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    Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop 7.X, 7 18xx & 7 19xx Monitoring Configuration Guide

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    Heather Hanlon
    • Updated

    This article was updated to support v11.7.8 and newer of Goliath Performance Monitor.

    Prerequisites

    • Service Account with Read Only Citrix Admin Rights within Citrix Studio and Local Admin Rights on the Delivery Controller required for Citrix 7.X, 7 18xx and 7 19xx Inventory & Metric Collection.
      • If using Citrix PVS, the above service account must also be a member of the PVS Farm Administrator group and have Local Admin Rights on the Provisioning Servers
      • Citrix Profile Manager must be enabled for Logon Duration metrics
    • Windows 7-10 (Desktop), 2008 R2 – 2016 (Server)
      • Full foreign language support for Windows installation of English, German, French and Spanish are supported for Session details and ICA Latency metrics. Partial foreign language support for Logon Duration.
    • PowerShell 2.0 or newer required
    • Support for real-time process metrics can be resource intensive requiring us to determine viability that we would test in the implementation.

    Monitoring Configuration

    Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop monitoring can be configured multiple ways. The below sections will take you through the configuration process to begin monitoring Citrix XenApp and or XenDesktop to automatically collect Delivery Group Inventory, Session Data Collection, and Health Check Monitoring. 

    Please Note: in this document we refer to XenApp as being published applications and desktops and XenDesktop as being VDI

    Before proceeding, if you are licensed for VMware vCenter or Citrix Xenserver for hypervisor monitoring, it is required to configure the hypervisor monitoring first, before attempting to configure the Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop environment(s). If this has not been done please reference the appropriate configuration articles to do do.

     

    A. Configuration via Wizard

    These steps will take you through the configuration process to begin monitoring Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop to automatically collect Delivery Group Inventory, User Session Data, and enable Citrix session monitoring. The wizard will also assemble the Network Topology view which will take about 5-10 minutes to create upon completion of the wizard.

    1. From the ‘Configuration Wizard’, select the icon for ‘XenApp & XenDesktop’
    2. Select ‘Citrix XenApp’ or ‘Citrix XenDesktop’ as appropriate and then select the ‘Next’ button

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    1. You will be prompted for the connection information on the ‘Add your Citrix Delivery Controllers, Storefronts & NetScaler’ page

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    1. Click the ‘Add’ button on the right-hand side and complete the requested information for the Delivery Controller:
      1. Enter the Hostname of one of your delivery controllers and then the IP address
      2. Click the drop-down menu in the ‘Role’ field and choose ‘Delivery Controller’
      3. Provide admin credentials in the form of ‘domain\user’. These credentials will be used for one-time authentication to install the Goliath Agent
      4. An account with Citrix Admin Rights within Citrix Studio is required for metric collection on an ongoing basis. If the account you would like to use is the same as the above account click ‘Apply’. If you would like to use a separate account uncheck the box for ‘Also Use…’ and enter the appropriate credentials. When finished click ‘Apply’
      5. If you have more than one Citrix Site that you would like to monitor, please repeat this step to add the other delivery controller but set the role to be "other role server".
      6. If you have more than one Delivery Controller for the same Citrix Site that you would like to monitor, please repeat this step to add the other delivery controller(s) but set the role to be "other role server". mceclip4.png
    1. Click the ‘Add’ button on the right-hand side and complete the requested information for a Storefront Server:
      1. Enter the Hostname of one of your storefront/web interface servers and then the IP address
      2. Click the drop-down menu in the ‘Role’ field and choose ‘Storefront’
      3. Enter the hostname for one of the Citrix Site Delivery Controllers connected to this storefront.
      4. Provide admin credentials in the form of ‘domain\user’. These credentials will be used for one-time authentication to install the Goliath Agent
      5. If you have more than one Citrix Site that you would like to monitor please repeat this step to add the other storefronts. Goliath will automatically identify your remaining site storefront servers.

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    1. Click the ‘Add’ button on the right-hand side and complete the requested information for a NetScaler:
      1. Enter the Hostname of one of your NetScaler gateways and then the IP address
      2. Click the drop-down menu in the ‘Role’ field and choose ‘NetScaler’
      3. Enter the hostname for one of the Citrix Site Delivery Controllers connected to this NetScaler.
      4. Please note, this is an agentless configuration used for ICMP monitoring and is not dependent on Citrix Session monitoring

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    1. If you would like to add in other role servers like domain controllers, license servers, SQL Servers, PVS servers etc. (which is recommended for optimal data in the Topology view) click the ‘Add’ button on the right-hand side and complete the requested information:
      1. Enter the Hostname of one of the role server and then the IP address
      2. Click the drop-down menu in the ‘Role’ field and choose ‘Other Role Server’
      3. Provide admin credentials in the form of ‘domain\user’. These credentials will be used for one-time authentication to install the Goliath Agent
      4. Repeat the above until all role servers are added

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    1. When all machines have been added, click the ‘Next’ button to continue. The Goliath Agent will now be deployed to the Delivery Controller, Storefront Server and any other role server defined. When deployment is finished click the ‘Next’

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    1. The Save and Finish screen will now appear, select ‘Finish’ to close the configuration wizard and enter the technology.
    2. Your Citrix environment will now populate into the product. Navigate to the Configure tab and choose the Inventory sub menu to view your environment.
      1. Please note, this can take an estimated 1-5 minutes depending on the size of your environment. 
    3. After about 2-5 minutes if you ‘Refresh’ the inventory page you should now see your XenApp/XenDesktop inventory indicated by the citrix icon in the ‘OS’ column.

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    B. Manual Configuration from Inventory

    1. Navigate to the Configure tab, and select the ‘Inventory’ sub menu
    2. On the inventory page, locate the Delivery Controller.
      1. If it is not listed within the product, you can add it by clicking the ‘New’ button at the bottom of the page and completing the appropriate information. (name, ip address, domain, etc)
    3. Next, identify whether or not an agent has been installed onto the Delivery Controller. You can do this by looking in the ‘Stat’ column for that inventory entry. If there is a green box in that column, you can proceed the Step 10. If there is no box in that column, or the box is red, please proceed to the next step.
    4. In order to enable Citrix monitoring and inventory collection we’ll need to first deploy an agent to the Delivery Controller. This can be done by selecting ‘Manage Agents’ at the bottom of the page.
    5. When the ‘Manage Agent’ screen appears, select the Delivery Controller(s) that you would like to deploy an agent to.
    6. The first time an agent is deployed to a server, you must choose the ‘Deployment Settings’ button and enter one-time local administrator credentials in order to copy over and run the install files. These credentials are not saved anywhere in the database. Once an agent connection has been establish this step is not needed.
    7. Click the ‘Install/Update Agents’ button at the bottom of the screen to begin the agent installation.
    8. You will see a prompt warning you to enter credentials if this is the 1st agent deployment, click ok the bypass and begin the agent installation
    9. Depending on the number of Agents that are being installed, the process may take a few minutes to complete.
      1. You will see green checkboxes appear as the agent installation succeeds
    10. Once all agents have been installed, you will receive a prompt that the installation is complete. You can click the ‘Close’ button at the bottom of the screen to return to the inventory page.
    11. Once on the Inventory screen, you can confirm that the agents are connecting into the product by looking at the ‘stat’ column and identifying a green box. This could process could take a 1-3 minutes, you’ll need to refresh the page as well.
      1. Please note, if you do not see any icon in the ‘Stat’ column after 5 minutes, confirm that the Goliath Server is accepting inbound TCP communication on all firewall levels (Domain, public, private) and that the server where the agent is installed is allowing outbound TCP communication for all firewall levels.
    12. Once the agent for the Delivery Controller is connected, select the inventory entry and click the ‘Edit’ button at the bottom of the page.
    13. When the edit pane is open for the Delivery Controller, under the ‘Enable Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop Monitoring Options’ section and check the boxes for which components you would like to enable monitoring for and inventory population as appropriate to your environment.
    14. Next, in order for the metric and inventory collection to take place, define a Citrix Admin credentials. These credentials will be used on an ongoing basis to gather metrics from Citrix
    15. If you would like your Citrix environment to be grouped within Goliath Performance Monitor by Delivery Group, check the box for inventory Auto-Update
    16. After all of the above settings have been applied, select the ‘Save’ button to close the Delivery Controller and apply the changes.
    17. Once the Delivery Controller settings are saved, restart the agent service. This can be done by clicking the green box in the ‘Stat’ column and approving the agent restart prompt.
    18. After about 2-5 minutes if you ‘Refresh’ the inventory page you should now see your XenApp/XenDesktop inventory indicated by the citrix icon in the ‘OS’ column.

    The XenApp & XenDesktop configuration is now complete.

    Post Configuration: What’s Next?

    Now that Citrix monitoring has been enabled in Goliath Performance Monitor, to start collecting user session data and alerting on faults taking place you’ll need to deploy an agent onto your session hosts and VDI’s. Please see additional documentation. 

    Please note: If you are using PVS or MCS to deploy your Citrix environment, the agent will need to be installed into the Gold and or Master Image(s). 

    Agent Installation/Update via the Goliath Console

    Agent Installation/Update for Gold Images, Master Images, & Templates

    Silent Agent Installation/Update

    Agent Installation/Update via Installer

    Agent Installation/Update via Command Line

     

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