eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by CtxXcXACityTest

The Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop environment is a shared environment hosting a wide variety of applications. Such applications will be accessed by users from different countries, cities and cities of the world at any time. In such a situation, it is administrator's responsibility to ensure a consistent experience for all users, regardless of their geographic location. When server resources are shared by users from multiple cities, excessive resource and bandwidth utilization by users from a specific city could impact the performance for users from other cities. Therefore, continuous monitoring of the activities of each and every city's users on the server is critical. Towards this end, the CtxXcXACityTest test assesses the traffic between the server and the user terminals and reveals the experience of users from different cities.

This test continuously monitors the resources taken up by a user's session on the server for each city. The results of this test can be used in troubleshooting and proactive monitoring. For example, when a user from a particular city reports a performance problem, administrators can quickly check the bandwidth utilized by that particular city's user, the CPU/memory/disk usage as well as the resource usage of user sessions established from other cities. The administrator also has access to details on the number of application processes launched by the users from each city and time taken for the same. This information can be used to spot a particular city from which the maximum number of application processes are launched on the target server.

Outputs of the test: One set of results for each city from which users are accessing the Citrix XenApp server that is being monitored

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
No_of_sessions Indicates the total number of user sessions established from this city. Number  
CPU_usage Indicates the percentage of CPU utilized by the processes being run by user from this city. Percent A high value for this measure is a cause of concern.

Comparing the value of this measure across cities helps administrators in identifying the city from which too much of CPU resources are being utilized.
Memory_usage Indicates the percentage of memory utilized by the processes being run by user from this city. Percent A high value for this measure is a cause of concern.

Comparing the value of this measure across cities helps administrators in identifying the city from which too much of memory resources are being utilized.
IO_reads Indicates the rate of I/O reads done by all processes being run by a user from this city. KB/sec Comparison across different cities helps identify the city from which the most I/O-intensive processes are being run by users.
IO_writes Indicates the rate of I/O writes done by all processes being run by a user from this city. KB/sec  
Total_iops Indicates the rate at which the I/O reads and writes done by all processes being run by a user from this city. KB/sec  
Avg_session_refresh Indicates the average time interval measured at the client between the first step (user action) and the last step (graphical response displayed) of the user's interactions with the XenApp server. The value reported is the average of the latencies for all the current users sessions established from this city.  Seconds This is a measurement of the screen lag that a user experiences while interacting with the XenApp server. In other words, is the latency detected from when the user hits a key until the response is displayed.

Comparing the value of this measure across users from different cities will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify if the screen lag is significantly higher for any of the cities when users from that particular are interacting with the XenApp server.

If both the Avg_session_refresh and Avg_ica_network measures report high values, it implies that network slowness is contributing to user-perceived Citrix slowness (i.e., the problem is not due to the Citrix servers, but probably due to the network connection that the user is connecting from - e.g., a wireless WAN).

If Screen refresh latency is high and Client network latency is low, this implies that there is a bottleneck in the Citrix stack that is causing user experience to be poor (e.g., overloaded server or virtual platform, slowness in storage, etc.). Slowness can also occur because of client-side processing delays on the receiver end.
Max_session_refresh Indicates the maximum time interval measured at the client between the first step (user action) and the last step (graphical response displayed) of the user's interactions with the XenApp server. Seconds Ideally, the value of this measure is preferred to be low.
Avg_ica_network Indicates the average latency experienced by a user from this city when transmitting/receiving data over the ICA channel. The value reported is the average of the latencies for all the current users sessions established from this city.  Seconds This measure represents the network latency detected between the ICA client and the Citrix XenApp server being monitored.

If both the Avg_session_refresh and Avg_ica_network measures report high values, it implies that network slowness is contributing to user-perceived Citrix slowness (i.e., the problem is not due to the Citrix servers, but probably due to the network connection that the user is connecting from - e.g., a wireless WAN).

If Avg_session_refresh and Avg_ica_network are low, this implies that there is a bottleneck in the Citrix stack that is causing user experience to be poor (e.g., overloaded server or virtual platform, slowness in storage, etc.). Slowness can also occur because of client-side processing delays on the receiver end.
Max_ica_network Indicates the maximum latency experienced by a user from this city when transmitting/receiving data over the ICA channel. Seconds  
Input_bandwidth Indicates the average bandwidth used for client to server communications for all the sessions of a user from this city. Kbps  
Output_bandwidth Indicates the average bandwidth used for server to client communications for all the sessions of a user from this city. Kbps  
Total_bandwidth Indicates the total bandwidth used for communication between the server and the client for all the sessions of a user from this city. Kbps  
Output_bandwidth_usage Indicates the percentage of bandwidth used for server to client communications for all the sessions of a user from this city. Percent Compare the value of this measure across cities to know which city's user is consuming the maximum HDX bandwidth.
Frame_rate Indicates the rate at which frames are processed during user sessions established from this city. Frames/sec FPS is how fast your graphics card can output individual frames each second. It is the most time-tested and ideal measure of performance of a GPU. Higher the value of this measure, healthier is the GPU.
Framehawk_frame_rate Indicates the rate at which frames are processed by the Framehawk virtual channel, if it is enabled for user sessions from this city. Frames/sec This is a good measure of the effectiveness of Framehawk in optimizing the bandwidth usage over the virtual delivery channel. A low value is desired for this measure.

Note:

This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user from a city or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk.
Framehawk_latency Indicates the latency experienced by user session from this city when the Framehawk virtual delivery channel is used. Seconds Compare the value of this measure across users to know which user is consuming the maximum HDX bandwidth.
Total_audio_bandwidth Indicates the total bandwidth used while transmitting and receiving sound/audio by users from this city. Kbps Comparing this value across cities will reveal which city's users sre sending/receiving bandwidth-intensive sound/audio files over the ICA channel.

To minimize bandwidth consumption, you may want to consider disabling client audio mapping.
Total_media_bandwidth Indicates the total bandwidth used for flash data traffic between users from this city and virtual desktop. Kbps  
Total_print_bandwidth Indicates the total bandwidth used by a user from this city to issue print jobs to a desktop printer and receive response from the desktop over the ICA channel. Kbps Comparing the value of this measure across different cities will reveal which city's users are issuing bandwidth-intensive print commands over the channel.

If bandwidth consumption is too high, you may want to consider disabling printing. Alternatively, you can avoid printing large documents.
Total_app_launch_count Indicates the count of application processes launched during the user sessions established from this city. Number By comparing the value of this measure across cities, administrators will be able to find out the city from which maximum number of application processes are launched.
Total_app_launch_time Indicates the time taken for launching application processes during the user sessions established from this city. Seconds An unusually high value for this measure may require investigation.
Total_logon_count Indicates the number of user logons from this city. Number  
Total_logon_time Indicates the time that users from this city took to logon to the server. Seconds The value of this measure should be low.