, on published application launches and users, and on session duration. Browse This tab allows you to browse or search lists of reports and to display reports. You can also display report properties and subscriptions. Configure As a non-administrative user, you can edit your profile, and display reports you have designated as favorites. If you have administrative privileges on the server, the operations available on this tab allow you to additionally configure companies (including agent options, alerts, devices, and security), configure the server (including licensing, authentication, database grooming, and company creation), and monitor server status (including messages, jobs, services, and agent database broker activity). Navigation Tree Use the Navigation Tree at the left of the content area to select the specific type of operation you want to perform or the type of report you want to display. On the Configuration tab, click the icon or the corresponding page name to expand or contract that portion of the list. Menu Bar Use the Menu Bar at the top of the content area to perform common operations on the current page, such as bookmarking a page, refreshing a page, or printing a page. When displaying a report, you can add the report to the list of favorite reports or subscribe to the report. Filter Bar Once a report or monitoring page is selected, use the Filter Bar to filter data. Depending on the report or page selected, filter by department, group, time period, process, device, user, site, and other data types. Filter data to isolate information based on particular classes of processes, devices, or users and to quickly identify problems or trends. You can also filter data on non-report pages such as the Current Alert List or the administrative and configuration pages.

Click Go to apply filter parameters. (You can run reports without having to click Go by setting the Automatically Run Reports setting to Yes when editing your profile.) Help Link Click the Help link at the top right of the console to invoke context-sensitive online help. In addition to context-sensitive help, the help system also provides reference material, such as glossaries of report counters and a definition of SQL views. A single server can support multiple companies. Companies are broken down into departments. Departments are organized as a hierarchical tree with a default root department (All), and device-specific subdepartments (XenApp Farms, XenDesktop Farms, and Endpoints) which are created on installation. The structure of the XenApp Farms subdepartment is determined by the XenApp or Presentation Server farms. The structure of the XenDesktop Farms subdepartment is determined by the Desktop Delivery Controller (DDC). Additional Endpoint subdepartments can be created automatically as agents register with the server, or can be created manually by a user with administrative privileges. Configuration information is associated with agents based on their department. Each department corresponds to a set of systems running Citrix EdgeSight Agents. These systems are referred to as devices. In addition to the department structure, you can organize devices by custom groups. A custom group is a user-defined collection of devices. Membership in a group can be based on the associated departments, device characteristics, or queries. Note that the console user interface uses the term group in report names to indicate both departments and custom groups. In addition to groups of devices, you can also create user groups which are collections of XenApp, XenDesktop, or endpoint users. Many reports containing data on user experience can be filtered by user groups, allowing you to monitor system performance for a group of users with specific characteristics.

Users log on to the console to display reports or perform administrative tasks. (Note that reports use the term user to indicate a XenApp or XenDesktop user associated with a session.) Each user is assigned a role (such as the default roles of Administrator, Report Viewer, License Server Monitor Administrator, and License Server Monitor Viewer) which has an associated set of permissions. These permissions determine what actions a user can take and what pages are displayed on the console. For example, a user with a role of Report Viewer can display reports but cannot display pages under the Company Configuration or Server Configuration menus or perform administrative functions on the server. Users can display reports from the console or can receive them based on a subscription which specifies the distribution or a report by or to a file share. (This is an effective means of distributing targeted information to people in the organization without requiring them to log on to the console.) Subscriptions are distributed based on a defined schedule. Historical reports are useful when examining trends over long time periods or across large numbers of devices. You can browse or search for reports, or use these features in conjunction with one another. All reports are available from the Browse tab. As you work with EdgeSight, you may find that you use some reports frequently. Add these reports to your Favorite Reports page for easy access. Display the report and click on the Add to Favorite Reports link in the menu bar. See the Working with Reports and the Favorite Reports online help topics for more information. Browsing for Reports You can browse for reports by time frame, data type, object type, or report type. As you select a browse term, you refine the list of reports, making it easier to find the report you want. Browse terms are cumulative, and the browse terms selected are shown at the top of the report list.