The previous blogs were about the console for administration. We looked at the menu options, creating a catalog and the options that come with that. If you want to read the previous blogs start here, this is version one https://robbeekmans.net/euc/citrix-managed-desktops-a-guided-tour-part-1/ and go to part2 form that one. The last topic to talk about is monitoring as a customer wants to monitor and support users working. At first hand Citrix Managed Desktops monitoring looks like a simplified version of what Studio and director are offering but looks can be deceiving. Let’s take a right turn and get this tour into the monitoring ally.
Monitoring
When you open the monitoring tab you are greeted by the standard monitoring overview. This screen and a few below it will give a quick insight in the current environment.
You can select the catalog of just look at the overall environment and see all catalogs. You can specify the time period of your view, so if you want to see how the desktops or sessions behaved over time, switch to a 1 week, 1 month or 3 month period.
If you scroll down you see the Top10 active users and active catalogs. My screen is rather empty as this was a new Citrix managed Desktops environment. I was the sole user. Again there is an option to change the view to a different time period.
Filtering
Next to the basic monitoring on the main monitoring page there is the option to filter. There are several option to create a filter to monitor the environment and see status of machines or sessions.
You can refine the view by several status options, like;
- Failed to Start
- Stuck on boot
- Unregistered
- Maximum load
- Unknown
These filters can be saved for later use. which makes administration easy and allows you to view how your environment is running every day, week or month.
The filter by option is a extensive list of filter options, you can tailor it exactly as you want. depending on if you select machines or session both the refine and filter list options will change.
To even fine-tune your administration experience more, you can create a custom monitoring console by picking which columns you want to see.
Supporting users
Now we step out of the basic monitoring, I think we left that when we entered the filters but now we go even deeper. There are two ways of getting to a user deep dive. One option is by going into filters, select sessions and click on the user name. You will be presented with the screen below.
The other option of getting here is clicking search and typing parts of the username. By doing so the users with a likewise name are populated and you can select the user you want to help or monitor.
Once you selected the session, he or she might have more that one open, you can click on details.
Detailed view
Once you open the detailed view you relive a child in a candy store. all the goodness of Director is at your feet again. I copied a small part of the console here but you get the drift.
An amazing set of detailed metrics are available to support and help your users. You can see all processes in use and the application started. If you scroll down more metrics that will blow your mind are available.
The old EdgeSight or even older RMS detailed reports are back here. There are many interesting metrics here, if you want to know what they mean check out this doc https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops-service/monitor/troubleshoot-deployments/user-issues/session-startup.html
Let’s look at one, GPVD for one is the metric that shows how long the GPO took to load on the VDA. This will help you find the culprit that is hurting your users experience.
If we go even further down in the same detailed screen we get to the well known channel/components monitoring screen. I’m not sure if there are others out there with this advanced monitoring for their DaaS solution.
If you click on a channel or component you see the details there. If you select USB there is information about the channel state, the priority and so on. Mine is blocked by policy as you can see.
This was the last part of this series, I hope you get a good view on Citrix Managed Desktops. I think it is a easy to use, well thought through solution with a true value add to WVD.
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