My presentation was somewhat hampered by being told I could not use any of my customer data in the presentation.  One of the hard tasks in teaching Edgesight is that most companies do not want their data made public so doing the presentation in a public forum was a bit tough.  This would be much easier if it were done in a corporate classroom using the customer’s data. 

Anyway, please have a look, if you have never run a SQL query you will see some of that here.

Take care and thanks for watching.  I cannot recommend enough, attending Briforum, it is a true geek-to-geek, vender nuetral conference and was, hands down, the most informative virtualization conference I have ever gone to. 

Thanks guys

John

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2011/08/16/edgesight-under-the-hood_2C00_-a-video-from-BriForum-2011.aspx

DECLARE @UTCNow DATETIME
DECLARE @LocalStartDate SMALLDATETIME
DECLARE @LocalEndDate SMALLDATETIME
DECLARE @CompId INTEGER
DECLARE @Filter INTEGER

SET @CompID = 1
SET @Filter = 1

SET @UTCNow = GETUTCDATE()
SET @LocalStartDate = dbo.udf_core_get_offset_date(1, @Start, 1, 0, @UTCNow)
SET @LocalEndDate = dbo.udf_core_get_offset_date(1, @End, 0, 0, @UTCNow)

SELECT     SUM(vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.active_sessions_peak + vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.inactive_sessions_peak) AS TotalSessions,
                      CONVERT(varchar(10), DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp), 111) AS Date, CONVERT(varchar(10),
                      DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp), 108) AS Time
FROM         vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf INNER JOIN
                      company ON vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.compid = company.compid INNER JOIN
                      timezone ON company.tzid = timezone.tzid
GROUP BY vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp, timezone.standard_bias
HAVING      (DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp) >= @LocalStartDate) AND (DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias,
                      vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp) < DATEADD(d, 1, @LocalEndDate))
ORDER BY Date, Time

In the “Design the Matrix Wizard” Add Time2 to the Columns, Date to the Rows, and Total Sessions to the Details value.  Click finish.

The first necessary items that need to be added to the report in order for this report to run successfully are parameters.  On the data or layout tab of your new report, open the Report Parameters window.  Two parameters need to be added to the report “Start” and “End”.  They both need to be string values.  EdgeSight reads these parameters on the reports and allows you to choose what dates you want to run the report for.  Go ahead and preview the new report.  If it doesn’t work, take a break, watch an episode of Dexter, and be glad you work on computers, where everyone gets a second shot.  Let’s continue down the steps to making this a report with a bit more useful data.

In the rows where the Date is, I needed to add the day of the week to display days like the following: 8/1/2011 – Monday.  To do this I changed the formula for the cell to:  =Fields!Date.Value & ” – ” & WeekdayName(Weekday(Fields!Date.Value))

In the columns where time2 resides I needed to show the hours and not show the integer.  I’m not a big VB guy and am still working on growing my coding.  For that reason I have change the cell to the impeccableformula of: =Fields!Time2.Value & “:00:00″. This shows the hours of the day in military format.

Good enough for me.

In BIDS, to show the average of rows and columns, a bit of code needs to be added to the report.  In the Report Layout window, you can add the subtotals to the rows and columns by simply right clicking on any row and column and selecting “Subtotal”.  BIDS will add a new row or column to your report that shows the subtotal of the row or column.  The problem is that BIDS 2005, I don’t know about any newer version, only subtotals are shown and not the average.  To show the average of the columns instead of the subtotals, open the “report properties” and go to the code tab.  Based on a how-to from All About Business Intelligence add the following code:

Public Function MatrixCellValue(ByVal sumValue As Object, ByVal avgValue As Object, ByVal InScope As Boolean, ByVal sumFormat As String, ByVal avgFormat As String) As Object
        If InScope Then
            Return sumValue
        Else
            If Not avgValue Is Nothing Then
                Return String.Format(avgFormat, CDbl(avgValue))
            Else
                Return Nothing
            End If
        End If
    End Function

Next you have to change the details cell to the following code:

=Code.MatrixCellValue(
Sum(Fields!TotalSessions.Value),
Avg(Fields!TotalSessions.Value),
InScope("matrix1_Date") and InScope("matrix1_Time"),
"{0,6:N0}",
"{0,6:N1}")

Go ahead and preview the new results of your report.

After a few aesthetic changes, you can find an example data output of my finished report here:
Download – Session Count by Date and Hour – Please note that this file is set to a .doc and needs to be renamed to a .rdl in order to be uploaded into EdgeSight.

***Update 8/19/11 – I did some playing around with this report and query and have noticed that I only applied the timezone offset to the time and not the date structure.  If a user runs the report on GMT-5:00, then instead of Friday 7:00PM showing up as the time, it will show Saturday 7:00PM.  I am correcting the query as soon as I can, and will update this post and the report once it is corrected.

****Update 8/20/11 – I fixed the query and the report.  The new version of the report converts time correctly.  You can download it here

SELECT     SUM(vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.active_sessions_peak + vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.inactive_sessions_peak) AS TotalSessions, 
                      CONVERT(varchar(10), DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp), 111) AS Date, CONVERT(varchar(10), 
                      DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp), 108) AS Time
FROM         vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf INNER JOIN
                      company ON vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.compid = company.compid INNER JOIN
                      timezone ON company.tzid = timezone.tzid
GROUP BY vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp, timezone.standard_bias
HAVING      (DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp) >= @LocalStartDate) AND (DATEADD(mi, timezone.standard_bias, 
                      vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp) < DATEADD(d, 1, @LocalEndDate))
ORDER BY Date, Time

Lets talk about the output real fast:

The first column of data is labeled “TotalSessions”.   This data combines the total number of inactive and active sessions for any given hour of the day.  Since we want the total number of Citrix sessions on the farm and not just the active sessions,  I needed to combine both the inactive and active sessions.

The second column of data is the Date:  The dataset’s date is split out of the vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.time_stamp data field to supply you with only the YYYY/MM/DD value.  This is much easier to use in the report that we are going to be creating.

The third column of data Time:  This is the hour of the day in GMT that the data is recorded for.  If you are on east coast time (-5), and the Time column says 00:00:00, your local time is 7:00 PM.  Because we don’t want out times to show up in GMT, we have to connect the company and timezone tables to calculate the correct time of the day, which show up in the fourth column

The fourth column of data is Time2: This column shows the time of the day with integers.  This data is converted to your timezone (but does not adjust for DST.  I will try to spend some time to work on DST at a later date).

Before I go any further with this data and creating a report, we have to dive into the grooming policies in EdgeSight.  Because this query runs off vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf, the data is subject to the EdgeSight grooming policy.  By default, this view is groomed to only hold 30 days of data.  This is an out of the box nightmare.   As most of the general public knows, are at least one or two months in the year with more than 30 days in them.  For this reason we are going to update the grooming policy to groom every 45 days.  Why 45? So that you can run this report on last month’s data, and it can be ran up to 14 days into the current month and still pull last month’s data..

To update this grooming policy: In EdgeSight go to Configure: Server Configuration: Data Maintenance: Grooming.  The policy that you will need to adjust is the one on the very bottom called: XenApp System Performance: ctrx_system_perf:  vw_ctrx_archive_system_perf.

As stated earlier, I put this figure on 45.  You can do more, but note that the view will hold more data in your EdgeSight Database.  Tune this as you see fit.

Please follow up with my next article to the creation of the Average Session Count by Day and Time report.

Or… if you would rather just play with the report and don’t feel like reading any more, Download the Report here.  Simply rename the file to a .rdl and upload it to your custom reports on your EdgeSight web server!

Recently I was asked to determine which users were using a certain application in our Citrix Farm.  We are using a published desktop and while EdgeSight has reports to show published applications, few built-in reports to show what users are running in their session.  In addition, I was only looking for users who were on our internal network and not using a thin client.  Unless your network team has created a very segregated network, and you have set up user groups based on various subnets and devices, this sort of information is impossible to pull out of EdgeSight.   In this post I will show you a query that gathers this information.

The Query

DECLARE @today datetime 
DECLARE @app varchar(20) 
SET @today = convert(varchar,getdate(),111) 
SET @app = 'notepad.exe' 
SELECT DISTINCT CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111) AS 'Date', serv.machine_name AS 'Server', serv.[user] AS 'Username', serv.client_name, serv.client_address, serv.client_version, icatbl.client_directory, apptbl.app_description, apptbl.exe_name, apptbl.exe_version 
FROM vw_es_archive_application_usage apptbl, vw_ctrx_archive_server_start_perf serv, vw_es_usergroup_ica_users icatbl 
WHERE apptbl.exe_name like '%'+@app+'%' 
and apptbl.account_name <> 'UNKNOWN' 
and serv.client_address not like '192%' 
and icatbl.client_directory not like '\%' 
and convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111) >= @today-30 
and apptbl.sessid = serv.sessid and icatbl.sessid = serv.sessid 
and CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,serv.time_stamp), 111) 
ORDER BY CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111), 'username' 

The Query Explained

Let’s review the criteria we are looking for in this query:

1. Users accessing a certain application
2. Users who are not using thin clients
3. Users who are on the internal LAN

To gather this information, I’m using 3 different views in the EdgeSight database:

1. vw_es_archive_application_usage – aliased as “apptbl”
   • This will give me Application Description, the EXE name, the EXE version
2. vw_ctrx_archive_server_start_perf – aliased as “serv”
   • This will give me the XenApp server, the Username, the Client Name, IP Address, and ICA Version
3. vw_es_usergroup_ica_users – aliased as “icatbl”
   • This will give me the ICA Client Directory

These 3 views will be linked by the SESSID (session id) column with is present in all the views.

and apptbl.sessid = serv.sessid and icatbl.sessid = serv.sessid

First we declare some variables and assign them values:

DECLARE @today datetime
DECLARE @app varchar(20)
SET @today = convert(varchar,getdate(),111)
SET @app = 'notepad.exe'

If you have the several requests with different criteria you can declare some variables to help you.  In this case, I’ve created a variable called @app that I can set to any executable that I’m reporting on. To refer to this variable in the query, I use it in the WHERE clause using a LIKE operator and a regular expression.

WHERE apptbl.exe_name like '%'+@app+'%'

The rest of the WHERE clause helps us find the users we are looking for.

 
and apptbl.account_name <> 'UNKNOWN' 
and serv.client_address not like '192%' 
and icatbl.client_directory not like '\%' 
and convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111) >= @today-30 
and apptbl.sessid = serv.sessid and icatbl.sessid = serv.sessid 
and CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,apptbl.time_stamp), 111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,serv.time_stamp), 111) 

I have filtered out user IP addresses that start with “192” as this is typical of home-based routers.  Obviously, you can modify this to reflect your own network.  To filter out thin-clients, I’m not selecting any client directories that start with “\”.  I’ve found that thin clients (in my case Wyse) have file systems that begin with a “\” and you can refer to my post that covered finding non-PC devices in EdgeSight here. Finally, I’m only looking at entries for the past 30 days, where the sessid’s match, and where the time_stamps match.

I always welcome comments and questions.

Thanks,
Alain

Intro

Holistic Query
This query is designed to give you your basic system performance including Memory and Disk Queue.  You can use this to query specific metrics of a system during a reporting period (by hour).  The only value you have to manually enter is the date in the format you see above.  You will take the “Machine Name” and “Time Stamp” column values and enter them into the query below to get more detail.

The Query:

select machine_name, dateadd(hh,-5,time_stamp), disk_time_sum/disk_time_cnt as "Disk Time", total_processor_time_sum/total_processor_time_cnt as "Processor Time",
(committed_Kbytes_sum/committed_kbytes_cnt)/1000.0 as "Committed memory", Context_switches_sec_sum/Context_switches_sec_cnt as "Context Switches",
current_disk_queue_length_sum/current_disk_queue_length_cnt as "Disk Queue Length"
from c3edgesight.citgop_edgesightxa.dbo.vw_es_archive_system_performance
where  machine_name like '%ComputerName%'
and CONVERT(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-5,time_stamp),101) = '07/14/2011'
order by dateadd(hh,-5,time_stamp)

Gives us:

Drilling Down:
So, if looking at the results of the query above uncovers an issue of high CPU, RAM or Disk Que you can drill down with the following query.  In this example we will copy the Machine_name column and Time_Stamp column and paste them in between the single quotes to populate the variable.  So we will copy SVR-DS81 and 2011-07-14 13:00:00.000 which will give us a list of every processor owned by every user on the system during that reporting period.

declare @MachineName nvarchar (255)
declare @timestamp datetime
set @MachineName= 'SVR-DS81'
set @timestamp = '2011-07-14 13:00:00.000'
select account_name, exe_name, App_description, total_processor_time_sum/total_processor_time_cnt as "Processor Time",(Private_kbytes_sum/private_kbytes_cnt)/1000 as "Private Memory(megs)", pages_sec_sum/Pages_sec_cnt as "Pages/Sec"
from vw_es_archive_application_performance
where DATEADD(hh,-5,time_stamp) = @timestamp
and machine_name = @MachineName
order by "pages/sec" desc

How long did a user’s session last:
So this is one of my cross-tab queries that you can copy and paste and just change the username for.  This will give you the date, sessoin ID, logon and logoff time as well as the length of the session for a specific user.  In this instance I am NOT pulling data from the views, rather I am pulling the data from two tables, the session table and the principal table.  This query can be handy when you are trying to audit the time a user is on the system.

The Query:

declare @today datetime
set @today = convert(varchar(10),getdate(),111)
select convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time),111), inst_sessid, dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time),
dateadd(hh,-5,logoff_time),
convert(varchar,floor(datediff(mi,dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time) , dateadd(hh,-5,Logoff_time))/60))+ ':' +Right('0' + convert(varchar,datediff(mi,dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time) , dateadd(hh,-5,Logoff_time)) % 60), 2) as HrMinfrom session s, principal p
where convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time),111) > @today-30
and account_name = '%AccountName%'
and p.prid = s.prid

Average Start/End Time:
The idea for this Query came about after listening to Chris Nickerson (one of the top Social Engineers in the world) discuss how, as part of penetration testing, they can call a helpdesk and try to get them to change a passoword after finding a  user ID for a particular company.  I tend to think of this query as a social engineering counter measure.  What it gives me is the average logon and logoff time for a particular user.  How this can be valuable would be if you could set it up as part of the helpdesk solution so that when someone calls in, the helpdesk knows the average logon and logoff time for the person they are talking to.  If a person who normally works M-F 8AM to 5PM calls in at 2:15AM wanting to change their password, the helpdesk technician can maybe ask a few more questions or be more alerted to a possible social engineering attempt.  This query is still not entirely vetted but as I have changed employers, I may not get a chance to vet it further.  I have noticed it is accurate for standard users but for Admins who may have that “special” ICA Timeout, it my show some skewed results because lets face it, we are on the system pretty much 24×7.  This query gives the average logon and logoff time for the last 7 days.

The Query:

select account_name, right(convert(varchar(20),(cast(AVG(cast(dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time)as float) - floor (cast(dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time) as float)))as datetime)),100),7),
right(convert(varchar(20),(cast(AVG(cast(dateadd(hh,-5,logoff_time)as float) - floor(cast(dateadd(hh,-5,logoff_time) as float)))as datetime)),100),7)
from session] s, principal p
where s.prid = p.prid
and account_name = '%UserName%'
and  dateadd(hh,-5,logon_time) >= GETDATE()-7
group by account_name

Today’s workplace no longer follows a strict standard in terms of endpoint devices.  Despite the efforts of your infrastructure, network, and security teams users are connecting non-approved devices to your network and your Citrix farm.  A lot has been said about the “Consumerization of IT” and it is a reality for any Citrix administrator/engineer.  In this blog post we will explore how to find these types of devices using EdgeSight.

The Query

We will use the VW_ES_USERGROUP_ICA_USERS view for this query.  Here are the columns in this view:

Here is a sample of data in this view (customer specific information hidden):

Mobile Devices

The following query will select mobile devices that connected to your farm in the last 30 days.

SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR,dtlast,111) AS 'Date', account_name, client_buildnum, client_productid, client_disp_horiz, client_disp_vert
FROM vw_es_usergroup_ica_users
WHERE client_name = 'mobile'
and account_name <> 'UNKNOWN'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,dtlast,111) >= getdate() - 30
ORDER BY 'Date' DESC

Here’s a sample of the output:

The new Citrix Receiver sets the client name to ‘mobile’. On a PC this is typically the environment variable %COMPUTERNAME%.  To find the devices that are connecting, you can use the horizontal (client_disp_horiz) and vertical (client_disp_vert) resolutions and compare them to current resolutions of mobile devices.  I found a nice reference list here.  This can get you half-way there.  The only other way that I’ve been able to distinguish the client that is connecting are the ‘client_buildnum’ and ‘client_productid’ fields.  Unfortunately, finding an updated list of ICA/Receiver build numbers is not easy.  Stephane Thirion at Archy.net provides a recently updated list.

Thin Clients

We can also use VW_ES_USERGROUP_ICA_USERS to report on thin client devices.  It is unlikely that thin clients will be an unapproved device on your network, but we can get some useful data on them from this view.  The following query will select thin client devices that connected to your farm in the last 30 days.

SELECT  CONVERT(VARCHAR,dtlast,111) AS 'Date', account_name, client_directory, client_version, client_buildnum, client_productid, client_disp_horiz, client_disp_vert
FROM vw_es_usergroup_ica_users
WHERE client_directory like '\%'
and account_name <> 'UNKNOWN'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,dtlast,111) >= getdate() - 30
ORDER BY 'Date' DESC

Here’s a sample of the output:

If the thin client is windows-based, chances are the client_version field will give you the currently installed ICA client on the device.  You can use this information to pester the person in charge of thin client’s to update them or replace them (just kidding – but really you need to get them updated).  For this example, we examined the ‘client_directory’ column and determined that if it started with a  ‘\’, it was a thin client.  You may have to experiment with this field depending on which thin clients you have in your environment.

I hope this post has shown you how to track down non-pc devices connecting to your Citrix farm.  Once you have determined the ICA/Java client versions connecting to your farm (see the ICA Client Version report in EdgeSight!) you can modify these queries to find Java client users and Macintosh users.

As always, I welcome all comments and questions.

Thanks,
Alain

Intro

EdgeSight allows to you to create alerts that trigger on many criteria.  In this post, we will configure an alert and show how to query the database directly to get this information.

Creating an alert

For the purposes of this post, I have created a Process Hung alert for outlook.exe.  This is a built-in Application Error alert that can trigger on the EXE file name, the application description, the process file version, and/or the process company name.  The actual alert will show up in the Farm Monitor and Alert List view under the Monitor Tab in the EdgeSight console.

Now you will get a near real-time alert in the console that looks like this:

I found that this alert triggered quite often and while you can use the “Process Not Responding Alert” report, this blog is all about pulling back the veil.

The Query

We will use the VW_ES_ARCHIVE_ALERT view for this query.  Here is an example of all the columns in this view (customer specific information hidden):

For our purposes, I want to get the date of the alert, the machine name, the username, the process name, the process description, and the actual text of the alert.

DECLARE @mydate DATETIME
Set @mydate = GETDATE()
SELECT DISTINCT CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) AS 'Date', machine_name, account_name, exe_name, alert_name,alert_text
FROM vw_es_archive_alert
WHERE alert_name = 'Process Hung'
and exe_name = 'Outlook.exe'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR,@mydate,111)

This gives me:

If you look at the alert_text field, you will see some information that doesn’t look right.  You can see “Microsoft Office Outlook”, a weird character, and a series of numbers.  These numbers are in fact the actual process hang measured in milliseconds.  You can see this if you go back to the farm monitor and select the detail for an alert:

You have the information you need to determine who is having a real long delay, but how can we sort or organize this delay information.  There is no built-in MSSQL function to break this column up into two useful fields.  A Google search pointed me to a user-written function that will strip non-alphanumeric from a column.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_StripCharacters]
(
@String NVARCHAR(MAX),
@MatchExpression VARCHAR(255)
)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
SET @MatchExpression =  '%['+@MatchExpression+']%'
WHILE PatIndex(@MatchExpression, @String) > 0
SET @String = Stuff(@String, PatIndex(@MatchExpression, @String), 1, '')
RETURN @String
END

Once you execute this in the MSSQL Management Studio, you can reference the function in your query:

DECLARE @mydate DATETIME
Set @mydate = GETDATE()
SELECT DISTINCT CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) AS 'Date', machine_name, account_name, exe_name, alert_name, dbo.fn_StripCharacters(alert_text, '^a-z0-9')
FROM vw_es_archive_alert
WHERE alert_name = 'Process Hung'
and exe_name = 'Outlook.exe'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR,@mydate,111)

This now gives us:

Now the special character is gone, but how can you split the process delay out of the column?  You can use a built-in MSSQL function call SUBSTRING.

DECLARE @mydate DATETIME
Set @mydate = GETDATE()
SELECT DISTINCT CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) AS 'Date', machine_name, account_name, exe_name, alert_name, SUBSTRING(dbo.fn_StripCharacters(alert_text, '^a-z0-9'),23,6) AS 'Delay'
FROM vw_es_archive_alert
WHERE alert_name = 'Process Hung'
and exe_name = 'Outlook.exe'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR,@mydate,111)

Now we get:

To finish up, we’ll divide the Delay by 1000 to get the delay in seconds.

DECLARE @mydate DATETIME
Set @mydate = GETDATE()
SELECT DISTINCT CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) AS 'Date', machine_name, account_name, exe_name, alert_name, CONVERT(INTEGER,SUBSTRING(dbo.fn_StripCharacters(alert_text, '^a-z0-9'),23,6),10)/1000.0 AS 'Delay'
FROM vw_es_archive_alert
WHERE alert_name = 'Process Hung'
and exe_name = 'Outlook.exe'
and CONVERT(VARCHAR,time_stamp,111) = CONVERT(VARCHAR,@mydate,111)
ORDER BY 'Delay' desc

Our end result:

With this information, you can do further manipulation including counting the number of alert instances for a user or tracking a single user over time.

As always I welcome all questions and comments.

Thanks,
Alain

Prologue

Intro
Thanks to the vibrant competition present in the virtualization space, many Engineers find themselves always transitioning to the next version of their virtualization solution. During such a transition, management (and hopefully the engineers) want to know who’s using the new system and if users are still accessing the old one. In many cases this can be a trivial exercise, but for this scenario we’ll make it more complex.

Scenario
The networking team has intelligently organized its users’ locations by subnet. In fact, due to number of users and available IP’s, each floor at the main location has it’s own subnet. Recently, Citrix users at the main location were transitioned to the new environment, except for a subset who had legacy applications that would not work in the new Citrix farm. Management wants to know many of the transitioned users are using the new system.

Problem
Since we are using published desktops in both the old and new Citrix environments, EdgeSight (version 5.3) does not provide an easy way to query desktop launches (see this post on EdgeSight Under the Hood for how to get a query of published desktop launches). In this case, we have a different naming schema for the servers in the new farm, but since there are many different locations connecting back to our Citrix farms, we need to just select the users at the main location. This will require us to filter the users based on their IP subnet.

PARSENAME
While researching this issue I found that dealing with IP addresses in Transact-SQL is a common problem. Luckily there is a built-in function called PARSENAME that parses object names like ‘servername.databasename.schemaname.objectname’. Since IPv4 addresses follow the same convention, you can reference each part of the octet in an IP address.

For example:

DECLARE @IP nvarchar(15)
SET @IP = '192.168.1.1'
SELECT PARSENAME(@IP,4) AS 'Octet 1',
PARSENAME(@IP,3)AS 'Octet 2',
PARSENAME(@IP,2)AS 'Octet 3',
PARSENAME(@IP,1)AS 'Octet 4'

Gives us:

Octet 1    Octet 2    Octet 3    Octet 4
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
192        168        1          1

(1 row(s) affected)

The query
For this query we will use vw_ctrx_archive_server_start_perf which has become my goto view for client related information and just sort by one subnet: 192.168.1.0 – 192.168.1.101 and look at the last 3 days of data

DECLARE @today datetime
SET @today = CONVERT(varchar(10),getdate(),111)
--we are using DATEADD and offsetting by minus four hours due to Eastern Daylight Time
SELECT CONVERT(varchar(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111) as 'Date', ([user]) as 'User'
FROM vw_ctrx_archive_server_start_perf
WHERE CONVERT(varchar(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111) >= @today-3 --past 3 days
and [user] <> 'UNKNOWN'
--Gets NEWSERVER01, NEWSERVER02, etc
and machine_name like 'NEWSERVER%
and PARSENAME(client_address,4) = '192'
and PARSENAME(client_address,3) = '168'  and (PARSENAME(client_address,2) = 1 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 101
GROUP BY CONVERT(varchar(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111), [user]
ORDER BY CONVERT(varchar(10),DATEADD(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111)

For our second example, we’ll sort with 11 sub-nets:
192.168.1.0 – 192.168.1.101
192.168.2.0 – 192.168.2.102
192.168.3.0 – 192.168.3.103
192.168.4.0 – 192.168.4.104
192.168.5.0 – 192.168.5.105
192.168.6.0 – 192.168.6.106
192.168.7.0 – 192.168.7.107
192.168.8.0 – 192.168.8.108
192.168.9.0 – 192.168.9.109
192.168.10.0 – 192.168.10.110
192.168.11.0 – 192.168.11.121

DECLARE @today datetime
SET @today = convert(varchar(10),getdate(),111)
SELECT CONVERT(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111) as 'Date', ([user]) as 'User'
FROM vw_ctrx_archive_server_start_perf
WHERE CONVERT(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111) >= @today-3
and [user] <> 'UNKNOWN'
and machine_name like 'NEWSERVER%'
and PARSENAME(client_address,4) = '192'
and PARSENAME(client_address,3) = '168'
and (PARSENAME(client_address,2) =1 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 101
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =2 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 102
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =3 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 103
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =4 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 104
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =5 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 105
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =6 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 106
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =7 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 107
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =8 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 108
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =9 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 109
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =10 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 110
or PARSENAME(client_address,2) =11 and PARSENAME(client_address,1) between 0 and 121)
GROUP BY convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111), [user]
ORDER BY convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,time_stamp), 111)

Hopefully this will provide you with some more options when you need to present data from your EdgeSight database. As always I welcome any and all questions and comments.

Thanks,
Alain

We recently made the move to published XenAPP Desktops in our environment and after the initial rollout I thought I would consult edgesight and see what kind of metrics and performance numbers were in place and see how many users were using the new published desktop. What I found was that published desktops do now show up in several of the views/tables in Edgesight and the data is basically missing for a number of canned reports.

After a call with Citrix and finding out that they will not have a fix for some time, I decided to see if I could find the data somewhere in the vast archives of Edgesight Data Model. What I found is that information about published Desktops does, in fact, appear to be there. It is in a table (not a view) called ctrx_session. Running the command

select * from ctrx_session where app_name = ‘#%desktopName%’
This will give you a list of published applications, if you don’t know the name of your published desktop than use the ‘like’ function to find it.

Once you know your Desktop name you will need to cross reference the sessid with the view vw_ctrx_archive_session_perf and compare the sessid column type the following query to get counts on your published desktop. (Inner join folks can type it their way as well, note the alias of “s” and “p” for the tables)

select convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,s.dtlast),101), count(distinct [user])
from ctrx_session s , vw_ctrx_archive_session_perf p
where p.sessid = s.sessid
and s.app_name = ‘#%virtual Desktop’
group by convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,s.dtlast),101)
order by convert(varchar(10),dateadd(hh,-4,s.dtlast),101)

If you want to get the users who have accessed your virtual desktop you would type the following query

select distinct [user]
from ctrx_session s, vw_ctrx_archive_session_perf p
where p.sessid = s.sessid
and s.app_name like ‘%virtual%’

Comparing the “sessid” and specifying the “#Virtual Desktop” in your queries will also get you user names, system statistics such as CPU, Memory, etc but it does not get you any latency statistics which really sucks! I am hoping Citrix makes it a priority to get this fixed. Basically, you will not be able to tell a user who complains about their XenAPP Session that they had a latency of 500ms. One of the nice things about Edgesight was the ability to gather latency data, bummer!

Conclusion:
I know this may not be much of a consolation prize but if you want to report usage, usernames, etc you at least can grab some of that information. If there is a specific metric (that does not have to do with latency) please let me know and I will try to send you a query that will work for you. I have been able to answer all but one question that has been sent to me.

Thanks for reading!

John

ALSO NOTE: I am on eastern standard time so my query of the dtlast column has a “dateadd(hh,-4,dtlast). Adjust this according to your time zone.