Slow and Choppy Day: Using Citrix Director and HDX Insight

When you’ve been supporting remote users, you hear it all.   Someone called the help desk or worse you.

“Not sure what it is but my vm is slow today?”

“My mouse just keeps wigging out?”

“Everyday from 3pm to 5pm it gets boggy?”

“I’m at my grandmother’s house today and nothing works.” (Yup…True story)

They are tons of great 3^rd party monitoring tools out there and many would help you troubleshoot the issue.   We all wish we could buy them all but hey we are on a budget right!   So let’s use what we have.  For those that are running Citrix XenDesktop 7.x with the Platinum license, you have many of the tools and information to help your users specifically XenDesktop Director and NetScaler HDX Insight.  

Here is some key info to pass along to the Level 1 or 2 helpdesk staff.

The General Windows Stuff via Director

It is always a habit to pop open Task Manager or Resource Manager on Windows to check things out and this is still a great place to start even in a virtual environment. The nice thing is you can do it right from Director.    Check to see if something is “Not Responding”?  Something pegging?  Using a ton of memory?  Basic but always a good place to start.  

Session Details in Director

Do not overlook the info here. Often we jump right to the Latency and say must be some poor connection.   Often it can be…like your grandmother’s wifi she shares with all her condo friends.  But the  simple things like “Connected via” and “Launched via”  can tell you a lot of how the user is connecting too.  For example,  we’ve seen users who have VPN’d in first then connected via StoreFront to their XenDesktop vm or XenApp app.  This has added 100ms since they were VPN’ing in first.   “Launched via” may actually show your VPN controller or some other internal server signifying they are connecting from the “inside” but you know they are remote. Why the do this?  Because they always have done it that way.

Machine Details via Director

I usually look at Session Details first to get a sense of the users network conditions.  Assuming they are ok …say < 250ms … based on the issue, I look at the storage.  Storage has been an issue for VDI performance for a long time.  Many are moving to Flash Arrays and this is becoming less of an issue but still something to check as it can greatly contribute to a poor user experience.   In the example, below you can see the disk is queue up….no wonder nothing is happening.

NetSclarer HDX Insight

Again this advanced feature makes it possible to isolate and manage your ICA network performance.    When users are accessing remotely, the big challenge is determining if the issue is internal or external.  Remember that example where someone said everyday from “3-5am” it is slow.   The screenshot below isn’t flashy and at first glance is boring but it does show that the WAN latency has been consistent over the past week.   So maybe it isn’t your stuff that is causing the slowness.   Internet surge?  Partner’s WAN connection?

Hopefully this help give you a sense of how to use the information in Director and HDX insight to start that troubleshooting exercise.  No tool will flat out tell you the problem.   You need to look at the info and read those tea leaves a little.

Good luck.