One of the single biggest issues that Citrix administrators are forced to deal with is the sheer complexity of their Citrix systems. Not only is there complexity associated with the Citrix software itself, but the Citrix software also has a dependency upon a number of supporting infrastructure components. All of this complexity can make troubleshooting extraordinarily difficult whenever problems arise. An inexperienced administrator may not even know where to start.
Even if an organization’s Citrix deployment has always performed flawlessly, the administrative staff will still have to cope with the underlying complexity as a part of its capacity planning efforts. If additional users are going to be added to the system for example, then administrators will need to know whether any of its resources are already being strained, and whether or not the system can realistically be expected to handle the increased workload.
If performed manually, troubleshooting or evaluating the capacity of a Citrix system can be a monumental and time-consuming task that requires an administrator to have a very deep understanding of the underlying network and systems architectures. As an alternative however, Goliath Technologies provides a Topology View feature that can help administrators to pinpoint issues in just a few clicks.
“Goliath’s Topology View is a graphical tool that automatically detects and maps an organization’s entire Citrix deployment, including all of its subcomponents… This allows you to capture the overall status and health of your entire Citrix infrastructure at a single glance.”
Goliath’s Topology View is a graphical tool that automatically detects and maps an organization’s entire Citrix deployment, including all of its subcomponents. This includes things like Citrix storefronts, hypervisors, delivery controllers, databases, and more. Furthermore, each of these individual components is color-coded, as an indication of its general health. A component that is displayed within a green circle, for instance, is known to be healthy, while a component that is displayed within a red circle is performing sub-optimally. This allows you to capture the overall status and health of your entire Citrix infrastructure at a single glance.
If an organization is experiencing problems with its Citrix infrastructure, Goliath Technologies’ Topology View is going to display that one individual component in red, while everything else on the chart is shown in green. The reason for this is that there is a complex structure of interdependencies between the components. Therefore, if one infrastructure component is experiencing problems, there is likely to be a chain reaction effect in which a series of other components with direct or indirect dependencies on that component are also affected. Topology View illustrates the relationships between the various components and shows how an issue with one component impacts other components within the hierarchy.
Having the ability to see the infrastructure as a whole and the relationships between the various components is hugely important from a troubleshooting standpoint because it can save admins from chasing dead ends while attempting to resolve a problem. Imagine for example, that an organization is having problems with their Citrix infrastructure, and that the symptoms point to an issue with a Citrix delivery controller. In spite of the symptoms, the delivery controller may or may not be the true cause of the problem. It could very well be that the delivery controller is actually fine and that the real source of the problem is a backend infrastructure component such as a database. So with that in mind, just imagine how much time an administrator might waste manually trying to figure out what is wrong with a delivery controller that is actually healthy.
Now consider how Topology View is part of the Goliath Performance Monitor technology which can monitor the entire infrastructure and alert on any lower level components that are in an unhealthy state. An administrator would be alerted to issues relating to back-end components and problems that are lower in the stack.”
The administrator could then use the information provided by Topology View to track the issue to its source. By drilling down a little further, the administrator would receive actionable information that they could use to resolve the problem.
An organization’s Citrix infrastructure is by far one of its most critical IT resources. As such, IT pros are under tremendous pressure to keep the Citrix environment healthy and to immediately resolve any issues that may occur. Topology View from Goliath Technologies can greatly simplify such troubleshooting efforts, while also saving administrators from spending hours trying to manually trace issues across complex, interconnected infrastructure components.
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