Citrix Users By Cities Test

The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment is a shared environment hosting a wide variety of applications. Such applications will be accessed by users from different countries, cities and cities of the world at any time. In such a situation, it is administrator's responsibility to ensure a consistent experience for all users, regardless of their geographic location. When server resources are shared by users from multiple cities, excessive resource and bandwidth utilization by users from a specific city could impact the performance for users from other cities. Therefore, continuous monitoring of the activities of each and every city's users on the server is critical. Towards this end, the Citrix Users By Cities test assesses the traffic between the server and the user terminals and reveals the experience of users from different cities.

This test continuously monitors the resources taken up by a user's session on the server for each city. The results of this test can be used in troubleshooting and proactive monitoring. For example, when a user from a particular city reports a performance problem, administrators can quickly check the bandwidth utilized by that particular city's user, the CPU/memory/disk usage as well as the resource usage of user sessions established from other cities. The administrator also has access to details on the number of application processes launched by the users from each city and time taken for the same. This information can be used to spot a particular city from which the maximum number of application processes are launched on the target server.

Target of the test : A Citrix Virtual Apps server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each city from which users are accessing the Citrix Virtual Apps server that is being 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 target Citrix Virtual Apps 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 from this city.	Number
CPU usage for user processes	Indicates the percentage of CPU utilized by the processes being run by user from this city.	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 processes	Indicates the percentage of memory utilized by the processes being run 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.
I/O reads for user processes	Indicates the rate of I/O reads done by all processes being run by a user from this city.	KB/sec	Comparison across different cities helps identify the city from which the most I/O-intensive processes are being run by users.
I/O writes for user processes	Indicates the rate of I/O writes done by all processes being run by a user from this city.	KB/sec
Total reads and writes for user processes	Indicates the rate at which the I/O reads and writes done by all processes being run by a user from this city.	KB/sec
Screen refresh latency - avg	Indicates the average time interval measured at the client between the first step (user action) and the last step (graphical response displayed) of the user's interactions with the Virtual Apps server. The value reported is the average of the latencies for all the current users sessions established from this city.	Seconds	This is a measurement of the screen lag that a user experiences while interacting with the Virtual Apps server. In other words, is the latency detected from when the user hits a key until the response is displayed. Comparing the value of this measure across users from different cities will enable administrators to quickly and accurately identify if the screen lag is significantly higher for any of the cities when users from that particular are interacting with the Virtual Apps server. If both the Screen refresh latency and Client network latency measures report high values, it implies that network slowness is contributing to user-perceived Citrix slowness (i.e., the problem is not due to the Citrix servers, but probably due to the network connection that the user is connecting from - e.g., a wireless WAN). If Screen refresh latency is high and Client network latency is low, this implies that there is a bottleneck in the Citrix stack that is causing user experience to be poor (e.g., overloaded server or virtual platform, slowness in storage, etc.). Slowness can also occur because of client-side processing delays on the receiver end.
Screen refresh latency - max	Indicates the maximum time interval measured at the client between the first step (user action) and the last step (graphical response displayed) of the user's interactions with the Virtual Apps server.	Seconds	Ideally, the value of this measure is preferred to be low.
Client network latency - avg	Indicates the average latency experienced by a user from this city when transmitting/receiving data over the ICA channel. The value reported is the average of the latencies for all the current users sessions established from this city.	Seconds	This measure represents the network latency detected between the ICA client and the Citrix Virtual Apps server being monitored. If both the Screen refresh latency and Client network latency measures report high values, it implies that network slowness is contributing to user-perceived Citrix slowness (i.e., the problem is not due to the Citrix servers, but probably due to the network connection that the user is connecting from - e.g., a wireless WAN). If Screen refresh latency is high and Client network latency is low, this implies that there is a bottleneck in the Citrix stack that is causing user experience to be poor (e.g., overloaded server or virtual platform, slowness in storage, etc.). Slowness can also occur because of client-side processing delays on the receiver end.
Client network latency - max	Indicates the maximum latency experienced by a user from this city when transmitting/receiving data over the ICA channel.	Seconds
Input bandwidth	Indicates the average bandwidth used for client to server communications for all the sessions of a user from this city.	Kbps
Output bandwidth	Indicates the average bandwidth used for server to client communications for all the sessions of a user from this city.	Kbps
Total bandwidth	Indicates the total bandwidth used for communication between the server and the client for all the sessions of a user from this city.	Kbps
Output bandwidth usage	Indicates the percentage of bandwidth used for server to client communications for all the sessions of a user from this city.	Percent	Compare the value of this measure across users to know which user is consuming the maximum HDX bandwidth.
Frame rate	Indicates the rate at which frames are processed during user sessions established from this city.	Frames/sec	FPS is how fast your graphics card can output individual frames each second. It is the most time-tested and ideal measure of performance of a GPU. Higher the value of this measure, healthier is the GPU.
Framehawk frame rate	Indicates the rate at which frames are processed by the Framehawk virtual channel, if it is enabled for user sessions from this city.	Frames/sec	This is a good measure of the effectiveness of Framehawk in optimizing the bandwidth usage over the virtual delivery channel. A low value is desired for this measure. Note: This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user from a city or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk.
Framehawk latency	Indicates the latency experienced by user session from this city when the Framehawk virtual delivery channel is used.	Seconds	This measure will report the value 0 if Framehawk is not enabled for a user from a city or if the device from which the user is accessing the application does not support Framehawk.
Total audio bandwidth	Indicates the total bandwidth used while transmitting and receiving sound/audio by users from this city.	Kbps	Comparing this value across cities will reveal which city's users sre sending/receiving bandwidth-intensive sound/audio files over the ICA channel. To minimize bandwidth consumption, you may want to consider disabling client audio mapping.
Total HDX media stream for flash data bandwidth	Indicates the total bandwidth used for flash data traffic between users from this city and virtual desktop.	Kbps
Total printer bandwidth	Indicates the total bandwidth used by a user from this city to issue print jobs to a desktop printer and receive response from the desktop over the ICA channel.	Kbps	Comparing the value of this measure across different cities will reveal which city's users are issuing bandwidth-intensive print commands over the channel. If bandwidth consumption is too high, you may want to consider disabling printing. Alternatively, you can avoid printing large documents.
Total application processes launch count	Indicates the count of application processes launched during the user sessions established from this city.	Number	By comparing the value of this measure across cities, administrators will be able to find out the city from which maximum number of application processes are launched.
Total application processes launch duration	Indicates the time taken for launching application processes during the user sessions established from this city.	Seconds	An unusually high value for this measure may require investigation.
Total user logons	Indicates the number of user logons from this city.	Number
Total user logon duration	Indicates the time that users from this city took to logon to the server.	Seconds	The value of this measure should be low.