eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by CtxSDXXenCPUTest

Typically, when creating VPX instances on a Citrix NetScaler SDX appliance, you can allocate CPU cores to each instance depending on their processing requirements. While a single core is usually set aside for the use of the Management Service on the SDX appliance, the rest are available for allocation to the VPX instances.

If one/more instances engage in CPU-intensive operations, it can result in a severe contention for CPU resources on the appliance. This in turn can degrade the performance of the VPX instances and the SDX appliance as a whole. To avoid this, SDX administrators should continuously track the overall CPU usage of the SDX appliance and capture a potential CPU contention before it aggravates and adversely impacts performance. The CtxSDXXenCPUTest test helps administrators with this!

This test reports the number of CPU cores the SDX appliance supports and the average CPU usage of the appliance across all the cores. In the process, the test warns administrators of a probable CPU contention on the appliance and prompts speedy action, so that performance does not suffer.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target NetScaler SDX.

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Cpu_usage Indicates the percent CPU usage of the SDX appliance. Percent A value close to 100% is a cause of concern, as it could indicate excessive CPU usage by one/more VPX instances on the target SDX appliance. If this condition is left unchecked, it can cause the overall performance of the SDX to significantly deteriorate and badly impact user-experience with the appliance.

Under such circumstances, it might be good practice to compare the value of the CPU usage measure of the SDX VPX Instances test across all VPX instances operating on the target appliance. This will point you to the VPX instances that are CPU-hungry and are contributing to the CPU contention. To prevent the contention, you can decide to either allocate more cores to the CPU-starved instances or change the CPU allocation mode of the instance - i.e., from shared to dedicated or vice-versa.
Noof_cpu Indicates the total number of CPU cores the SDX appliance supports. Number