Product Documentation

Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop Monitoring

Last updated on 19 January, 2022

Overview

Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop monitoring covers three components:

  • Desktop Data Collectors (DDC). Also known as Brokers, these DataSources provide information about the state of their services, connections to their datastores, and hypervisors.
  • The Farm. Provides information for farm-level entities such as applications, desktop groups, Virtual Delivery Agent registrations, etc. All farm monitoring is done through the DDCs.
  • Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA). Enhanced session monitoring for metrics such as RoundTripTime and Throughput are performed if Virtual Delivery Agents have been added to LogicMonitor.
DataSource Coverage Description
Citrix_XenApp_MachinesFarmMonitor machines (VDAs) belonging to the Farm
Citrix_XenApp_LogonPerformanceFarmMonitor logon performance; logon performance is aggregated per delivery group
Citrix_XenApp_TroubleshooterDDCFind issues that might impede monitoring
Citrix_XenApp_ConnectionFailureTrendsFarmBreakdown of connection failure trends by the reason for failure
Citrix_XenApp_MachineFailureTrendsFarmBreakdown of machine failure trends by reason for failure
Citrix_XenApp_DatastoreStatusDDCMonitor a DDC’s data connection to the datastore
Citrix_XenApp_ApplicationUsageFarmMonitor application launch data
Citrix_XenApp_MachineCatalogsFarmMonitor machine catalog utilization
Citrix_XenApp_UserExperienceVDAUser experience metrics such as RoundTripTime, Bandwidth and latency
Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnectionsDDCVerify that the DDCs have control of the configured hypervisors
Citrix_XenApp_DeliveryGroupsDDCMonitor delivery group utilization and availability

Setting up Monitoring

  1. Create or identify a XenApp user account that has read-only administrator privileges that LogicMonitor will use to access XenApp/XenDesktop.
  2. Within LogicMonitor, define the properties xenapp.user and xenapp.pass on the global, group, or DDC device level, matching the XenApp user account name and password. These properties must be set in order for collection to work, even if the Collector service account has the same access.
    • (Optional) Citrix.VAD.SecureHostname can be set to the value in the certificate if it is different from the value of system.hostname.
    • For more information on setting authentication credentials as properties, see Defining Authentication Credentials.
  3. To enable PowerShell SDK-based collection methods (the Citrix_XenApp_DatastoreStatus and Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections DataSources rely on PowerShell), make sure that the Collector account has Farm credentials (these can be the same credentials used for the xenapp.user and xenapp.pass properties).
  4. Import the DataSources and PropertySources.
    • All of the Citrix DataSources start with Citrix_XenApp_*.
    • The addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV2 PropertySource must also be imported.
  5. Because we should only collect FARM information from one of the DDCs, we have to determine which one that will be. This is done by setting “CitrixBrokerActive” as the value for the system.categories property on the DDC from which data collection will take place.
  6. (Optional) By default, LogicMonitor uses HTTP to connect to the XenApp modules. You can enable HTTPS connections by setting the resource property Citrix.VAD.HTTPS = true.
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