Geneos

Citrix XenApp Monitoring User Guide

Overview

Geneos provides a monitoring solution for the Citrix XenApp virtualisation architecture and its components. This integration is available through the Toolkit plug-in.

Geneos monitoring for Citrix XenApp produces three samplers, each providing monitoring and dataviews:

  • Citrix-Apps — for published applications, as defined by Citrix XenApp.
  • Citrix-Processes — for processes running on a virtual machine.
  • Citrix-Sessions — for each unique session based on the user, applications used, and virtual machine logged into.

This integration provides a Gateway configuration file that enables monitoring of Citrix XenApp through a set of pre-configured Toolkit samplers.

This guide discusses the steps to set up the Citrix XenApp integration on a Gateway. Once the integration is set up, the samplers providing the dataviews become available to that Gateway.

Prerequisites

The following requirements must be met prior to the installation and setup of the template:

  • Citrix XenApp version 7.x
  • PowerShell versions 4.0 or above must be available on the machine where the Netprobe runs.
  • PowerShell's execution policy must be allowed to execute scripts.
  • You must have an Active Directory user account with Citrix monitoring privileges configured in the Citrix Delivery Controller.
  • Application monitoring must be enabled in the Citrix Delivery Controller.

Integration workflow

The Citrix XenApp integration is largely pre-configured. The integration involves three primary tasks:

  • Download the integration files from the ITRS Downloads page.
  • Load the Citrix monitoring configuration file from the Gateway Setup Editor.
  • Associate the Citrix samplers with a managed entity.

The Citrix integration files also include an additional utility for encrypting your configured password via PowerShell.

Download the integration files

  1. On the ITRS Downloads page, download the Citrix integration files (geneos-integration-citrix-4.9.0.zip).
  2. As a best practice, save the files on the same machine where your Gateway is running.

The integration files include the following:

  • include/CitrixMonitoring.xml — Gateway configuration file containing Toolkit samplers configured for Citrix XenApp monitoring.
  • util/encrypt_pwd.ps1 — Encryption utility for obscuring the password to the integration template.

Load the Citrix configuration file

  1. On the Gateway Setup Editor, right-click the Includes folder and select New Include.
  2. Under the Basic tab, type the file path to the Citrix configuration file into the Location field. This is the file path ending in citrix/include/CitrixMonitoring.xml.
  3. Update the Priority field. This can be any value except 1. If you enter a priority of 1, the Gateway Setup Editor will return an error.
  4. Expand the entry for this new inclusion by clicking the "+" symbol next to it.
  5. Click the child entry, "Click to load...".
  6. The Load included file prompt appears. Click "Yes", or press Enter to confirm the action.

After you load the Citrix configuration file, it loads its own Gateway, samplers, and configuration associated with the Citrix XenApp integration.

For more information on the dataviews associated with the Citrix XenApp integration, see the Citrix XenApp Monitoring Technical Reference.

Associate the Citrix samplers with a managed entity

After you have loaded the Citrix configuration file, the Citrix monitoring samplers become available for use.

  1. On the Gateway Setup Editor, create a new managed entity by right-clicking the Managed entities folder.
  2. Under the Basic tab for the new managed entity, click Add new under the Add types field.
  3. In the text field under Ref, type Citrix.
  4. In the text field under Environment, specify the environment associated with the Citrix samplers. By default, this is Citrix-Defaults. However, you can create a new environment or modify the Citrix-Defaults environment variables according to your system. For more information on the environment variables, see the Citrix XenApp Monitoring Technical Reference.
  5. Click the save icon to apply your changes.

After you save your changes to the managed entity, the Citrix dataviews appear under the managed entity on the state tree.

Encryption utility

The Citrix XenApp integration files include an encryption utility. Run this utility in PowerShell to encrypt your password for the CITRIX-MONITORING-PASS environment variable:

  1. Open the Command Prompt.
  2. Enter the following command line:
    3. powershell.exe .\encryptPassword.ps1 [plainTextPassword]

    When you enter this line command, the utility encrypts the password and displays its encrypted string on the command line.

  3. Copy the encrypted string for the CITRIX-MONITORING-PASS environment variable.

If you enter the line command without the plaintext password, then the utility prompts for a password, encrypts the text you enter, then generates a password.txt file. Use the contents of this file for the CITRIX-MONITORING-PASS environment variable.

Further reading

After you have included the Citrix monitoring samplers, you can learn about its dataviews and environment configuration in the Citrix XenApp Monitoring Technical Reference.