Citrix VAD Monitoring

LogicMonitor’s Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) monitoring package leverages the Citrix VAD OData4 API to monitor and alert on the status of applications and desktops as well as WMI communication for a wide variety of health and performance metrics.

Requirements

• Citrix VAD OData4 based modules require Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops version 7.15.1912 LTSR or higher.
• The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) OData4 API must be accessible by the Collector.
• WMI must be enabled.
• NTLM based authentication is required and may need to be enabled on Windows 2019 or higher based resources.

Add Resources into Monitoring

• Add your Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops hosts into monitoring. For more information on adding resources into monitoring, see Adding Devices.
• Add the system category CitrixBrokerActive to one host per farm.

Citrix Brokers collect data from the entire Citrix farm so some datasources in this suite should only be active for one DDC per farm. Add the system.category CitrixBrokerActive on a single resource in a farm to enable monitoring via the following modules that require the CitrixBrokerActive category.

DataSource	Requires CitrixBrokerActive?
Citrix_VAD_ApplicationsUsage	Yes
Citrix_VAD_ConnectionFailureSummary	Yes
Citrix_VAD_DeliveryGroups	No
Citrix_VAD_LoadIndexMetrics	Yes
Citrix_VAD_MachineHotfixLogs	Yes
Citrix_VAD_MachineSummary	Yes
Citrix_VAD_Services	No
Citrix_VAD_SessionActivitySummaries	No
Citrix_VAD_Troubleshooter	No

Obtain Credentials

LogicMonitor must provide the appropriate credentials in order to successfully access the Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops resource’s data. These credentials must belong to an account that has been assigned the following minimum permissions:

Role	Description
Read-only Administrator	At minimum a Read-Only Administrator account is required

Assign Properties to Resources

The following custom properties must be set on the Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops resource within LogicMonitor. For more information on setting properties, see Resource and Instance Properties.

Property	Value
Citrix.VAD.User	REST API username this overrides the value XenApp.user if present. XenApp.user will be used as a fallback only if Citrix.VAD.User is not setup as a property. This should typically be set to DOMAIN\username in a domain environment.
Citrix.VAD.Pass	REST API password this overrides the value in XenApp.pass if present. XenApp.pass will be used as a fallback only if Citrix.
system.category	Add “CitrixBrokerActive” to one resource per farm(this value must be manually added as a category for the system.category property.
Citrix.VAD.SecureHostname	(Optional) If hostname in ssl certificate used is different from the value in system.hostname.
Citrix.VAD.HTTPS	(Optional) If https access is configured this enables the protocol.
CitrixMonitorServiceV4	Added by addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV4.

Import LogicModules

From the LogicMonitor public repository, import all Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops LogicModules, which are listed in the LogicModules in Package section of this support article. If these LogicModules are already present, ensure you have the most recent versions. Data collection will automatically start once the LogicModules are imported.

Considerations and Warnings

• Citrix_XenApp_UserExperience and Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections are WMI based and can be used with this suite of modules on (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops hosts. To prevent double monitoring and double alerting Citrix_XenApp modules other than Citrix_XenApp_UserExperience and Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections should not be used on Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) resources.
• Citrix_VAD_Services deprecates Citrix_XenApp_Services and should replace it even in older XenApp environments.
• The legacy DataSource WinCitrixServices- is deprecated and replaced by Citrix_VAD_Services. Citrix_VAD_Services will work on supported versions of XenApp as well as on supported versions of Virtual Apps and Desktops once the addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV2 or addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV4 modules apply a category to a resource.

Troubleshooting

• Some instances may return no data or -1 if no data is being output by the resource for that instance since some application and desktop use is transitory this is to be expected.
• Resource CPU usage will be higher once CitrixBrokerActive is set and monitoring for a farm begins.
• This suite of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) modules contains the Citrix_VAD_Troubleshooter module to assist with troubleshooting.

Migration from Legacy LogicModules

In March of 2022, LogicMonitor released a new suite of Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops modules. These modules operate on resources that are running Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.15.1912 LTSR or higher. Most of the new DataSources query the API for data via the OData4 API, PowerShell, and WMI; whereas the prior suite relied mainly on the OData2 API, PowerShell, and WMI.

1. Import all the modules in this Suite.
2. If not already set: Choose a single DDC resource per farm as the source of data from the broker service by setting a category on the resource to CitrixBrokerActive
3. Unapply some of the XenApp Modules (For environments only monitoring resources running Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.15.1912 LTSR or higher)

• With the exception of Citrix_XenApp_UserExperience and Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections, all other Citrix_XenAppp modules should not be applied to resources running Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.15.1912 LTSR or higher to avoid any increased performance loads caused by double monitoring as well as possible double alerting. If you apply Citrix_XenApp and Citrix_VAD modules to a 7.15.1912 LTSR or higher resource you could collect duplicate data and receive duplicate alerts for as long as both sets of DataSources are active and the resource retains the CitrixMonitorServiceV2 category.
• For a mixed (XenApp below 7.15.1912 / Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7.15.1912 or higher) environments we will continue to support the XenApp modules as long as Citrix supports XenApp resources.
• If historical data does not need to be retained you can remove the CitrixMonitorServiceV2 category from resources you want to exclude from XenApp monitoring to avoid double monitoring after the CitrixMonitorServiceV4 category is applied by the PropertySource.

4. Unless running portals running XenApp: With the exception of Citrix_XenApp_UserExperience and Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections, we recommend that you disable the remaining Citrix_XenApp DataSources after importing the new set of DataSources and confirming that they are working as intended in your environment.

• When a DataSource is disabled, it stops querying the host and generating alerts, but maintains all historical data. At some point in time, you may want to delete the legacy DataSources altogether, but consider this move carefully as all historical data will be lost upon deletion. For more information on disabling DataSources, see Disabling Monitoring for a DataSource or Instance.

LogicModules in Package

LogicMonitor’s package for Citrix (VAD) Virtual Apps and Desktops consists of the following LogicModules. For full coverage, please ensure that all of these LogicModules are imported into your LogicMonitor platform.

Display Name	Type	Description
Citrix_VAD_ApplicationUsage	DataSource	Monitors application usage for Virtual Apps and Desktops including daily, 7 day and 30 day usage duration, launch counts and instance counts.
Citrix_VAD_ConnectionFailureSummary	DataSource	Connection failure summary counts including no license available, no capacity available, client connection failures, and configuration error counts.
Citrix_VAD_DeliveryGroups	DataSource	Delivery Groups info for application and desktop instances. Also collects failure log summary data for each delivery group.
Citrix_VAD_LoadIndexMetrics	DataSource	CPU, Memory, Disk, Load Index data for servers.
Citrix_VAD_MachineHotfixLogs	DataSource	Searches for available but unapplied hotfixes by machine as well as applied but removed hotfixes.
Citrix_VAD_MachineSummary	DataSource	Monitors machine data including, CPU, Memory, Sessions, operating state and failure trend category counts. Machine failure trend individual category counts include resource availability, licensing failures, connection timeouts, session limits and more, as well as total fault counts. Also monitors Machines Metric data for IOPS and Latency published hourly.
Citrix_VAD_Services	DataSource	Tracks the State of Citrix Services via WMI including state, start mode, status, exit code, and service specific error code.
Citrix_VAD_SessionActivitySummaries	DataSource	Logon Performance and Session Activity Summaries
Citrix_VAD_Troubleshooter	DataSource	Troubleshoots Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops API connection issues.
Citrix_XenApp_HypervisorConnections	DataSource	Checks the state of Hypervisor connections.
Citrix_XenApp_UserExperience	DataSource	Monitors XenApp/XenDesktop session experience via WMI.
addCategory_Citrix_Licensing	PropertySource	Sets appropriate system.categories if server is running Citrix Licensing.
addCategory_CitrixEUEM	PropertySource	Checks for the existence of the Citrix_EUEM WMI class and sets the “CitrixEUEM” system category.
addCategory_Citrix_Licensing	PropertySource	Sets appropriate system.categories if server is running Citrix Licensing.
addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV4	PropertySource	Checks for the Citrix Monitor Services and sets appropriate system categories.
addCategory_CitrixMonitorServiceV2	PropertySource	Checks for the Citrix Monitor Services and sets appropriate system categories.

When setting static datapoint thresholds on the various metrics tracked by this package’s DataSources, LogicMonitor follows the technology owner’s best practice KPI recommendations. If necessary, we encourage you to adjust these predefined thresholds to meet the unique needs of your environment. For more information on tuning datapoint thresholds, see Tuning Static Thresholds for Datapoints.