Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops: Logon Duration

Combining in-depth Citrix data and Windows OS logging data, the Logon tab breaks down the user’s login from start to finish, providing the administrator with actionable metrics to reduce troubleshooting times.

The Logon tab is comprised of four main sections displaying a wide variety of data to assist in diagnosing slow logon times. Each of the logon stages is presented with easy to identify graphs to quickly see where the majority of time is spent in the process, saving you time getting to the root cause of potential problems.

Figure 1 - Session dialog - the Logon tab at a glance

From the top of the dialog, the first section presents general session information. This information will differ if you're reviewing a Published app or desktop session versus a Virtual Desktop. The example in Figure 2, below, displays a Virtual Desktop session, which includes the Delivery Group name, the endpoints IP address, the Citrix broker responsible for the connection and the version of Citrix Receiver\Workspace the endpoint has installed.

Figure 1.a - Virtual Desktop session information

The next area is a Logon summary where you can find actual logon duration time as well as session start, duration, and end time if applicable. the Logon time is the time from when a user initiates the Citrix session until they have keyboard and mouse control within that session. 

Multiple factors impact logon times, many of which are captured within the stage information below. Policy configuration, network latency, and even failing to open the Citrix launcher after initiating a session can all impact the logon times. Using the data below and relevant environmental or other information from your users when possible will help in troubleshooting and getting to root cause of long logon times.

Figure 1.b - Logon summary

Logon Stage Details

The Logon Stage Details section of the Logon tab is unique to Goliath Performance Monitor.  It presents a granular breakdown of the login process by combining all of the above metrics with information included in the Goliath logs. This approach saves time and testing efforts by highlighting specific details during the login process that an administrator would normally have to dig through logs and other areas to obtain.

Figure 5: Logon Stage Details

As seen in the image above, some of the stages of the logon process can be expanded to drill in to specifics about the individual logon stage process.

Note that some of the stages described below may not be present depending on your specific Citrix configuration (for example, the VM Start stage is only displayed when a VM is required to be started for the session).

The table below includes descriptions and additional details for each stage.

The Server Validation and Client Validation stages provide the times taken brokering the session between client and servers.

Phases of the logon process that go into Client Validation and Server Validation include, but are not limited to, following the user clicking on their desktop or application, are:

1. Storefront requests a session host from the Delivery Controller
2. Delivery Controller selects a session host
3. Delivery Controller sends session hostname & IP address to storefront
4. Storefront creates the ICA File and sends it to Citrix Receiver
5. Citrix Receiver launches the ICA File
6. Citrix Receiver determines and then checks that the connection to the session host can be established
7. Citrix Receiver establishes and ICA connection to the session host
8. Delivery Controller creates a user’s session
9. Delivery Controller processes Citrix policies
10. Session is brokered by the Delivery Controller to the session host
11. User authentication between domain controller and session host

The Authentication section is key to determining which domain controller processed the login as well as the time it took to read group policy objects.  One of the key metrics here are is the domain controller’s location.  An improper site configuration could have a client authenticating through a domain controller not local to the client.  Another key metric would be the client’s ability to read the Group Policy file and how long that read takes.

The GPO section displays the amount of time to process each group policy.   Long GPO processing could indicate invalid printer mapping and network drive mapping.

In summary, Goliath Performance Monitor's Logon tab provides administrators with a unique view into the login process by combining data from Citrix as well as Windows log information to assist in troubleshooting slow logons and getting to root cause much faster.

Example Troubleshooting Scenarios

Figure 6, below, depicts a real-world example of how the GPO stage identifies the root cause for slowness issues during a user's logon. This stage breaks out each policy name, the times each one takes, and a line graph providing an at-a-glance view of the total duration.

In this example, you can see that a VDI drive map added 180 seconds (indicative of a three minute timeout) which means the drive may not be available.

Figure 6: GPO Section of Logon Stage Details

Understanding Logon Stages and Logon Duration

In some cases, logon stage durations may not add up to to, or may exceed, the reported Logon duration time. This can be due to multiple factors, including:

• Citrix versions out of date or mismatched. Ensure all Citrix components and agents are up to date and consistent. Out dated versions can cause Citrix to incorrectly report stage data for the session.
• Parallel processing of stage data. Many stages in the log on process happen simultaneously which can impact how stage data is perceived relative to the logon time.
• In some stages more processing occurs resulting in a longer logon duration than the total displayed.

Session Brokering Stages

The middle section of the Logon tab displays the session brokering stage data for both the delivery controller and the Citrix Workspace startup stages.

Delivery Controller Stages

Figure 1.c - Delivery Controller Stages

• Credentials Authentication:
  • The time spent on the server authenticating the user credentials against Active Directory.

• Credentials Obtention:
  • The time taken for credentials to be passed through to the server. This is only likely to be a significant amount of time if a manual logon is used and the server side credentials dialog is displayed (or if a legal notice is displayed before the logon commences.)
• Credentials Obtention Network Server:
  • Network credential retrieval for pass-through authentication.
• Drive Mapping:
  • Client pass-through drives, port and device mapping.

• Login Script Execution:
  • Time spent executing user login scripts.

• Printer Creation:
  • The time spent mapping the user’s client printers.
• Profile Load:
  • The time spent loading the user’s profile.

•  Program Neighborhood Cred Obtention:
  • The time needed for the server to cause the Program Neighborhood instance running on the client to obtain the user credentials.
• Session Creation:
  • The time the server spends creating the session.
• Session Startup:
  • This is the high-level server-side connection start-up metric that encompasses the time XenDesktop takes to perform the entire start-up operation. When an application starts in a shared session, this metric is normally much smaller than when starting a new session, which involves potentially high cost tasks such as profile loading and login script execution.

Citrix Receiver Startup Stages

Figure 1.c - Citrix Receiver Startup Stages

• Application Enumeration Client:
  • Application enumeration is one of the issues slowing down session start times.
• Backup URL Client Count:
  • If this metric has a value higher than 1, it indicates the Web Interface server is unavailable and the Citrix Receiver is attempting to connect to back-up Web Interface servers to launch the application.
• Configuration Obtention Client Duration:
  • The time it takes to get the configuration file from the XML server
• Credentials Obtention Client:
  • The time it takes to obtain user credentials when the user credentials are manually entered by the user.
• ICA File Download:
  • The time it takes for the client to download the ICA file from the server.
• Launch Page Web Server Duration:
  • Review the information for IFDCD. The LPWD metric is only used when Web Interface is the application launch mechanism.
• Name Resolution Client:
  • This metric is collected when a client device directly queries the XML Broker to retrieve published application information stored in IMA (for example, when using Program Neighborhood or a Custom ICA Connection). NRCD is only gathered for new sessions since session sharing occurs during startup if a session already exists.

• Name Resolution Web Server:
  • When this metric is high, there could be an issue with the Web Interface server or the XenApp plugin site (formerly known as the Neighborhood Agent site), the XML Service, the network link between the two, or a problem in IMA.

• Reconnect Enum Client:
  • The time spent for the user’s client to get a list of reconnect-able sessions.
• Reconnect Enum Web Server:
  • The time it takes the Web Interface to get the list of reconnections for this user from the XML service.
• Session Creation Client:
  • The time it takes to create a new session, from the moment wfica32.exe is launched to when the connection is established.
• Session Lookup Client:
  • The time it takes to query every session to host the requested published application.
• Ticket Response Web Server:
  • The time it takes to get a ticket from the STA server or XML service.