Usage guide: Citrix CVAD essentials

This page outlines various ways to use the pack, including use case examples.

Administrators can refer to the Configuration guide: Citrix CVAD essentials to set up and customize the installed content.

The Citrix Virtual Machine Monitoring library pack enables IT administrators to:

Monitor the health and status of Citrix virtual machines in real time.
Track critical infrastructure components like the delivery controller, license server, and StoreFront.
Identify and troubleshoot VDA registration issues and reboot health concerns.
Act proactively with preconfigured remote actions to restart session hosts, refresh GPO policies, log off inactive sessions, or end unresponsive processes.

This pack equips IT teams to detect and address Citrix performance or availability issues before users are impacted.

Library pack uses

Jump to Use cases on this page to see relevant scenario applications.

Virtual machine monitoring

The Citrix virtual machine monitoring dashboard is the starting point for VM diagnosis. It provides a dedicated environment for managing the online/offline VM distribution, reboot health tracking, and VDA registration insights into Citrix CVAD machines.

Visibility into online/offline VM distribution

With the Summary tab on the provided Citrix virtual machine monitoring dashboard, you can quickly determine the online/offline status of your VMs, with breakdowns by desktop pool and VDI type.

Virtual machine performance overview

The Performance Overview tab on the Citrix virtual machine monitoring dashboard focuses on hardware load and resource utilization across your virtual desktop session hosts. It helps you identify infrastructure bottlenecks before they affect the end-user experience.

It organizes telemetry into four health groups:

CPU/GPU: Normalized CPU queue length, overall CPU usage, and GPU utilization for graphics-intensive pools.
Memory: Available memory, available cache, and swap activity to reveal pressure and paging.
Storage: Disk queue length and read/write latencies to surface storage contention.
Network: Failed connections, slow connection establishment, and total traffic to highlight connectivity and saturation patterns.

Infrastructure server monitoring

The Citrix CVAD infrastructure dashboard is the starting point for server diagnosis. It provides a dedicated environment for monitoring infrastructure servers that are offline, with critical stopped services, or experiencing performance or stability issues.

Citrix CVAD hypervisor monitoring

Monitor Citrix CVAD hypervisors (virtualization hosts) to understand their load and how it affects hosted virtual machines. This dashboard provides insights into VDI pools, virtual machines, and user sessions across virtualization hosts, along with a performance summary of these hosts.

Monitoring Citrix Workspace client application

Monitor and manage your employees' experience with the Citrix Workspace client application. This hybrid web and desktop application provides insights into usage, performance, and stability, helping you identify issues with the application on devices.

Refer to the Monitoring applications documentation for more information on monitoring web and desktop applications.

Triggering alerts for VDI-related issues

The installed VDI monitors from this library pack allow you to monitor and detect issues using the critical metrics specific to your virtual desktop infrastructure:

High percentage of disconnected sessions per desktop pool – Identifies frequent or unexpected drops.
High CPU usage per desktop pool – Flags potential performance bottlenecks.
High average latency per VDI client location – Highlights network-related delays by region.
High number of sessions per virtual machine – Prevents resource overutilization.

Alerts generated by the VDI library monitors appear in the Alerts overview dashboard for further investigation and analysis.

Virtual machine administration

Remediation remote actions are provided that can be used to resolve common issues with VDI devices, which typically require assigning issues to specialist teams with VDI experience or specialized administration tools. These fixes include the ability to invoke session host restarts, update GPO policies, and end unresponsive processes running within a session.

Use cases

In addition to the relevant use cases covered below, you may uncover other troubleshooting scenarios specific to your environment.

Investigate devices with poor reboot health

The reboot health of a VM is determined by the custom field "Citrix reboot health" included with this pack. The parameters for 'good, average, and poor' are configurable. This information is summarized in the dashboard, which features a dedicated bar chart that displays the number of devices in each category. This allows you to drill down to any devices that have not rebooted for a long period, which may require further investigation.

Monitor critical services on infrastructure servers

Each infrastructure server monitored by this pack has a specific set of services that are considered critical for the server to function properly. If any of these services are stopped, it could potentially have a significant impact on your VMs and the employees using them. For example, if the Broker Service is not running on the Desktop Delivery Controller, users may not be able to connect to their applications or desktops. This should be investigated as a matter of urgency.

Monitor the components' health of the Citrix CVAD solution by monitoring their event logs

Use remote-action-based widgets in the Events Insights section to monitor the health of your CVAD solution's components, including Desktop Delivery Controllers, StoreFront servers, and License servers. These widgets display the results of remote actions that monitor Citrix event logs for specific events related to predefined topics.

The list of predefined topics for Desktop Delivery Controllers is as follows:

DDCs with license server communication issues: indicates Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller servers that have ongoing connectivity issues with Citrix Licensing servers. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.
DDCs with license validity issues: shows Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller servers that have entered the emergency licensing grace period. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.
Devices with Data store connectivity issues: indicates Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller servers experiencing Data Store connectivity issues. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.
Hypervisor connectivity status by DDC name: shows the last Hypervisor connectivity status event for each Desktop Delivery Controller server. Note: This widget shows the most recent message in the DCCs' logs for this topic. This message may be outdated, and the topic may no longer be relevant. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.
Virtual machines connectivity status by DDC name: displays the last Desktop Delivery Controller connection status event to virtual machines by the Desktop Delivery Controller server name. Note: This widget shows the most recent message in the DCCs' logs for this topic. This message may be outdated, and the topic may no longer be relevant. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.
Failed session launched by DDC name: indicates the last failed session launch event by the Desktop Delivery Controller server name. Note: This widget shows the most recent message in the DCCs' logs for this topic. This message may be outdated, and the topic may no longer be relevant. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix DDC Events" remote action.

The list of pre-defined topics for StoreFront servers is as follows:

StoreFront servers with DDCs communication issues: indicates Citrix StoreFront servers that have ongoing connectivity issues with Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller servers. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix CVAD Storefront Events" remote action.
StoreFront servers with Configuration replication failures: indicates Citrix StoreFront servers that have ongoing issues with the Configuration Replication service. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix CVAD Storefront Events" remote action.
Configuration retrieval status by StoreFront server: shows Citrix StoreFront servers that have had configuration retrieval failures in their event logs within the last 24 hours. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix CVAD Storefront Events" remote action.

The list of pre-defined topics for license servers is as follows:

License servers with Broker service communication: indicates Citrix License servers that have ongoing connectivity issues with the Citrix Broker service. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix License Server Events" remote action.
DDC servers in emergency grace period: indicates Citrix DDC servers that entered emergency grace period due to a lack of communication with the Citrix License server. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix License Server Events" remote action.
DDC servers failed to obtain the required license: indicates Citrix DDC servers that failed to obtain the required licenses from the Citrix License server. This widget can detect whether the topic is currently in place and display the relevant state. This is based on the "Monitor Citrix License Server Events" remote action.

Detect network congestion causing latency spikes in specific office locations

The High average latency per VDI client location monitor tracks the average network latency for each VDI client entity and triggers an alert when the latency exceeds a dynamic threshold compared to a 7-day baseline, computed hourly.

Identify CPU bottlenecks affecting virtual desktops

The High CPU usage per desktop pool monitor tracks the average CPU queue length for virtual desktop pools and generates an alert when it surpasses a dynamic threshold computed hourly compared to a 7-day baseline.

Prevent overloading of a desktop pool to maintain optimal user experience

The High number of sessions per virtual machine monitor tracks the total number of active sessions per virtual machine and triggers an alert when the session count exceeds a user-defined threshold.

Identify network instability affecting session continuity

The High percentage of disconnected sessions per desktop pool monitor observes session disconnections, calculates the disconnection-to-active session ratio, and triggers an alert if the ratio surpasses a defined threshold.