Citrix Server Monitor

The SiteScope Citrix Server Monitor allows you to monitor the availability of an Citrix MetaFrame servers (MetaFrame 1.8 Service Pack 3, MetaFrame XP(s,a,e) Feature Release 1/Service Pack 1, and MetaFrame XP(s,a,e) Feature Release 2/Service Pack 2). . The error and warning thresholds for the monitor can be set on as many as ten Citrix Server performance statistics.

The Citrix Server Monitor makes use of Performance Counters to measure application server performance. SiteScope will need to be running under an account that has the necessary administrative security privileges to access performance counter data from remote servers. If the servers you want to monitor are in a different domain, are governed under a different policy, or require a unique login different than the account SiteScope is running under, then you will need to define the connection to these servers under the NT Remotes option in the SiteScope Preferences.

Usage Guidelines

The Citrix Monitor allows you to monitor the server performance statistics from Citrix Metaframe Servers. You can monitor multiple parameters or counters with a single monitor instance. This allows you to watch server loading for performance, availability, and capacity planning. Create a separate Citrix monitor instance for each Citrix Server in your environment.

The following are important requirements for using the SiteScope Citrix Server Monitor:

The Remote Registry service must be running on the machine where the Citrix Server is running if Citrix is running on a Windows 2000 platform.
The Citrix Resource Manager must available, installed, and running on the Citrix servers you want to monitor.
One or more Citrix vusers need to have established a connection with the Citrix server in order to enable viewing of ICA Session object.

Completing the Citrix Server Monitor Form

To display the Citrix Server Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing Citrix Server Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and click the Add Citrix Server Monitor link.

Complete the items on the Citrix Server Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Server

Choose the server you want to monitor. Use the choose server link to view a list of servers or to enter a path name. On Unix servers, enter the full pathname of the applicable server.

Counters

Select the server performance parameters or counters you want to check with this monitor. The table list to the right of this item displays those currently selected for this monitor.

Note: You will not see the counters listed for the ICA Session object until the Citrix vusers have established a connection with the Citrix server. You will have to initialize or run the Citrix vuser first and then configure the SiteScope Citrix Monitor to add the counters for the ICA Session object.

Use the choose counters link to bring up the counters selection screen. Check or clear the check boxes on the choose counters screen to select between one to ten counters to monitor on this server. The performance parameters or counters available for the Citrix Server Monitor include:

Latency - Last Recorded	Latency - Session Average	Latency - Session Deviation
Output Session Bandwidth	Input Session Bandwidth	Output Session Compression
Input Session Compression	Output LPT 1 Bandwidth	Input LPT 1 Bandwidth
Output LPT 2 Bandwidth	Input LPT 2 Bandwidth	Output COM 1 Bandwidth
Input COM 1 Bandwidth	Output COM 2 Bandwidth	Input COM 2 Bandwidth
Output Printer Bandwidth	Input Printer Bandwidth	Output COM Bandwidth
Input COM Bandwidth	Output Drive Bandwidth	Input Drive Bandwidth
Output Clipboard Bandwidth	Input Clipboard Bandwidth	Output ThinWire Bandwidth
Input ThinWire Bandwidth	Output Audio Bandwidth	Input Audio Bandwidth
Output Management Bandwidth	Input Management Bandwidth	Output Licensing Bandwidth
Input Licensing Bandwidth	Output VideoFrame Bandwidth	Input VideoFrame Bandwidth
Output PN Bandwidth	Input PN Bandwidth	Output Seamless Bandwidth
Input Seamless Bandwidth	Output Font Data Bandwidth	Input Font Data Bandwidth
Output Text Echo Bandwidth	Input Text Echo Bandwidth	Output Control Channel Bandwidth
Input Control Channel Bandwidth

Update every

Select how often the monitor should read the server statistics. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.

Title

Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule

By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.

Monitor Description

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description

Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.

Depends On

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

SiteScope Application Monitors allow you to set multiple threshold conditions to determine the status reported by each monitor. The individual conditions are combined as logical OR relationships so that when one or more of the conditions (for example any of the conditions for Error if) are met the monitor status is set to the applicable condition. If multiple conditions are met for more than one status condition (such as conditions for both error and for warning), the status for the monitor is set to the highest valued condition. Thus a match of an error condition and a warning condition would be reported as an error status, error being the highest value, warning the next highest and good the lowest value.

Error if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more error conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change error threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. After choosing a counter or parameter, use the comparison operator drop-down list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than) and enter a comparison value in the box provided. Comparison values should be entered as whole numbers.
Warning if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more warning conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change warning threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. Set these values relative to those you set for the error threshold in the Error if item.
Good if: You can set this monitor to return a good status for certain conditions. You may define those conditions here. Complete this item as you would for the Error if and Warning if items.

Troubleshooting Tips

The following are troubleshooting tips for the Citrix Server Monitor.

Open a command line window (DOS prompt)
Type the following command, substituting the hostname as appropriate:
C:\>perfex \\hostname -u username -p password -h | find "ICA"

This should return a response like the following:

(3378) ICA Session
(3386) ICA Session
(3379) This object has several counters that can be used to monitor the performa
nce in ICA sessions
(3387) This object has several counters that can be used to monitor the performa
nce in ICA sessions
"ICA Session" 3386
    performance in ICA sessions

If you do not see something like the above response, then either the counters are not available on the remote server or you will get a more descriptive error message indicating what might be the problem.