NetScaler Request Flow Dashboard

Typically, when monitoring a Citrix ADC VPX/VPX appliance, eG Enterprise tracks the request traffic to the appliance and automatically discovers how the traffic flows within the NetScaler ecosystem. In other words, eG intelligently auto-discovers the virtual servers, services/service groups, and nodes (in a server farm), using which the appliance load-balances the traffic, and also reports the health of these virtual entities. Using this information, eG Enterprise offers administrators with a holistic, at-a-glance view of the request flow on demand using the NetScaler Request Flow Dashboard. For a chosen NetScaler appliance, this dashboard quickly reveals which virtual servers front-ended client requests, which services/service groups were being requested, and which nodes (in the server farm) fielded the requests. The health of each of these virtual entities can also be instantly determined using this dashboard.

To access the dashboard, navigate through the menu sequence: Monitor -> Dashboards -> Digital Workspaces -> Netscaler Request Flow. Alternately, you can access the dashboard by clicking the icon available on top of the layer model of the Citrix ADC VPX/MPX component. The dashboard with the NetScaler Load Balancing Flow as the first section will then appear.

Using the NetScaler Load Balancing Flow section, administrators can figure out which virtual servers front-ended client requests, which services/service groups were being requested, and which nodes (in the server farm) fielded the requests. This way, administrators can figure out load balancing irregularities (if any) on the virtual servers, services/service groups and nodes.

The Top 5 Service Groups by Established connections section reveals the list of service groups configured on the target Citrix ADC VPX/MPX appliance based on the maximum number of server connections that were in Established state. This section also reveals the total number of server connections bound to each service group and the count of packets received by each service group. Using this section, administrators can exactly pin-point the service group on which maximum number of connections were established. Administrators can also identify the service group on which maximum number of packets were received.

The Top 5 Services by Established connections section reveals the list of services configured on the target Citrix ADC VPX/MPX appliance based on the maximum number of server connections that were in Established state. This section also reveals the total number of server connections bound to each service, the data throughput and the count of request hits to each service. Using this section, administrators can isolate the service that is catering the requests more extensively.

The Top 5 Virtual Servers with Lowest Health Status section reveals the virtual servers that are currently exhibiting poor health percentage. In addition, this test also reveals the count of server connections bound to each virtual server and the count of packets received by each virtual server. This way, this section helps administrators isolate unhealthy/abnormal virtual servers and detect inconsistencies in load balancing based on the request packets received by each virtual server.

The next section reveals a series of doughnuts (Power CPU usage and the Management CPU usage) that reveals how well CPU resources are utilized by the target Citrix ADC VPX/MPX appliance. The Memory usage doughnut reveals the percentage of memory utilized by the target appliance.

The next section reveals the input and output throughput of the network interfaces that are configured on the target Citrix ADC VPX/MPX appliance. This section also reveals the count of HTTP v 1.1 requests received by the target appliance. This section will help administrators figure out if the target appliance is consistently responding to requests or is it experiencing slowdowns?

If multiple Citrix ADC VPX/MPX appliances are monitored in your target environment, you can choose the appliance of your choice from the drop down list available against the NetScaler Request Flow Dashboard label in this page.