eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by CtxCdSiteTest

A Site comprises of a delivery controller and the other core components such as machine catalogs, delivery groups, a Microsoft SQL database server, a license server, Citrix StoreFront/Receiver, Citrix Studio, etc.

This test promptly alerts administrators if it finds the following anomalies in a site:

  • License is in grace period;

  • DNS resolution is disabled;

  • Trust requests are not sent to the XML service;

  • The site is overloaded with sessions.

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the site to which the managed cloud delivery controller belongs.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Dsks_active_sessions Indicates the total number of sessions that are currently active on this site. Number This measure is a good indicator of the load on this site.
Is_dns_res_enabled Indicates whether the DNS resolution is enabled or not on this site.   The values that this measure reports and their corresponding numeric values are:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether DNS resolution is enabled or not on this site. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Is_secure_ica_req Indicates whether/not a secure ICA is required for this site.   By default, client-server communications are obfuscated at a basic level through the SecureICA feature, which can be used to encrypt the ICA protocol.

Plug-ins use the ICA protocol to encode user input (keystrokes and mouse clicks) and address it to a server farm for processing. Server farms use the ICA protocol to format application output (display and audio) and return it to the client device.

You can increase the level of encryption for the ICA protocol when you publish a resource or after you publish a resource.

In addition to situations when you want to protect against internal security threats, such as eavesdropping, you may want to use ICA encryption in the following situations:

  • You need to secure communications from devices that use Microsoft DOS or run on Win16 systems

  • You have older devices running plug-in software that cannot be upgraded to use SSL

  • As an alternative to SSL/TLS encryption, when there is no risk of a “man-in-the-middle” attack

The values that this measure reports and their corresponding numeric values are:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether a secure ICA is required for this site or not. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Is_trust_req_sent_to_xml Indicates whether/not trust requests were sent to the XML service.   Trusting requests sent to the XML Service means:

  • Smooth Roaming works when connecting with the Web Interface using pass-through or smart card authentication, and when connecting with the online plug-in using smart card authentication or the Kerberos pass-through option.

    For example, you can use workspace control to assist health-care workers in a hospital using smart cards, who need to move quickly among workstations and be able to pick up where they left off in published applications.

  • XenApp can use the information passed on from Access Gateway (Version 4.0 or later) to control application access and session policies. This information includes Access Gateway filters that can be used to control access to published applications and to set XenApp session policies. If you do not trust requests sent to the XML Service, this additional information is ignored.

The values that this measure reports and their corresponding numeric values are:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not trust requests were sent to the XML service. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Total_brokers Indicates the total number of delivery controllers that are configured for this site. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which controllers are part of the site.
No_of_connector Indicates the total number of cloud connectors in this site. Number Use the detailed diagnosis of this measure to know which connectors are operating in this site.
conn_lease_enabled Indicates whether/not connection leasing is enabled for this site.   To ensure that the Site database is always available, Citrix recommends starting with a fault-tolerant SQL Server deployment by following high availability best practices from Microsoft. However, network issues and interruptions may prevent Delivery Controllers from accessing the database, resulting in users not being able to connect to their applications or desktop.

The connection leasing feature supplements the SQL Server high availability best practices by enabling users to connect and reconnect to their most recently used applications and desktops, even when the Site database is not available. Although users may have a large number of published resources available, they often use only a few of them regularly. When you enable connection leasing, each Controller caches user connections to those recently used applications and desktops during normal operations (when the database is available). The leases generated on each Controller are uploaded to the Site database for periodic synchronization to other Controllers on the Site. In addition to leases, each Controller’s cache holds application, desktop, icon, and worker information. The lease and related information is stored on each Controller’s local disk. If the database becomes unavailable, the Controller enters leased connection mode and “replays” the cached operations when a user attempts to connect or reconnect to a recently used application or desktop from StoreFront.

Connections are cached for a lease period of two weeks. So, if the database becomes unavailable, the desktops and applications that the user launched in the previous two weeks remain accessible to that user through StoreFront. However, desktops and applications that have not been launched during the previous two-week lease period are not accessible when the database is unavailable.

Connection leasing is enabled by default. You can turn connection leasing off or on from the PowerShell SDK or the Windows registry.

This measure reports the value Yes if connection leasing is enabled for a site and the value No if connection leasing is not enabled for a site. The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not trust requests were sent to the XML service. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
license_grace_period_active Indicates whether/not the license for this site is in the grace period.   During the Supplemental Grace Period (SGP), the license policy engine will grant unlimited connections, for about 15 days to allow for fixing the issue. An alarm is activated when the grace period expires, and the Delivery Controller cannot checkout licenses to launch sessions from license server. After the expiration of SGP, regular license limits are enforced.

If the license for the site is in the grace period, then the value of this measure will be Yes. If the license has not entered the grace period, then the value of this measure will be No.

The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not the site license is in the grace period. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.

If this measure reports that the license is in grace period, then you may instantly want to know which license server the delivery controller is communicating with and the type of desktop and application licenses it manages . At this juncture, you can use the detailed diagnosis of this measure (if enabled) to ascertain the same.
license_outOfBox_grace_period Indicates whether/not the license grace period for this site has expired.   If the license for the site has lived out its grace period, then the value of this measure will be Yes. If the license grace period has not expired, then the value of this measure will be No.

The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not the grace period of the site license has expired. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
license_grace_hours_left Indicates how much time (in hours) is left for the grace period to expire. Hours This measure will report a value only if the value of the ‘license_grace_period_active’ measure is ‘Yes’.

If the value of this measure is low, then you may want to quickly install additional licenses on the site to ensure that your users receive uninterrupted access to their critical applications and desktops. Because, upon the expiry of the grace period, the delivery controllers in the site can not checkout licenses to launch sessions from license server.
Is_secondary_ddc Indicates whether this site contains secondary delivery controller or not.   The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not this site contains secondary delivery controller. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Is_lhc_enabled Indicates whether the local host cache is enabled in this site or not.  

Local Host Cache is the most comprehensive high availability feature in XenApp and XenDesktop. The Local Host Cache (LHC) feature allows connection brokering operations in a XenApp or XenDesktop Site to continue when an outage occurs. An outage occurs when the connection between a Delivery Controller and the Site database fails. Local Host Cache engages when the site database is inaccessible for 90 seconds.

The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not the local host cache is enabled. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Is_reuse_machines Indicates whether the machines in this site can be reused without shutdown during outage.  

By default, power-managed desktop VDAs in pooled Delivery Groups are placed into maintenance mode when an outage occurs. You can change this default behavior, by setting the ReuseMachinesWithoutShutdownInOutageAllowed to "true". As a result, the desktop VDAs will be reused without shutdown during the outage. The ReuseMachinesWithoutShutdownInOutageAllowed parameter is set to true only when the local host cache is used, and this parameter does not affect the ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse parameter (which is a default parameter).

The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value
Yes 1
No 0
Note:

By default, this measure reports the values Yes or No while indicating whether/not the machines are allowed to be reused without shutdown during outage. However, in the graph of this measure, the same will be represented using the corresponding numeric equivalents of 0 and 1 only.
Total_unique_users Indicates the total number of unique users to this site. Number  
Peak_concurrent_users Indicates the peak number of concurrent license users in this site. Number