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How To Use The Goliath Application Availability Monitor for Citrix Reports

The Organization:  Applicable to any Goliath Application Availability Monitor Customer

The Organization’s Infrastructure: Citrix XenApp and or Citrix XenDesktop

The Organization’s Performance Monitoring Products:  Goliath Application Availability Monitor for Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop

Understanding the Application Availability Report

The Goliath Application Availability Monitor for Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop (GAAM) provides time stamped information on all the stages of the end user logon process that were completed during a given simulation. The data provided in the report is very powerful and provides significant value to administrators because the information provided serves multiple purposes as detailed below;

      • Troubleshooting logon or application/desktop availability issues
      • Analyzing availability or performance trends over specific time frames
      • Validating the effectiveness of updated configuration related to the logon process such as profile changes
      • Providing objective evidence as to what the issue is, as well as proving what is not the issue
      • Validating that SLAs for availability and logon duration are being met

Although there is significant value in the report, there are times when the information conveyed is not always fully understood. Thus, we have created the following to provide a detailed explanation of how to read, interpret and use the data contained within the Simulation Success and Failure Analysis report.

About the Report:

The Simulation Success and Failure Analysis Report has to ability to be scheduled and sent to your inbox automatically on an interval basis or it can also be run on-demand when analysis is needed. The report includes all the necessary data points needed to confirm success or failure of a logon simulation as well as why it failed.

The following data sets are included with the report:

      • Server Name where the simulations ran
      • Date/Time the simulated session was launched
      • URL that was used to connect to the Citrix environment
      • Application/Desktop that was launched
      • Username of the simulated end user who launched the session
      • Status of whether the simulation was a success or failure
      • Isolation of the exact failure point such as the NetScaler/StoreFront or session brokering
      • Simulation log details

The “status” and “simulation result logs” provide the most actionable information for troubleshooting root-cause. The troubleshooting process begins with identifying a failed simulation and expanding the result logs to identify what caused the failure. Since GAAM is testing the entire logon process, failures can manifest in multiple ways. The most common failure and informational messages that are included in the result logs are detailed below. The will help to understand what can be identified, how it’s presented, and what to look for in the report:

  • SF Resources Page Not Found: This error is indicative of GAAM being unable to confirm that it has successfully signed into Storefront successfully. This error can manifest for 2 reasons, first is invalid user credentials and the second is the storefront server is down and not accepting logins.
  • Resource ‘______’ not found: This error entails that GAAM was unable to find the defined application/desktop on the Storefront page. When first deploying the simulator, please ensure that application/desktop is spelled correctly and matches the content on the page exactly. If the resource is spelled correctly, we often suggest our customers to do an ‘Inspect Element’ of the resource to ensure there is no hidden space characters that may not be visible to the naked eye. You will also want to confirm that the simulated end user has rights to the application/desktop.
  • WARNING: Unable to confirm that session launched for Resource= ‘_____’ and Title=’____’: This error is the result of GAAM being unable to confirm that the session has been successfully launched. Once the simulator clicks on the application/desktop, next the simulation will confirm that the session did indeed launch by using the defined window title for the application/desktop. If any windows open instead of the application, i.e. an error prompt, the window title will be included the lines above this message for you to reference.
  • Try #_ Waiting: This is an informational message, not an error message. With the simulation configuration process, a ‘Launch Timeout’ value is defined. This value is the threshold that is used for the stages of GAAM. If any stage of the simulation process, i.e. loading the page, signing in, finding the application, etc., exceeds the threshold the simulation is deemed as a failure. The ‘Try’ messages simply countdown how long it takes each stage to execute. If the ‘try’ reaches the value of the launch timeout, the simulation will result in a failure.
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Conclusion:

The Simulation Success and Failure Analysis report includes all the necessary data points required to confirm success or failure of a logon simulation. The data contained in the report, delivers significant value to administrators when troubleshooting logon availability issues because it provides objective evidence, and or documentation that proves the success or failure of end user logons to Citrix and if they did fail, isolates the exact failure point.

Do you think Goliath can add value to your organization? Reach out.
Email us at  techinfo@goliathtechnologies.com or schedule a demo, consultation or free trial.