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 in 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.

Figure 1.b - Logon summary

Logon Duration Brokering Stages

The middle section of the Logon tab displays the logon duration brokering stage data for both the delivery controller and the Citrix Receiver 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 reconnectable 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.

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.

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 Scenario

Figure 6, depicts a real-world example of how the GPO section identifies the root cause for slowness issues during a user’s logon. This section breaks out each policy name, the time each one takes and a Gantt chart showing the duration of each police. Here you see that a VDI drive map adding 180 seconds with is indicative of a 3 minute timeout which means that the drive in this case may not be available. 

 Figure 6: GPO Section of Logon Stage Details