Citrix Director: Logon Duration Improvements

Citrix Director: Logon Duration Improvements

book

Article ID: CTX221405

calendar_today

Updated On:

Description

One of the key parameters which decides the end user experience of XenDesktop is how fast the desktop/app session appears so that the user can start using the desktop/app. The time that the user has to wait after he selects a desktop on receiver and finally be able to use the session is the “log on duration.” This becomes an important metric for measuring the end user experience.

Citrix Director 7.0 had introduced these metrics to help XenDesktop and XenApp admins in case they want to monitor or troubleshoot end user experience.

Logon Duration By User Session:

This table provides the breakdown of each Logon providing trends to administrators with details of each significant steps in the Logon Process.
User-added image

User search is made available to filter the results to show only for a specific user.

Consider a scenario where a user “aaa” calls up XenDesktop Administrator and says from past one week they have to wait a lot to get a desktop/application session from XenDesktop.
The administrator can go to Logon Duration Trends and select Last Week time period and search for the user “aaa” and see what’s the Total Logon time taken for each of the sessions launched in the past week and with the breakdown steps of Logon, pinpoint what can be the root cause.
It might be the case that ProfileLoad time has increased a lot for the user “aaa” in past week. This might be due to large number of files in user “aaa” profile.
Administrator can then suggest the user “aaa” to delete unnecessary files to improve Logon. This is just one example and there are many more scenarios where “Logon Duration by User Session” Table will be useful to the administrator.
Administrators can choose only the columns that is required using “Choose Columns”  
User-added image
Additionally, the administrator has the flexibility to sort this table either by total logon duration column or by any drill-down component column.
Average Logon Chart :
Salient UI Features Added :

Average Logon chart which provides Average of Logon Duration of all sessions launched within the time period and Delivery Group selected. This has been redesigned to be more intuitive with more information provided in the tooltip of the chart.
Bar Graph: Number Of Logons
Blue Line Graph: Average Logon Duration
Orange Line Graph: Baseline Average Logon Duration
Note: Baseline is previous X average of Logon where X is the time period.
For example: For Last 24 Hours Baseline value is the average of 24 Hours before last 24 Hours.
In the screenshot below we can see the baseline corresponding to current time period.
User-added image

Administrator could choose to limit the graph and table for a single delivery group and also choose various time-intervals for historical reports.

User-added image

The tooltip on the chart provides a comparative view of Average Logon Duration with Previous Baseline Time period. This will provide Administrators with data whether overall Logon has improved or declined over the period.
User-added image
Baseline value in the chart can be Selected/Deselected.
User-added image
Number Of Logons value in the chart can also be Selected/Deselected.
User-added image
With these new improvements , an admin would be able to analyze and troubleshoot logon duration issues with ease.
Note : Logon Performance tab, might not display the trends chart for very large data and might throw “Cannot retrieve the data”. Typically, this error occurs when the time period is set to more than a week and the site has sessions configured on a large scale. 

Issue/Introduction

One of the key parameters which decides the end user experience of XenDesktop is how fast the desktop/app session appears so that the user can start using the desktop/app. The time that the user has to wait after he selects a desktop on receiver and finally be able to use the session is the “log on duration.” This becomes an important metric for measuring the end user experience.

Additional Information

Citrix Director Logon Performance Chart Displays “Cannot Retrieve the Data” Error Message