Citrix Users By Browsers Test

In recent times, browsers have become one of the common ways to access many applications in enterprises. The same browser may be used for accessing multiple applications. Further, users may even use browsers to access non-corporate web sites from their environment. In modern architectures, a lot of the processing is done by the scripts executed on browsers. This further adds processing tasks to the browsers. Citrix administrators need to know when exactly specific browser instances started taking up excessive resources (CPU, memory, disk) and most importantly, what URLs were accessed when a browser started taking up resources. The Citrix Users By Browsers test helps administrators in this regard!

This test auto-discovers the browsers accessed by each user connected to a Citrix Virtual Apps server/server farm, and for each browser, reports the number of sessions initiated and the number of processes running. This test also reports the URLs that were accessed when a browser started taking up resources. Using this test, administrators can figure out the URL and browser that is responsible for excessive resource utilization by a user.

Target of the test : Any Citrix server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each browser:user pair on the Citrix Virtual Apps server monitored

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed. By default, this is 15 minutes.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	Refers to the port used by the Citrix server .
Report by Domain Name	By default, the flag is set to Yes. This implies that by default, this test will report metrics for every domainname\username configured for this test. This way, administrators will be able to quickly determine which user logged in from which domain. If you want the test to report metrics for the username alone, then set this flag to No.
DD Frequency	Refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD Frequency.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
User sessions	Indicates the total number of user sessions initiated through this browser.	Number
Processes running in user's sessions	Indicates the number of processes running for this browser.	Number	The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the Process ID, Website Title, Website URL and the Website domain.
CPU usage for user's processes	Indicates the percentage of CPU utilized by the processes running for this browser.	Percent	A high value for this measure is a cause of concern. Comparing the value of this measure across browsers helps administrators in identifying the browser that is utilizing too much of CPU resources. The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the session ID, Process ID, the CPU utilized by the process and the memory utilized by the process.
Memory usage for user's processes	Indicates the percentage of memory utilized by the processes running for this browser.	Percent	A high value for this measure is a cause of concern. Comparing the value of this measure across browsers helps administrators in identifying the browser that is utilizing too much of memory resources. The detailed diagnosis of this measure lists the session ID, Process ID, the CPU utilized by the process and the memory utilized by the process.