Measures reported by CtxXcXAAppLayerTest

Citrix App Layering lets you package any Windows application as a virtual disk, layer and deliver it, installation-free, to pooled desktops and session hosts. With App Layering, you can:

• Install and manage a single copy of your Windows operating system and a single copy of each of your applications in layers. A layer is simply a container for the file system objects and registry entries unique to that layer.

• Select any combination of layers to create layered Images that are deployable as desktops or session hosts.

• Deploy the layered images to virtual machine desktops and session hosts, making the applications available to users.

Citrix App Layering enables IT administrators to deliver applications that look, act and feel as if they are installed locally in the VM/Golden Image, but these applications are actually stored as separate manageable objects in their own virtual disks. With Citrix App Layering, any application can be separated from the Windows OS. As a result, IT administrators will only have a single OS Layer to manage regardless of the number of machine configurations (pools, silos, delivery groups). This simplifies the environment while reducing management time/complexity and the costs associated with OS and app management. Application layers can be attached to the virtual machine in one of two ways:

1. App Layers can be combined with an OS Layer, in a process called image publishing, and pushed to existing provisioning systems such as Citrix Provisioning Services, Citrix Machine Creation Services, or VMware View Composer;

2. App Layers can be attached to a VM at user login based on user AD group membership and app assignments. Each user can also receive a unique “Personalization Layer”. This Personalization Layer will contain unique information for that user that will include things like local Windows profiles, application settings, files and folders created by the user and even user-installed applications.

When the App Layers are attached to a VM at the time of user login, the App Layers specific to a user should be fully attached without adding a significant delay to the logon process. If, for any reason, the App Layering fails or takes more time during the logon process, then the logon process may eventually fail or take longer time to complete. This in turn will impact the productivity of the users and overall user experience with the XenApp server. Therefore, it is imperative that administrators keep track of the time taken for attaching the App Layers. This can be easily done using the CtxXcXAAppLayerTest test.

This test tracks the App Layering process for each user and alerts administrators if any user is experiencing undue slowness during App Layering. This way, administrators are prompted to rapidly initiate remedial measures, so that the bottleneck can be resolved before it seriously impacts a user's productivity and experience. This test also monitors a log file i.e. c:\ProgramData\Unidesk\Logs\ulayersvc.log file created during App Layering process and reports the count of the warning messages and errors occurred. This way, administrators are alerted to the errors and warnings encountered during the App Layering process.

Note:

This test reports metrics only when the App Layering feature is enabled for the Citrix XenApp server.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each user connected to the Citrix XenApp that is to be monitored.

The measures made by this test are as follows: