Problem

The Application Availability Monitor is identifying high logon launch times.

Identifying Root Cause

Overview of the Goliath Application Availability Monitor (GAAM)

There’s nothing more proactive than identifying an issue before a user encounters it - and that’s exactly what GAAM enables you to do. GAAM's objective is to prevent end users from having issues like network connectivity, application enumeration, logon duration, etc..

GAAM can be deployed to remote locations or in the cloud to receive advanced warning for each of the issues mentioned above. Ultimately, this allows you to identify site specific, regional and or geographic issues, or prove that there is no real problem. GAAM can be configured to launch Citrix sessions, however frequent, and when failures occur or thresholds are breached real-time alert notifications are triggered and sent.

GAAM Analysis & Troubleshooting

As mentioned above, threshold-based alerts can be configured with GAAM so that if an application does successfully launch, however it does not meet an SLA for launch time, an alert is triggered.

This can be viewed (both present and historic) from the Application Availability > Analysis page. Please note, the "launch time" metric GAAM is calculating is from when the technology clicks on the application to when it determines that the application has been launched. This metric is not to be confused with logon duration. Even though the metrics are similar, it is important to note that GAAM is running independently from the Citrix datacenter so the exact logon time is unknown. However, the launch time provides a very close estimate. On the other hand, when integrated with Goliath Performance Monitor (GPM), the true logon duration for the session is captured via our Citrix API integration. 

 To investigate the logon duration of a GAAM launch go to the Views - Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops page. This page is divided into 3 areas: App Servers and Published App & Desktops (for Citrix XenApp environments) and Virtual Desktops (for XenDesktop environments). Navigate to the applicable section for your environment (Published App & Desktop or Virtual Desktops) to troubleshoot further.

These displays include user session data (both past and present) for your real end users as well the GAAM users, and allows you to track the complete user experience through the environment, from the login at the endpoint, all the way through the environment back to the underlying infrastructure, and present these data points over the course of the session so you can troubleshoot any issue that takes place during a user’s session.

In the case of logon duration for GAAM users, you can use the search option (at the bottom of the page) to filter the page to match a time period and user(s) that you'll want to focus on. Once the page is filtered, to analyze the 33+ stages of the users logon process, click on any of the user session to drill into the session metrics. Once the detail dialog opens, navigate to the Logon Duration tab. This tab is divided into three sections: the top area provides the logon summary showing the high-level stages of the overall logon process, and then the next two sections display the details of what is happening in the brokering stages and the launch of the session on the App Server or VDI.

Figure 1 - Session dialog - Logon Duration tab 

Root Cause

Many times, the GAAM metric for launch time is confused with true Citrix logon duration. The above items review the differences as well as walk you through the process of starting with GAAM and moving to GPM.