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Troubleshooting Citrix XenApp??

Chapter 1. Basic Troubleshooting Methodology

XenApp has grown into complex software with ever-expanding infrastructures in place. Together with tight integrations with other systems, such as Remote Desktop Services, Active Directory Domain Services, and other third-party authentication services, troubleshooting XenApp has become more complicated.

This first chapter will cover basic troubleshooting methodologies, how to approach troubleshooting complex issues, and what the full process entails—understanding the problem, finding a fix or workaround, determining the root cause, and applying corrective steps where applicable.

In this chapter, we will cover:

Basic troubleshooting guidelines and methodologies
Breaking down problems into affected components
Resolution testing
Root cause analysis and corrective actions

Troubleshooting 101

As with many software nowadays, XenApp requires minimal configuration and installation decisions, and an experienced administrator can configure the infrastructure in a matter of hours.

Particularly because the installation is a simple process, it is the troubleshooting that sometimes becomes difficult.

It is important to note that a solid grasp of XenApp components, interaction, and workflow is needed before performing troubleshooting.

Most times troubleshooting can be easy, either the solution is straightforward, perhaps because the administrator has experienced this problem in the past, or a simple Internet search for the particular error message will yield a Citrix knowledge-based article or blog post for that particular problem.

In all other cases, troubleshooting needs to be performed in an organized fashion so the solution is reached in the shortest amount of time possible, since many times the problem could involve downtime for a large number of users.

Although seemingly unimportant, one of the most important aspects of troubleshooting is producing a comprehensible problem statement:

How is the problem manifesting itself?
Who is facing the issue?
When did the issue start?

Without clear answers to these questions, an ambiguous problem can undermine efforts for a solution.

Consider the fact that most of the time an issue is generally logged by a service desk or call center (first line of support), who might escalate it to a desktop support team (second line of support), and who will in turn escalate it to a Citrix team (third line of support).

If any piece of information is misunderstood by the analyst logging the incident, this in turn can be propagated to the Citrix team with the information being completely irrelevant to the troubleshooting process or even incorrect.

Consider the following scenario: a user working in the finance department calls the helpdesk and complains that an accounting application stopped working in Citrix. The application was working fine last week. The help desk agent performs a series of basic troubleshooting steps and escalates the problem to the next line of support without requesting additional information.

Consider the following questions:

How many users are affected? Has the application stopped working for other users?
What is the expected behavior of the application?
Are you in the same location as last week or a new office?
Is the application being used by a small or large number of users?
Can the issue be reproduced on a different machine or in a different office?

While each question in itself might not directly lead to a solution, it can narrow down the problem considerably.

For instance, a positive answer to the first question might indicate this is a server or network issue as it affects multiple users.

A positive answer to the third question might indicate this is a network error; the next logical step would be to check whether there are any networking restrictions applied to subnets or IP addresses in the current location.

The fifth question is meant to check whether the issue is specific to a user, machine, or location.

Breaking down problems

When troubleshooting difficult cases, after making sure you have understood the problem (and that the information provided is correct and relevant), you must ensure a systematic approach to problem solving.

One strategy that can be used is divide and conquer, where you break down a problem into individual, easily solvable problems.

Considering the previous example where a user calls the helpdesk, one way of breaking down the problem is testing each sub-system individually, for example:

Are the Citrix servers online and healthy? Check the monitoring systems.
Is the network link reliable? Run a continuous ping and check whether websites load correctly.
Is the problem easy to reproduce on any machine or does the problem follow the user?

For instance, in the case of XenApp 7.5/7.6, the following components can be considered:

Server/desktop operating system machines and virtual delivery agents
Delivery controller
StoreFront
Citrix receiver
NetScaler Gateway

Going back to our example, one or more components can be causing a problem. For instance, there might be a problem with the Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) on the server/servers hosting the finance application. This prevents the controller from being able to use the broker agent part of the VDA to communicate with the server.

Another possibility is that the issue is related to authentication. The StoreFront or the NetScaler Gateway (if the user is outside the corporate network) might have problems authenticating users to site resources.

It is important to quickly rule out as many components as possible. For instance, we could quickly test if the Citrix web page is accessible internally (where only the StoreFront component is used) and externally (where we might be reaching a NetScaler Gateway first). If the webpage is accessible internally but not externally, we would need to focus our attention on the NetScaler Gateway.

Alternatively, if, in both scenarios, the webpage does not load, we might focus our attention on the actual servers and/or delivery controllers.

Let's take another example: several users complain that during the day, applications published in XenApp start to become slow every morning.

The users mention that the slowness has been happening for some time, but it has only started to impact them recently.

Consider the following questions:

How long has the initial slowness been observed (several weeks or months)?
Around what hour is the impact noticeable?
How long is the impact—several hours or the entire day?
How often does the problem occur—on a daily basis or only on specific days?

Answers to the these questions can be tremendously important when dealing with performance-related issues. For example, it is important to establish whether the performance is affected during specific hours/days (to help to isolate whether a scheduled operation is causing the issue) and whether it is consistent (for example, happens every day of the week or happens only on specific dates/days).

Further breaking down the problem could consist of:

Determining whether there is any correlation between systems tasks (antivirus, backup, web filtering, and so on) and the start of the slowness
Determining whether the impacted application(s) can be tied to a group of servers, users, or user locations
Analyzing past monitoring data for any negative performance trends
Tip
Use NetScaler Insight Center to collect information about traffic, performance data, and session information for NetScaler Gateway.

Root cause analysis

Once the problem has been correctly understood, and a fix applied and tested, the next step would be to determine the root cause and apply corrective actions if needed.

The Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Actions (RCCA) is the final step in troubleshooting a problem and involves determining the root cause of the issue and outlining any suggestions and recommendations for actions that can be implemented to prevent the reoccurrence of the underlying issue.

Most of the problems encountered in the Citrix world can be grouped into three categories:

Performance issues, for example, applications are slow to start, the network is unreliable, and so on
Incorrect configuration, for example, XenApp is not properly configured during the initial installation or a subsequent change
Broken code leading to unexpected behavior from XenApp or underlying components—these are trickiest to debug and probably the least encountered

Most root cause analysis reveal either a performance issue or an incorrect configuration.

Where a root cause is deemed to be performance related, tackling them usually requires improvements in the infrastructure—bigger bandwidth, more servers, faster disks, and so on. The real challenge is determining how much to scale the infrastructure so that performance falls back within acceptable parameters without spending a large amount of money.

Preventive steps for these types of problems could be:

Ensuring a capacity management process is in place
Monitoring Citrix infrastructure for active usage
Creating an easily scalable Citrix architecture

Incorrect configurations are usually self-evident; for example, if an administrator performs a change that negatively affects the Citrix infrastructure, again usually almost immediately. The root cause analysis, therefore, focuses on the following questions:

Has the change management process been followed?
Have the risks been properly established and highlighted?
Have actions been considered to minimize the risks?
Is there a backup plan in place in case a rollback is needed?
What is the impact of a failed change and how will it affect users or production environments?

Changes where the risks have been appropriately highlighted ("Changing X setting has the risk of bringing down the Citrix site for 15 minutes"), where the change is performed out of hours (minimizing risks) and has a proper rollback plan in place are perfectly acceptable.

Most changes have the potential of causing downtime, but if the proper change management process is followed, the risks are minimized and the potential outage reduced.

Preventive steps for this type of problems could be:

Ensuring the risks have been correctly identified and presented to the business
Ensuring steps to minimize the risks have been identified
Ensuring there is a clear backup plan in place

Finally, during troubleshooting, a number of changes might need to be done before the final fix is found. It is, therefore, a good idea to keep a track of these changes while the troubleshooting process is actively ongoing.

Once the correct fix has been identified, a retroactive change request should be logged in the IT system. Although, in this instance, the change hasn't followed the standard change management approval process, it is still useful to have changes logged in the system in case they need to be looked up in the future as part of troubleshooting previous changes.

Key benefits

Understand the key troubleshooting methodologies when working with XenApp 7.5 version and above

Uncover effective tips and techniques to solve real-world XenApp® infrastructure problems

This is a fast-paced guide to developing key troubleshooting and problem resolution skills you can put to use in a Citrix environment

Description

Citrix XenApp® is an application virtualization product from Citrix. It allows users to connect to their corporate applications from various computer systems and even mobile devices. XenApp® has grown into a complex software with ever-expanding infrastructures in place. Together with tight integrations with other systems such as Terminal Services, Active Directory, and other third-party authentication services, troubleshooting XenApp® has become more complicated. This book teaches you how to approach troubleshooting complex issues with XenApp® deployments and understand the problem, find a fix or workaround, determine the root cause, and apply corrective steps wherever applicable. The book progresses to give you an idea about the many supportive components that play an important role in XenApp’s application delivery model and should be considered while troubleshooting XenApp® issues. It also shows you standard troubleshooting processes so that you can resolve complex XenApp® issues in a mission critical environment. By the end of this book, you will see how and where to use supportive components that help minimize XenApp® issues. Also, we’ll explain various tools that can be useful when monitoring and optimizing entire application and desktop delivery model.

Who is this book for?

This book is for Citrix Administrators or Citrix Engineers who are currently managing Citrix XenApp® in a production environment and want to learn how to troubleshoot XenApp® issues in the shortest possible time. It is assumed that you have a basic understanding of XenApp’s components and how to implement and manage a XenApp® infrastructure.

What you will learn

Get to know about troubleshooting methodologies and perform a root cause analysis of the problem

Understand the individual components and interactions required for a successful XenApp environments

Identify and troubleshoot issues around the core Citrix components

Identify XenApp® components and their roles and learn how they interact with the communication channels

Gain tips and tricks to optimize Citrix deployments

Monitor and optimize the XenApp® environment

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ruben Mar 09, 2016

This is an excellent book it covers all the necessary for working with your projects. This book teaches you how to approach troubleshooting complex issues with XenApp® deployments and understand the problem, find a fix or workaround, determine the root cause, and apply corrective steps wherever applicable. The book progresses to give you an idea about the many supportive components that play an important role in XenApp’s application delivery model and should be considered while troubleshooting XenApp® issues. It also shows you standard troubleshooting processes so that you can resolve complex XenApp® issues in a mission critical environment.

Amazon Verified review

Mateo Spencer Jan 19, 2016

I helped technically review this book and found that it to be very useful. I have setup Citrix XenApp in a lot of different environments for a lot of different places and believe that this resource guide includes many of the steps that I utilized along the way to troubleshoot different problems that I encountered.

Perry Nally Mar 02, 2016

Great insight and steps to common and not-so-common troubleshooting. Good reference guide. It contains everything from communication ports to app layer interaction. Lists each component and possible issues each one could have with common troubleshooting for each.

Craig Gilbert Mar 10, 2016

This book is an excellent resource for beginners to XenApp and experts alike. It covers common troubleshooting concepts and also delves into the inner workings on XenApp giving you all the tools you need to properly troubleshoot any issues that could arise in your XenApp projects or existing environment. Along with covering XenApp specific issues, the book also touches on potential issues you may run in to with other applications that XenApp interacts with such as SQL Server.

SuJo Feb 27, 2016

Great coverage on Citrix XenApp, I used XenServer extensively and this book really helps in a pinch. If you're looking for support and unwilling to pay the high rates, then this book will help you out a lot if you're willing to put for the effort. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is not afraid to get hands on. Application performance, refactoring, and monitoring are all covered nicely with this title as well.

Troubleshooting Citrix XenApp??: Identify and resolve key Citrix XenAppÂ® issues using trusted troubleshooting and monitoring techniques

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Troubleshooting Citrix XenApp??

Chapter 1. Basic Troubleshooting Methodology

Troubleshooting 101

Breaking down problems

Tip

Resolution testing

Root cause analysis

Summary

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