CItRIX peRFoRMANCe MANAgEMENt - eG Innovations · new insights into the best practices for Citrix performance management. ... Migrating from Citrix XenApp 4.5 to 6.5 took a long time

Spotlight RepoRt

CItRIX peRFoRMANCe MANAgEMENt

http://www.dabcc.org

http://www.eginnovations.com

CITRIX PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT REPORT 2

INTRODUCTION

With revenues of close to $3 billion, close to 300,000 customers and over 10,000 partners, Citrix Systems, Inc.

(Citrix) is the market leader in securely delivering applications, desktops, data and services to any device, anywhere,

any time. Over the last decade, Citrix technologies have advanced significantly. From being a provider of remote

access solutions, the Citrix portfolio of solutions has dramatically expanded to include Citrix XenApp, XenDesktop,

XenServer, XenMobile, Sharefile, and so on. The use cases of Citrix technologies have also expanded. Flexwork

and telework, bring your own device, mobile workspaces, PC refresh alternatives, remote partner access, etc. are

just some of the ways that organizations are using Citrix technologies.

The key role that Citrix technologies play makes performance management of these technologies and their

supporting infrastructure critically important. In many cases, these technologies can be successfully deployed

only if the user experience is satisfactory.

To deliver the best possible user experience, Citrix environments need to be not only well architected but also

well monitored and managed, to identify and diagnose problems early on and prevent issues from escalating and

impacting end users and business processes.

DABCC and eG Innovations conducted a comprehensive survey to explore the state of Citrix performance management

and to better understand current challenges, technology choices and best practices in our Citrix community.

The survey results have been compiled into a data rich, easy to digest report to provide you with benchmarks and

new insights into the best practices for Citrix performance management.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this report.

Welcome to the 2014 Citrix performance Management Report!

Douglas Brown

Founder, DABCC, Inc.

Holger Schulze

VP Marketing, eG Innovations, Inc.


1

2

3

4

SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS

Performance management is critical for the success of Citrix deployments. 97% of respondents consider performance management to be important for the expansion of their Citrix infrastructure. 86% of respondents consider performance as a key concern during migration of Citrix versions.

The biggest performance challenge respondents face is that Citrix gets blamed for all problems – even if the problem is not with the Citrix tiers. However, a majority of the time (65%), performance problems are NOT directly caused by the Citrix tiers.

In over 60% of cases, respondents spend more than 30% of their time in fire-fighting and troubleshooting performance problems. One of the key reasons for this is that Citrix performance management is mostly manual - 80% of respondents have to deal with two or more tools for managing their Citrix infrastructure.

A majority of respondents (68%) are looking to make Citrix performance management proactive, so they get alerted and can fix issues before users notice.

Key Findings


1 WHaT CITRIx pRODUCTS DO YOUUSE IN YOUR ENVIRONmENT?

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

69%XenApp 6.5

NetscalerProvisioning Server

StorefrontXenDesktop 7.x

XenDesktop 5 .xXenApp 4.5 or lower

XenServerXenApp 5.0XenApp 6.0XenApp 7.5

ShareFileXenMobile

Citrix Cloud PlatformXenDesktop 4 or lower

Other / Not sure

48%38%

35%

29%29%

29%28%26%

23%23%

13%12%

11%

4%2%

Not surprisingly, Citrix XenApp is the most widely deployed Citrix product. 69% of users have XenApp 6.5 deployed.

23% of users have already migrated to XenApp 7.5 which was released only in April 2014. There is still a lot of

XenApp 6 and previous versions out there. 29% of respondents still have Citrix XenApp 4.5 or lower running in their

infrastructure, despite these products reaching end of life. From the results, we infer that many companies have

multiple Citrix XenApp farms and are running newer versions on some farms, but still have older versions on others.

•The growing importance of Netscaler

in Citrix infrastructures is apparent

from its popularity.

•Compared to XenApp, XenDesktop

is less widely deployed. Less

than a third of respondents have

XenDesktop.

•Despite its lack of importance

within the Citrix product portfolio,

XenServer has as many deployments

as XenDesktop.

•Deployment of XenMobile and

ShareFile are still in their infancy.

12% of respondents have these

technologies deployed.

•Only 4% of respondents are

deploying the Citrix Cloud Platform.


2 WHaT TYpE Of CITRIx LICENSES DO YOU HaVE?

Not surprisingly, only 17% of respondents have the standard/advanced Citrix edition. The value-added

capabilities of the Enterprise and Platinum editions are clearly in demand (e.g, provisioning services, vGPU

processing, delegated administration, etc.).

Enterprise Platinum Standard Not sure Other0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Responses in %

44%

17%

10%5%

50%

•The platinum edition adds

AppDNA functionality, historical

performance monitoring with

EdgeSight, Netscaler Insight

monitoring support and SSL VPN

support, besides others.

•50% of respondents have Citrix

enterprise licenses, while 44%

have platinum licenses.

•The responses also indicate that

some respondents own a mix of

licensing options.


3 fOR WHaT USE CaSES aRE YOU USING CITRIx TECHNOLOGIES?

There are many use cases of Citrix technologies. Providing remote employees access to centralized resources

in the enterprise (76%) and allowing workers in remote branch offices to connect to the head office (54%) are

the most common use cases. 36% of our respondents are using Citrix technologies to support BYOD initiatives.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

76%Remote employees access

Branch office accessConsolidation & centralization

of desktop managementSecure access to desktops

Remote partner accessBring your own desktop/laptops

/smartphones (BYOD)Mobile application access

Offer remote desktopsas a service provider

PC Refresh

Call centers

Virtualizing graphics processing

Not sure

54%

52%49%

35%

36%

35%20%18%

18%14%2%


4 WHaT VIRTUaLIzaTION pLaTfORmS DO YOU USE fOR YOUR CITRIx ENVIRONmENT?

It is well understood that a majority of organizations are using virtualization technologies to support Citrix access.

A whopping 76% of respondents are using VMware vSphere as the virtualization platform. 37% are using Citrix

XenServer and only 22% are using Microsoft Hyper-V. As expected, only 4% of respondents are still running Citrix

products on physical servers.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

76%VMware vSphere

Citrix XenServer

Microsoft Hyper-V

No virtualization(we use physical servers only)

Oracle VM

RedHat EnterpriseVirtualization (RHEV)

Not sure

Other

37%

22%

4%

3%

2%

1%

1%


12%19%25%13%

5%

21%5%

25%

19%

| Already migrated | Within 6 months | Within 1 year | Within 2-3 years | When my current version reaches end of life | Not sure | Other

will migrate within 6 months to a year

5 HOW SOON aRE YOU LIkELY TO mIGRaTE fULLY TO THE LaTEST VERSIONS Of CITRIx xENapp/xENDESkTOp?

Migrating from Citrix XenApp 4.5 to 6.5 took a long time. As the response to question 1 shows, 29% of

respondents are still using XenApp 4.5 or lower. So it is surprising to see that 44% of respondents believe

they will be migrating to XenApp 7.5 or XenDesktop 7.5 within the next year. Given that 69% of respondents

are already using XenApp 6.5, this answer points to an interesting trend - of administrators moving to the

latest versions of Citrix more rapidly than they did in the past.


6 WHEN YOU mIGRaTE fROm ONE VERSION Of CITRIx xENapp TO aNOTHER, pERfORmaNCE IS ONE Of THE kEY CONCERNS

Migration between Citrix versions can be a significant effort. Applications that worked in the lower version

must continue to work in the higher version. In addition, there is the expectation that new functionality must

work seamlessly. Often, a migration involves changes not just in the Citrix applications but also changes in the

underlying infrastructure - e.g., changes in the virtualization platform, server or desktop operating system,

etc. 86% of our respondents are concerned about what happened to user perceived performance of the Citrix

service after a migration.

46%40%

6%1%6%1%

46%

40%

| Agree | Strongly Agree | Disagree | Strongly disagree | Not sure | Other

86%agree that performanceis a key driver


7Several years ago, Brian Madden and Kevin Goodman created a chart describing in detail the complexity of the

Citrix logon process. Given the number of steps involved in the logon process, it is no wonder that slow logons

are the most common complaints received by Citrix admins (48%). Frozen sessions (43%) and long application

launch times (41%) are the other two issues that make up the top three common performance complaints.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

48%Logins are slow

Frozen sessions

Applications are slow to launch

Printing does not work

Slow remote sessions

Poor user experience

Users get disconnected oftenApplication access was faster on the

physical desktop than the virtual desktopCannot log in

Screen is slow to paint

None

Other

Not sure

43%

41%38%

31%

26%

26%

20%

14%

36%

7%

4%

5%

WHaT aRE SOmE Of THE COmmON COmpLaINTSYOU RECEIVE abOUT YOUR CITRIx ENVIRONmENT?

The chart also shows that

only 26% of the time,

users are complaining that

applications were faster

on their physical desktop -

signifying a growing maturity

of Citrix technologies.

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2006/04/26/the-excrutiating-detail-of-the-citrix-logon-process-a-huge-wall-chart.aspx


8 WHaT aRE THE bIGGEST pERfORmaNCE maNaGEmENT CHaLLENGES IN YOUR CITRIx ENVIRONmENT?

For years, the biggest complaint of Citrix admins has been that they get blamed for everything. Over all these

years, this situation has not changed. 53% of our respondents face this issue regularly. Two other observations

are interesting:

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

53%Citrix being blamed for everything

Users often notice issues before you do

Lack a single dashboard to monitorall Citrix tiers (Provisioning server,

XenServer, Netscaler, StoreFront, etc.)

Not able to measure the user experience

Need better / deeper monitoring ofthe Citrix XenApp servers

Diagnosis / troubleshooting istoo slow & complex

Lack of correlated, integratedend-to-end performance view

No visibility outside of the Citrix tiers(VMware, network, storage, etc.)

Too many silo tools /expert tools to look at

No simple way to forecast/planfor future growth

No visibility inside the virtual desktops

Not sure

Other

49%

46%

45%

40%

36%

27%

24%

20%

45%

16%

4%

7%

•There is now increasing awareness of the need to be proactive. The second biggest challenge that our respondents faced is that users were noticing problems before they did (49%). This points to an increasing need for better proactive performance management.

•Also of interest is the increasing need for a single dashboard across the Citrix tiers (46%). As we pointed out, Citrix is no longer a single product company. With the many products in the Citrix suite, customers are struggling to cope with the different administration and monitoring interfaces for each technology. Today, Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop, XenServer, Netscaler, XenMobile, ShareFile, VDI in a Box all have different administration and monitoring tool. Our respondents see an increasing need for unifying the monitoring, diagnosis and reporting of these technologies.


9 WHaT pERfORmaNCE maNaGEmENT fEaTURESaRE mOST ImpORTaNT TO YOU?

The performance management features considered most important are a direct reflection of the biggest

challenges experienced in Citrix environments. Proactive alerts (68%) are the most important performance

management feature, followed by a single interface to view the state of all Citrix and non-Citrix tiers that impact

performance (66%).

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

68%Proactive alerts

Single interface to view the state of all the Citrixand non-Citrix tiers that impact Citrix performance

Ability to measure and alert on end user experience

Simple interface that even the helpdesk can use totroubleshoot a problem and call the right expert

Intuitive dashboardIn-depth metrics that help youtroubleshoot problems quickly

Ability to generate reports for your management

Capacity planning and forecasting reports

Reporting for post-mortem diagnosis of problems

Capability to generate reports for compliance

Not sure

Other

66%

60%52%

52%

51%

47%

37%

32%

30%

1%

4%


10 HOW ImpORTaNT IS pERfORmaNCE maNaGEmENT TO THE ExpaNSION Of YOUR CITRIx ENVIRONmENT?

Most respondents see their Citrix deployments growing in the next few years. A vast majority (97%) say

that performance management is very important or somewhat important to the expansion of their Citrix

environment. Based on the response to this question, performance management is important for normal

operation of the Citrix infrastructure, during migration and for scaling of the infrastructure.

65%32%

3%

32%

65% | Very important | Somewhat important | Not important

97%think performancemanagement is important


11 WHaT TOOL(S) DO YOU USE fOR maNaGING YOUR CITRIx ENVIRONmENT?

Citrix EdgeSight/Director is the most commonly used management console for Citrix infrastructures (56%).

This is no surprise given that a very high percentage of respondents has access to Citrix platinum licenses,

which includes EdgeSight.

24% of respondents are using Microsoft SCOM with third party plugins to manage Citrix applications.

19% of respondents indicated that they are NOT currently managing their Citrix environment with any tools.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

56%Citrix EdgeSight / Director

Microsoft SCOM

Citrix Netscaler Insight

None

Solarwinds

Not sure

Other

24%

22%

19%

8%

9%

29%


12 HOW maNY TOOLS DO YOU USE TO maNaGE THEpERfORmaNCE Of YOUR CITRIx INfRaSTRUCTURE?

The answer to this question explains why Citrix admins have to spend a long time troubleshooting issues.

55% of respondents have to use 2 to 5 management tools to manage Citrix performance. 25% of respondents

are using 6 to 10 tools.

4%55%25%

7%3%6%

55%

| 1 | 2-5 | 6-10 | More than 10 | None | Not sure

use between 2-5 tools

80%are using more than 2 toolsto manage the performanceof their Citrix infrastructure


13 HOW OfTEN DO YOU fIND OUT afTER ExTENSIVEINVESTIGaTION THaT THE pRObLEm IS NOT CITRIx?

Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop provide application and desktop virtualization services to users. The

performance of these services is determined by the Citrix applications that are involved. However, many

non-Citrix tiers – for example, the network, the SQL datastore, the virtualization platform, the storage tier,

profile servers and Active Directory – can also affect the user perceived performance of the Citrix service.

65% of respondents believe that in over 50% of cases, after extensive investigation, they find out that

Citrix performance problems are NOT due to the Citrix tiers. This points to a growing need for end-to-end

performance management that includes the Citrix tiers and the non-Citrix tiers of the infrastructure.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1000%

10%

15%

5%

20%

Responses in %

Problem is not Citrix [%]

3%

9%8%

7% 7%

2%

11% 11% 11%

15% 15%

of respondents find that in over 50% of cases,performance problems are NOT due to Citrix.65%


14 HOW OfTEN DOES THE HELpDESk RESOLVE USER COmpLaINTS WITHOUT INVOLVING THE CITRIx ExpERT TEam?

The more user complaints the helpdesk can resolve without involving Citrix experts, the faster the

problem resolution and the lower operations costs (experts can perform more productive tasks than fire-

fighting). 78% of respondents indicate that less than 50% of the time, the helpdesk is able to resolve user

complaints without involving the Citrix expert team. The results indicate that there is a significant scope

for organizations to optimize the way that they are doing Citrix performance management. By leveraging

tools that empower the helpdesk to do more, organizations can reduce the workload on their Citrix

experts, lower their support costs and improve user satisfaction.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 1000%

10%

5%

15%

20%Responses in %

User complaints resolved without Citrix expert [%]

9%

15%

7%

14%13%

9%

2%5% 5%

3%

18%

say that the helpdesk resolves less than 50% of usercomplaints without involving the Citrix expert team.78%


15 HOW mUCH TImE DOES YOUR IT TEam SpEND ON TROUbLESHOOTING pERfORmaNCE pRObLEmS?

The responses to this question are not surprising given what we saw in the response to question 14. 60%

of respondents indicate that they are spending more than 30% of their time troubleshooting performance

problems. Organizations can gain significantly by enabling the key experts to spend time on productive

tasks rather than on routine fire-fighting activities.

4%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Dont Know0%

10%

15%

5%

20%

Responses in %

Time spent troubleshooting [%]

60%

7%

18%

16%

12%

9%

6%5%

1%1%

20%

of respondents spend more than 30% of theirtime troubleshooting performance problems


16 HOW OfTEN DO YOU DO a pERfORmaNCEbENCHmaRk Of YOUR CITRIx INfRaSTRUCTURE?

Despite the interest to manage Citrix performance proactively, very few respondents have solid performance

benchmarks of their Citrix infrastructure. 26% of respondents have NEVER conducted any performance

benchmark. 18% conducted benchmarks only during migration. Clearly, there is awareness of the need for

performance baselines. Yet, given the time they spend troubleshooting routine issues, Citrix admins are ending

up being very reactive.

13%15%11%18%26%13%3%

26%

| Monthly | Every 6 months | Once a year | Once during migration | Never | Not sure | Other

never conduct aperformance benchmark.


17 WHO DO YOU RELY ON fOR RECOmmENDaTIONSON pERfORmaNCE OpTImIzaTIONS aND TRENDS?

We asked respondents to indicate who they rely on for performance recommendations and tuning.

Given the profile of our respondents, it is not surprising that a majority of them (58%) rely on in-house

expertise. Citrix consulting services are used by 37%. 33% also use independent consultants to help.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

58%Inhouse citrix experts

Citrix Consulting

Independent consultants

Vendors

VAR

Not sure

Other

37%

33%

27%

15%

11%

5%


18 HOW maNY CITRIx CONCURRENT USERS DO YOUSUppORT aCROSS xENapp/xENDESkTOp?

To better understand the size of typical Citrix deployments, we asked our respondents to indicate the number

of concurrent users they support. 36% of respondents are supporting less than 500 concurrent users.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

16%

14%

11%

8%

5%

6%

3%

0 to 500 users

501 to 1,000 users

1,001 to 2,500 users

2,501 to 5,000 users

5,001 to 10,000 users

10,001 to 25,000 users

25,000 to 100,000 users

More than 100,000 users

Not sure

49%of respondents havebetween 500 and 10,000concurrent users

36%


DEmOGRapHICS & mETHODOLOGY

This survey was conducted from June through August 2014. We collected 640 responses from Citrix professionals.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

CITRIX ROLE

Citrix admin

Citrix architect

Citrix consultant

Citrix service provider

Citrix VAR / reseller

Other

Not sure

COMPANY SIZE(EMPLOYEES)

15% | 10-99

4% | Fewer than 10

26% | 100-999

19% | 1,000-4,999

12% | 5,000-9,999

13% | 10,000-49,999

6% | 50,000-99,999

4% | more than 100,000

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

JOB TITLE

Specialist

Consultant

Manager

Director

CTO, CIO, CMO, CFO, COO

Owner / CEO / President

Vice President

Other

abOUT EG INNOVaTIONS

eG Innovations provides intelligent performance management solutions that automate and dramatically

accelerate the discovery, diagnosis, and resolution of service performance issues in virtual, cloud, and

physical service infrastructures. Managing some of the largest Citrix deployments in the world, only eG

Innovations offers 360-degree service visibility with virtualization-aware performance correlation across

every layer and every tier - from desktops to applications, and from network to storage. This unique

approach delivers deep, actionable insights into the true causes of cross-domain service performance

issues and enables administrators to pre-emptively detect, diagnose, and fix root-cause issues - before

end users notice. More: www.eginnovations.com

MoRe ABout tHe BeNeFItS oF eG INNovAtIoNS FoR CItRIX

DoWNLoAD tHe WHIte pApeR“performance Assurance for virtualized Citrix XenApp Infrastructures” and find out how to overcome performance challenges and deliver better service uptime and user satisfaction while reducing cost and complexity.

FRee tRIAL oF eG eNteRpRISeLearn how eG Enterprise can help you radically simplify and accelerate application performance management to boost user experience and ROI - across your Citrix environment and beyond.

DoWNLoAD tHe SoLutIoN BRIeFLearn how to stop guessing what causes performance challenges. With eG Enterprise you can you can monitor, analyze and correlate metrics across every layer, every tier of the infrastructure to really understand the root cause of performance slowdowns.

DoWNLoAD tHe CASe StuDyLearn how a leading commercial services company boosts user productivity and reduces support costs with eG Enterprise.

WAtCH tHe WeBINARLearn how to achieve total performance visibility, enhance user satisfaction and realize the ROI you need for your Citrix environment.

WAtCH tHe DeMoGet a Tour of eG Enterprise: Performance Monitoring, Diagnosis and Reporting.



http://www.eginnovations.com/web/citrix-monitoring-benefits.htm?citrix

http://www.eginnovations.com/resource/xenapp-performance-white-paper/

http://www.eginnovations.com/demorequest/evalrequest.htm

http://www.eginnovations.com/solution-brief/xenapp-xendesktop-monitoring.pdf

http://www.eginnovations.com/news/eG-case-study-Higgins.pdf

http://www.eginnovations.com/webinar/xenapp/

http://www.eginnovations.com/demorequest/demorequest.php?name=citrix

Documents

CItRIX peRFoRMANCe MANAgEMENt - eG Innovations · new insights into the best practices for Citrix performance management. ... Migrating from Citrix XenApp 4.5 to 6.5 took a long time