Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp 5.8

When you deploy Foglight™ for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp and set up the monitoring agents for data collection, the XenDesktop Environment dashboard enables you to review the performance of your environment at a glance. use this dashboard to ensure consistent application performance, by drilling down for details about individual components, to look for the indicators of performance degradation, such as high CPU load or network utilization.

A typical XenDesktop® environment contains a set of servers, delivery groups, desktops, and applications. You can view the overall state of these components on the XenDesktop Environment dashboard. To access this dashboard, under Dashboards, click XenDesktop.

Figure 12. XenDesktop Environment dashboard

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Exploring the XenDesktop Environment dashboard

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Activating Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp licenses

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Investigating the performance of XenDesktop infrastructure components

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Monitoring Desktops

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Monitoring Applications

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Monitoring Sessions

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Monitoring Users

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Monitoring Delivery Groups

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Monitoring vSphere resources

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Viewing object dependencies

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Reviewing Frequently Asked Questions

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Generating reports

Exploring the XenDesktop Environment dashboard

The XenDesktop Environment dashboard provides a set of tabs, each displaying a different aspect of your monitored system.

Figure 13. XenDesktop Environment tabs

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Monitoring: Use this tab to review data specific to the main components of your monitored environment such as servers, delivery groups, desktops, applications, sessions, or vSphere resources. When you navigate to the XenDesktop Environment dashboard for the first time, the Monitoring tab appears open. This tab provides an overall summary of your monitored environment. It is described in this section.

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Reports: Use this tab to run and schedule Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp reports. For more information, see Generating reports.

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FAQts: Use this tab to review the answers to common questions about your monitored systems. For more information, see Reviewing Frequently Asked Questions.

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Administration: Use this tab to discover XenDesktop® hosts, and to manage XenDesktop Agent instances. For more information, see Setting up data collection agents .

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Getting Started: Use this tab to activate, purchase, or renew your Foglight license. For more information, see Activating Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp licenses.

Selecting monitored objects

A set of tiles along the top of the Monitoring tab gives you a quick overview of the monitored objects: servers, delivery groups, desktops, applications, sessions, and vSphere® resources. Each tile represents a collection of a specific object type, shows the object count, and the count of objects in each alarm state (Normal, Warning, Critical, and Fatal).

Figure 14. Tiles representing monitored objects

The Quick View appearing immediately below the tiles allows you to select a specific instance of the tile selection. From here, you can drill down on a desired object instance, and review the related monitoring metrics.

Figure 15. Drilling down on object in Quick View

Observing alarms

If any alarms are generated against certain types of monitored objects, they appear on the Monitoring tab, along the bottom of the summary view on the right. Drill down on an alarm to find out what triggered it, and to take steps to investigate further.

Figure 16. Drilling down on alarm

For complete information about alarms in Foglight™ for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp, see the Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp User Guide.

Activating Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp licenses

Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp is license-protected. When you install it for the first time, it comes with a 40-day trial license. You can activate it using the Getting Started tab. You can also use this tab to purchase or renew your Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp license when your existing trial or commercial license expires. For more information, see the Foglight for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp Release Notes.

Figure 17. Getting Started tab

Investigating the performance of XenDesktop infrastructure components

A typical XenDesktop® infrastructure consists the following high-level components:

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XenDesktop Site represents your monitored XenDesktop environment, consisting of Delivery Controllers, virtual desktops that they distribute to end-users, and other associated components.

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Delivery Controllers distribute virtual desktops to end-users, manage user access, and optimize connections.

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License servers allow Citrix® licenses to be shared among application components.

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StoreFronts represent services that provide users with access to applications and desktops.

You can monitor the performance of these components when you select the XenDesktop Infrastructure tile on the XenDesktop Environment dashboard.

The information appearing in the XenDesktop Infrastructure Quick View can help you discover potential resource-level issues such as spikes in session trends, and to reallocate resources where they are most needed.

Figure 18. XenDesktop Infrastructure Quick View

To explore XenDesktop Sites, Delivery Controllers, and License Servers:

On the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click XenDesktop Environment.

On the XenDesktop Environment dashboard, on the Monitoring tab, click the XenDesktop Infrastructure tile.

In the XenDesktop Infrastructure Quick View, in the XenDesktop Infrastructure view on the left, click Site Overview.

The XenDesktop Infrastructure Quick View refreshes, showing the Summary - XenDesktop Site view on the right.

This view displays general information about the monitored XenDesktop site and shows the high-level performance trends in session counts, logon duration, machine and connection failures, and so on. For more information, see Exploring XenDesktop sites.

In the left pane, select a License Server, Delivery Controller, or Storefront.

The XenDesktop Infrastructure Quick View refreshes, showing the summary information about the selected component on the right.

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When the Application tile on left is selected this view shows the list of services running on the selected License Server or Delivery Controller, and displays any alarms associated with it.

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When you select Guest, the view shows the usage of system resources on the machine on which the selected License Server or Delivery Controller is running.

For more information, see Investigating the use of License Server, Delivery Controller, and Storefront resources.

Explore a License Server, Controller, or Storefront in more detail. In the top-right corner of the view, click Explore.

The display area refreshes.

The resulting view helps you understand the state of the resources of the host on which the License Server, Controller, or Storefront is running, if that host is already monitored with Foglight™ for Infrastructure. You can observe how the existing resource levels affect your monitored system as a whole. Along with displaying the system, network, CPU, memory, disk usage metrics, and any related alarms, this intuitive dashboard connects these visual elements with a series of graphical flows that illustrate how quickly the hosts transmits and processes data in real time. For example, you can review the rates of incoming and outgoing data and how they affect your network resources.

For more information, see Exploring individual License Servers and Controllers.


	TIP: To return to the XenDesktop Environment dashboard, use the bread crumb trail in the top-left corner.

If you want to view the relationship your monitored XenDesktop site has with other components in your integrated environment, in the top-right corner, click View Dependency.

The display area refreshes, showing two tabs. Use the information appearing on these dependency maps to better understand the dependencies between the related components, and to look for any signs that may indicate potential performance degradation:

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Delivery Group View: A Delivery Group specifies which users can access Desktops or Applications based on their user type. This tab illustrates the relationships between main components associated with the Delivery Groups that belong to the selected XenDesktop site, including any Delivery Groups, Desktops, and Applications provided by the Delivery Groups.

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Infrastructure View: This tab illustrates the relationships between main infrastructure elements components associated with the Delivery Groups that belong to the selected XenDesktop site, such as the NetScaler Gateway, StoreFront Server, Delivery Controller, Domain Controller Database, and the License Server.

For more information about dependency maps, see Viewing object dependencies .


	TIP: To return to the XenDesktop Environment dashboard, use the bread crumb trail in the top-left corner.

Exploring XenDesktop sites

A XenDesktop Site represents your monitored XenDesktop® environment, consisting of Delivery Controllers, virtual desktops, and other associated components. The Summary - XenDesktop Site view allows you to review general information about the monitored XenDesktop site along with performance trends in session counts, logon duration, machine and connection failures. Use this view to review the general trends in the overall performance of your monitored XenDesktop site and to look for any indicators that suggest potential bottlenecks. For example, an unusually high number of connection errors can affect the end-user experience and should be investigated.

Figure 19. Summary - XenDesktop Site view

Table 3. Summary - XenDesktop Site view
Properties	Configuration details for the monitored XenDesktop Site: the name of the selected XenDesktop Site, the name of the XenDesktop application running on the monitored Site, the XenDesktop application edition, the XenDesktop version number, the type of the license model implemented at the monitored XenDesktop site, and the number of unregistered desktops. Citrix XenDesktop communicates with the controller in the monitored XenDesktop site using the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA), and this state is referred to as being registered with the controller. A communication failure prevents XenDesktop to establish connection with the affected virtual desktops, causing them to turn into wasted resources. This information can help you troubleshoot problems related to an unsuccessful VDA registration. Click Unregistered Desktops to find out the names and types (desktop, application, or desktop and application) of the unregistered desktops, and the delivery groups they belong to.
Session and Connected User	The session and user counts over the selected time period.
Logon Duration	The logon duration times over the selected time period.
Machine Failure	The counts of system-related failure types over the selected time period.
Connection Failure	The counts of connection-related failure types over the selected time period.
Inventory	The counts of delivery groups, desktops, and applications over the selected time period.
License Usage	The counts of currently used licenses and available licenses over the selected time period. For each license type (for example, Evaluation), this view displays the total number of licenses, the number of used licenses, the dates when the licenses are first used, and their expiration date. Alarms are generated when the number of used licenses exceeds predefined thresholds.
Alarms	The alarms generated against the monitored XenDesktop Site. Each entry indicates the alarm severity (Warning, Critical, or Fatal), the time when the alarm was generated, and an explanation indicating what triggered the alarm.