Does Using Citrix Cloud Make Performance Monitoring Easier?

© eG Innovations, Inc | www.eginnovations.com
Does Using Citrix Cloud Services Make
Performance Monitoring Easier?
Understanding Citrix Cloud and Monitoring Best Practices

Webinar Logistics
• Presenter: Srinivas Ramanathan
– CEO, eG Innovations
• Questions are welcome through the course
of the webinar
– Use the questions panel on the GoToWebinar
chat client to type in your queries
• This webinar is being recorded
– You will receive a link to the recording in a few
days

About eG Innovations
Faster diagnosis and resolution of
performance problems
Enhanced service delivery and user
satisfaction
Maximum business productivity
and cost savings
Accelerated IT deployments and
production rollouts
Transform IT Service Delivery
into Business Advantage
Worldwide Locations
Global Headquarters: Singapore
US Headquarters: New Jersey
Founded in 2001
eG Innovations is a provider of enterprise-class IT performance management
software that delivers end-to-end monitoring, diagnosis, reporting, and
analytics across physical, virtual, cloud, and hybrid IT environments
www.eginnovations.com

Agenda
 Introducing Citrix Cloud
 Does Citrix Cloud Make
Performance Monitoring Easier?
 Monitoring Best Practices for
Citrix Cloud Deployments
 Q&A

A Traditional Citrix Deployment
Physical, virtual, on-premises deployment

Citrix Evolution to the Cloud
Physical  Virtualization  Public Cloud  Citrix Cloud
Physical
Server
VMware,
Hyper-V,
XenServer,
Nutanix
Azure,
AWS
Citrix
Cloud

Citrix Cloud Adoption
5%
14%
31%
50%
Yes, currently using cloud services
Yes, considering cloud services
Plan to look at cloud services in the future
No plan for cloud services
50% of respondents don’t have any plan for Citrix
Cloud services now. Reasons include:
• Organizations are not acquainted with the cloud
deployment model
• Many feel Citrix Cloud services are more expensive
• There are also fears about security and compliance
• Only 5% are currently using Citrix Cloud
• However, 45% are considering using it in the
future. The migration to 7.x will drive more Citrix
Cloud adoption.
• In large enterprises (5,000+ employees), about
60% are considering using Citrix Cloud in the future
2018 Citrix Migration Survey ― eG Innovations & DABCC
www.eginnovations.com/Citrix-Migration-Trends

Introducing Citric Cloud
• Citrix Cloud is a cloud management platform that allows
organizations to deploy cloud-hosted desktops and
applications to end-users
 Simple: Upgrading Citrix components is easier – managed by Citrix
 Fast: Deploy apps and desktops in hours, not weeks
 Flexible: Hybrid cloud deployment model
 Secure: Keep apps, desktops and data under your control
 Scalable: Easy to scale up and scale down
 Cost-effective: Lesser hardware footprint on-premises

Citrix Cloud Components
• The Citrix components deployed in the datacenter in a
traditional on-premises environment are split into two groups
in a Citrix Cloud deployment:
S.No. Plane Component Deployment Managed By
1
Control
Plane
Delivery Controller,
StoreFront, NetScaler
Gateway, SQL Server,
Studio, License Server,
Director
Citrix Cloud Citrix
2
Resource
Plane
XenApp Server,
XenDesktop VDA, Active
Directory, Citrix Cloud
Connector
On-premises,
public/private/
hybrid cloud
infrastructure
Customer

Citrix Cloud Architecture

What Changes in Your Citrix Environment?
• You no longer manage the control plane components
– Deployment, upgrade and maintenance are owned by Citrix
• You are responsible for the upkeep and performance of
the resource plane
– Core Citrix components (XenApp Servers and XenDesktop VMs)
are under your control
– You still manage the hypervisor and other supporting IT
infrastructure components (network, AD, etc.)
– New component to manage: Citrix Cloud Connector
• Serves as a channel for communication between control & resource plane
• Typically deployed in pairs for high availability/failover

Citrix Cloud Deployment Options
Control Plane
(Managed by Citrix)
Resource Plane
(Managed by You)
On-PremisesCitrix Cloud
Citrix Cloud
Citrix Cloud
Private Cloud
Azure
Public Cloud
Any Public Cloud
XenApp Essentials
XenDesktop Essentials
1
2
3
(All features of XA/XD)
(All features of XA/XD)
(Limited features
of XA/XD) (Minimum subscription is 25 users)

XenDesktop Essentials Architecture

Does Citrix Cloud Make Performance
Monitoring Easier?

48%
45%
7%
The most performance sensitive service
Similar in performance demands as other services
Not that performance sensitive
Performance Monitoring is Important for
Citrix Infrastructures
Source: 2016 Citrix Performance Survey by eG Innovations and DABCC
93% believe that Citrix is one of the
performance sensitive services in
enterprise networks.

Does Performance Monitoring Become Easier
in Citrix Cloud?
You are NOT directly responsible for managing
the control plane (NetScaler, Delivery Controller,
StoreFront, License Server, etc.)
– You are still responsible for overall Citrix service delivery
• User experience for Citrix users
• Performance of the resource plane components
• Availability and functioning of control plane
– Two different infrastructure landscapes and domains of control
– Need to track connectivity between both planes
The Easy Part
The Not-So-Easy Part

What Are Your Monitoring Options?
Infrastructure to be Monitored Tools Available
For the control plane
http://status.cloud.com/
Citrix Director (built-into Citrix Cloud)
For the resource plane Citrix Director (built-into Citrix Cloud)
For the public cloud (Azure, AWS)
infrastructure
AWS CloudWatch APIs
Azure Monitor
For the on-premises infrastructure
supporting Citrix (network, storage,
virtualization, AD, etc.)
Third-party tools for each tier

Monitoring Using “status.cloud.com”
Performance Management Challenges
• No performance SLAs: Citrix only provides an availability guarantee
• Monitoring is reactive: Need to know about downtime by looking at
status.cloud.com. Issues reported only when many customers are impacted.
• Performance issues need to be reported to Citrix Support and wait for their
response and resolution

Monitoring using Citrix Director
• Only session-level data
• No visibility into the infrastructure
and cloud-connectivity issues
• No root cause diagnosis
• Limited historical data
retention (only 90 days)
• Not very helpful for
troubleshooting

Fragmented tools,
No centralized visibility
No simulation capabilities,
No proactive monitoring
Depth of visibility not
sufficient for troubleshooting
Citrix is slow.
But why?
No visibility of supporting
infrastructure

Performance Monitoring Best Practices
for Citrix Cloud Deployments

Best Practices for Citrix Cloud Monitoring
Synthetic and
Real User Experience
Measure All Aspects of
Citrix User Experience
1

Measure All Aspects of User Experience
Application/
Desktop Launch
Application
Access
Connection
Server Logon
Citrix Session
Logon
• Was application
launch successful?
• Did it take too much
time?
• Is the end-user facing
any screen refresh
latency, disconnects?
• Was the logon slow?
• If so, why?
• Were authentication
and enumeration
successful?
• AD authentication
• Application
enumeration
• Profile loading
• GPO processing
• Session establishment
• Application start-up
• Ready for interaction
• Screen/keystroke latency
• Bandwidth (audio, video,
printer, drive)
• Session resources (CPU,
GPU, memory, disk)
Diagnose Problems to Ensure Session Reliability
Best Practice 1

 Emulates users
 Imposes the same
workload again and again
 Provides a measure of
experience EVEN when
there is no real load
 Monitors real users
 Actual workloads
 Direct measure of what
users are seeing
Synthetic Measurements
How to Measure Citrix User Experience
Real User Experience Measurements
Best Practice 1
Log into session via Citrix
StoreFront/NetScaler Gateway
Launch application on
StoreFront
Enumerate
applications on
StoreFront
User Experience
Measurement
 Simulate logon; launch
different applications
 Synthetic monitoring from
multiple locations
 Real user monitoring from
the client, network, server
 Must use a combination of
both approaches

The eG Citrix Logon Simulator
Simulated logon into
Citrix via NetScaler
Applications enumerated on
the StoreFront console
Launching an application
on StoreFront

Citrix Logon Simulation
Identify the exact step of the
logon process casing slowness

Real User Logon Monitoring

Monitoring ICA Virtual Channels
Monitor critical ICA channel metrics including screen refresh
latency, client network latency, Framehawk latency, line
speed, HDX bandwidths, and more

Synthetic and
Citrix and Supporting
Infrastructure
Monitor Every Layer,
Every Tier
1
2

Monitor Every Layer, Every Tier
• XenApp/XenDesktop: on-premises/public cloud
• Supporting infra (network, AD, virtualization, etc.)
• Citrix Cloud Connector
• Citrix-hosted components
Monitor the
Resource Plane
Monitor the
Control Plane
Agent/Agentless
Monitoring
Agentless
monitoring
Best Practice 2

Total Performance Visibility:
Universal Monitoring Technology
Best Practice 2

Monitoring the Citrix Cloud Components
Citrix Cloud
Connector
Citrix Cloud Delivery
Controller
Best Practice 2

Citrix Cloud Topology & Dependency
Mapping

Synthetic and
Infrastructure
End-to-End
Performance Correlation
Every Tier
Pinpoint Root Cause
of Problems
1
2
3

• Is it on the client side?
• Is it the user’s network?
• Is it due to the control plane?
• Is there a Citrix server-side problem in the
resource plane?
• Is it due to the user’s workload?
• Is it due to the virtual platform/hypervisor?
• Are any of the on-premises infrastructure
components (network, AD, storage, etc.)
affecting Citrix performance?
Why is the Application Slow?
Pinpoint the Root Cause
Best Practice 3

A Citrix Service Topology
There is a critical alert in
the vSphere ESX Server

Virtual Topology Map
Visualize all the
applications hosted on
the ESX server

Drilldown to the Root Cause
Dive deeper to see what
is wrong inside this
virtual machine

There is high vCPU
utilization reported inside
the virtual machine

A backup process inside
the virtual machine is
consuming excess vCPU

Synthetic and
Infrastructure
End-to-End
Performance Correlation
Reports, Analytics,
Machine Learning
Every Tier
Pinpoint Root Cause
of Problems
Right-size & Optimize for
Maximum Performance
1
2
3
4

Right-size & Optimize for Maximum Performance
Right-Sizing
Planning
Auditing
Optimization
• Analyze usage
patterns
• Load-balance
your IT
infrastructure
• Measure resource
utilization against
availability
• Get the most out
of your
infrastructure
• Predict when you
will run out of
resources
• Forecast future
requirements
• Make information
available for
audits
• Get reports for
regulatory
compliance
Out-of-the-Box Analytics & Historical Reports
Best Practice 4

Citrix Reports

Understand User Behavior
Top Users based on
activity and impact on
resources
Know usage patterns and trends for effective capacity planning.

Understand application usage patterns and trends to
effectively size the environment and maximize resources
Understand Applications Usage

Before
Migration
After
Migration
Migration Analysis

Answers key
questions about
usage: who, when,
how long, what?
Compliance and Audit

A few of the servers
are handling most of
the sessions
Capacity Optimization

Capacity Planning
Memory
bottleneck
preventing
addition of more
Desktops
Identify and resolve bottlenecks and excess capacity
and right-size your environment.

Forecast the Future
Predicted FUTURE
performance based on
the past trends

Dramatically simplify and
accelerate application
performance management.
Deliver peak performance,
user satisfaction and ROI.
User Satisfaction
IT Productivity
Higher service
uptime
Simplicity
Cost control & ROI
Total Citrix
Performance
Management
“
”
Customer Benefits

Citrix and eG Innovations
Selected by Citrix as the exclusive Citrix monitoring solution for
Citrix Synergy ’15, ’16, ‘17 and Citrix Summit ’16, ’17, ‘18
Global Technology Partner for Citrix
www.citrix.com
Citrix Ready certified for all
products in the Citrix stack
For more information

Does Using Citrix Cloud Make Performance Monitoring Easier?

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