Troubleshoots Citrix, Windows & Mac EUE Issues

“The initial reasons for selecting Goliath Performance Monitor were the rare combination of purpose-built functionality for monitoring Citrix XenApp and the supporting VMware vSphere virtual infrastructure. We have extended the utilization of Goliath to monitor XenDesktop 7.6 farm and added functionality like Goliath Application Availability Monitor for Citrix daily health check reports to proactively ensure end-to-end connectivity so users have seamless access to Citrix delivered applications.”

– Chris Mielke, Infrastructure & Security Services Lead at Drake University

Infrastructure

Citrix XenApp 7.6, Citrix XenDesktop 7.6, & Citrix XenServer 6.5

Challenge

End Users Experience Issues with Virtualized Windows on Mac OS

The Drake Infrastructure Team was having an issue with the performance of virtualized Microsoft Windows instances on Mac OS. More specifically, the College of Business users or students were having performance issues when attempting to use Excel.

Solution

The Drake Team worked with their integrator, Choice Solutions, to leverage Goliath for Monitoring Citrix XenApp and monitoring vSphere virtual infrastructure to troubleshoot and isolate server resources as the root cause of the performance issues. Once the failure point was identified, they were able to resolve the issue quickly by adding server capacity.

The figure below shows how the logon stages are broken down within a single user session and the screen an administrator sees to diagnosis root cause.

Beyond the performance issue related to Windows, the team has also been able to resolve storage latency issues and in general maintain a proactive IT posture by monitoring Citrix, Monitoring vSphere, and Citrix end user experience.

In addition to Goliath Performance Monitor’s Citrix reporting functionality, Chris now also uses the Goliath Application Availability Monitor to proactively get ahead of any potential logon issues in Drake’s Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 environment.

This ensures a positive end user experience from session logon and duration to session performance. Chris stated that, “the logon data captured is very good, because of the deep visibility gained as a result of testing the entire Citrix delivery infrastructure, including the NetScaler.”

Results

To resolve the Windows and Mac OS performance issue, Chris needed objective evidence that isolated the root cause of the issue. This can only be had using a comprehensive Citrix monitoring tool that also deeply monitors Vmware vSphere. From there, Chris and his team could ultimately prevent the issue from occurring again.

With his selection of Goliath Technologies for his Citrix and VMware vSphere monitoring needs, Chris is now proactively providing Drake’s students with a positive Citrix end user experience.