Until now, Citrix system administrators with responsibility for XenApp and XenDesktop had no way to anticipate the end user experience, therefore, were only able to be reactive to complaints from users. Being proactive is now achievable as Goliath gives you the ability to create the same analysis for both real and simulated users, which allows administrators to proactively initiate user sessions with simulated users and analyze performance prior to real end users attempt to access their applications. Imagine that you can truly know what a user’s experience is going to be before they do!
With the Goliath Performance Monitor you will know what the end users will experience during logon initiation, the logon process and while in their Citrix session. This isn’t possible without key features that I will explain in this blog post, and to my knowledge, this capability is not available in any other single solution. Many of the Citrix Administrators, Citrix CTP’s and consultants we talked to while designing the product told us that they have attempted to accomplish the goal of being truly proactive but they had to leverage multiple different products and scripts, but still couldn’t get it done. Now, this very difficult objective can be achieved by utilizing a single product with the following key features:
Logon Simulation
With the Goliath Application Availability Monitor (GAAM), Citrix Administrators can finally become proactive when it comes to Citrix logon issues. GAAM is the only software available that tests the entire Citrix delivery infrastructure, both locally and remotely, by simulating the exact same steps a user would take during the Citrix logon process. This allows you to identify the root cause of logon issues, whether they fail or are simply slow, and resolve them before end users complain.
In this diagram, from left to right, the logon simulator initiates the logon process with simulated users which follow the same exact steps a user would, thereby exercising the entire Citrix Infrastructure including passing through the NetScaler, Storefront and other elements in the delivery infrastructure. In this example, a profile didn’t load but the root cause was active directory.
ICA Channel Dashboard
ICA Latency is the key indicator of Citrix session slowness as it takes into consideration server slowness and network performance in a single value to indicate user experience. By drilling down into the Citrix ICA Channel, you can track the bandwidth usage by channel – Audio, Video, Clipboard, Printer, KB & Mouse response, and Connection Speed – to identify the root cause of session slowness or performance degradation. Sample image below:
Logon Duration Breakdown
The Logon Duration Analysis real time dashboard lets you troubleshoot and resolve logon slowness issues by breaking down each stage of the logon process so you can determine exactly where the slowness is occurring by total logon time, authentication, profile load, group policy processing, script execution and interactive display load.
Logon Duration Report
The Logon Duration Report gives you a historical view of the entire logon process for all users during the time period you specify. This allows you to determine the root cause of user logon slowness by drilling down into each stage in the logon process including, total logon time, authentication, profile load, group policy processing, script execution and interactive display load. With this report, you can easily troubleshoot and resolve logon issues reported by users during a specified period of time.
User Application Task Visibility
With our End User Application Task Visibility, you can see what users are doing within an application and the resource utilization. For example, if a user was streaming audio and video, not only would you see how many resources an application was using, but also the specific content the user was streaming.
End User Experience Report
Run a report of all users or any specific user over a period of time to identify and troubleshoot slow Citrix sessions. The End User Experience Report allows you to first determine if a user’s session was slow and then correlate that to the connection speed and where the user launched the session from to narrow potential root cause.
End to End Connection Report
With the End-to-End Connection Report, you can run a report for a specified period of time for all users to see trends and troubleshoot user slowness caused by connection routes. The report correlates end user experience metrics to the exact combination of the Web Interface, Broker, and server for each user’s session.
This is a very exciting new release for our customers because these features allow them to truly be proactive in the three areas that most commonly cause ticket related issues – logon initiation, logon process and session performance.
If you want a fully supported 30-day free trial or personal demonstration of this software, please go here. If you just have a question or comment feel free to email us at techinfo@goliathtechnologies.com