Access Suite Console

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Technical Overview of the

Management Enhancements

within the Next Generation

Presentation Server

Douglas A. Brown

Senior Systems Engineer Citrix Systems, Inc.

Thomas R. Kilstrom

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Agenda

 MetaFrame Access Suite Console

– Alerts

– My Views (Custom Dashboards)

– Report Center

– Diagnostics Facility

– MetaFrame Access Suite

 Delegated Administration

 Zone Preference and Failover  Enhanced Policies

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Management Console for

MetaFrame Access Suite

 MetaFrame

Presentation Server

3.0 extends your ability to manage your

MetaFrame

deployment with the MetaFrame Access Suite Console

implemented as a

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Management Console for

 Management functionality is provided through a

number of snap-in management tools

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 Extensions are available to help you:

– View applications, servers, and zones in multiple farms

– Manage sessions across multiple farms

– Monitor the performance of your server farms

– Create reports analyzing your MetaFrame Presentation Server deployment

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Management Console for

 You can also use the Access Suite Console to launch:

– The Management Console for MetaFrame Presentation Server

(previously called the Management Console for MetaFrame XP)

– The Web Interface Console (previously called the Web Interface Admin Tool)

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Management Console for

 The Access Suite Console and the Presentation Server Console can be installed on any 32-bit

Windows workstations (Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP)

 You must be a MetaFrame administrator to use the Access Suite Console.

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 Important: Do not run the Access Suite Console in two sessions simultaneously on one computer using the same user account. Changes made on the

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Management Console for

 The first thing needed is to choose which farms are to be managed  Import them into the console by

selecting Run discovery.

– You need only enter the name of one server in each farm that you want to view

– You are required to re-run Run discovery if you add and or remove objects from a managed farm

 Note You can add only servers running

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MetaFrame

Access Suite Console

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Alerts

 If a MetaFrame Presentation Servers experiences issues resulting in an Resource Manager Alert then you will be presented with that alert, no matter

where you are in the console  Click the Alerts

link and the Access Suite

Console will take you to the

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Alerts

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Alerts

 Right click on the Metric in question and click

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MetaFrame

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My Views

 With My Views you are now able to create

custom views of: – Farms

– Zones

– Servers

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

My Views

custom views of: – Farms

– Zones

– Servers

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My Views

– Zones

– Servers

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My Views

– Zones

– Servers

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My Views

 You are able to save these customized views for fast, easy access to your environment, without being

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

My Views

 You can now view details about all user sessions in the server farms, which can be displayed in various

ways:

 For example, you can view by:

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My Views

ways:

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

My Views

ways:

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My Views

 You can now create a custom view which allows you to:

– Place all MetaFrame Access Suite items in different parts of the screen

– Customize the

background graphic to identify each customized view

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

My Views

 _{You can add a Dashboard}

view to give administrators a live status/health display of servers, folders & farms

 _{You can display such items}

as:

– CPU Load

– Active Sessions

– Available Memory

– And many more

 Uses WMI via IMA to

obtain live information from the servers

 Only for MetaFrame

Presentation Server 3.0 Enterprise servers running Resource Manger with

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Access Suite Console

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Report Center

 The Report Center extends the reporting capabilities in Resource Manager by allowing Administrators to:

– Easily generate reports from a variety of real-time and

historic data sources

– Scheduled reports

– Reports can be published to a web site, emailed and

or saved as a HTML or .CSV file, for later use

For example, quarterly data for server uptime, CPU utilization, or

application availability are commonly compared to agreed figures in a

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 The Report Center contains several report types, including:

– Application Availability report - Lists the published applications in a farm and the percentage of time when they were available, in a planned down state, and in an unplanned down state.

– Server Availability report - Lists the servers in a farm and the percentage of time when they were available, in a

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

– Server Performance report - Displays, for the server selection, the average CPU

utilization, the minimum memory available, and the maximum number of concurrent connections. The report also contains

details of the most heavily loaded servers. – Application report - Provides details of all

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

– Application Usage report - Shows the most frequently used applications, the number of times each application was accessed, and the maximum number of concurrent users.

– Client Type report - Shows the number of MetaFrame Presentation Server Clients for different platforms in use throughout the server farm, and presents this information

graphically as a proportion of all clients in the farm.

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 The Report Center utilizes the farms SummaryDB/IMA for report

generation data (depending on report)

 Only for MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 Enterprise servers

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Report Center

 _{All these reports can be emailed, published to a web} site, and or saved as an HTML and or CSV file for later use

 _{The follow three steps need to be completed in order} to generate, schedule a report

– Configure mail server settings

– Generate specifications

– Create report schedule

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 The first thing that will need to be done is to specify the SMTP mail server settings, to allow emailing of reports

 Click the Report Center

node in the MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 Click Define mail server

in the Other Tasks box  Enter the SMTP mail

server FQDN and click

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 Reports can be run in a variety of ways

– You can generate specification that allows you to predefine the source of data in your reports and the format of your reports

– You can generate report in which you define the source of data and look and feel every time you run the report

 Click the Report Center

node in the MetaFrame Access Suite Console  Click Generate

specifications in the

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 You are prompted to create a connection to the desired farm’s

Summary Database

– If you have previously generated a report you will find existing

connections

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Report Center

 You are required to select the OLE DB Provider to connect to the SummaryDB through

– If you will be connecting to a

SummaryDB running on Microsoft SQL then use

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 Select the farm you would like to monitor  Click Next to

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Report Center

 The next screen you will be prompted to select the items to report upon.

 In this example, we are creating an

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 _{You are prompted to} define the following:

– time period the

report covers

– The number of

items to be displayed

– If a graph is displayed

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Report Center

 You are now

prompted to define if the report will be:

– Stored for later use

– Published to a folder

and or share

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center



You are prompted

to save and or

discard the report



If you are saving

the report you will

be required to

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Report Center

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Report Center

 Report specifications can be found in the

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center



You now have the ability to schedule a

specification to be run and published

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Report Center

 Enter the

specification you would like to

schedule

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Report Center

 Enter the schedule details:

– Schedule task

 Daily

 Weekly…

– Start time

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 You are allowed to

password protect reports

 If desired enter the

appropriate password

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Report Center

 Enter a name for the schedule report

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Report Center

 Verify all settings are correct and click

Finish to continue  Reports will be run

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

Report Center

 The

following is an example of an

Application Usage

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Report Center

 The

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Diagnostics Facility

 With the Diagnostics Facility you are now able to easily generate technical reports for local analysis and or to send off to Citrix Technical Support for problem analysis

 Wizards guide you through the

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 The first thing needed is to configure the folder for

diagnostic information and specify the FTP server path and port to Citrix Technical Support

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 Specify the appropriate locations in the Set Package Details windows and click OK when Finished

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 You can now select modules for tracing, create trace logs, package the information, and save it locally or FTP the package to Citrix

 On the desired server click

Diagnose Problems

 Click Start Trace

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 Select the module

settings to use to create the trace log

– For new traces select Create new trace settings

radio button

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 Select

Sequential or

Circular logging, the maximum log file size and click

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 Select the Modules you would like to monitor and or have been

requested by Citrix Technical Support

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 Verify all setting all as desired

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 Verify all settings are as desired and click Finish

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 Switch to the Diagnostics Facility node to view any Trace Sessions. To package and send the logs, Right click on

the desired Trace and click Stop Trace

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 Select the Stop and Copy button to start the copy of all the logs to the destination directory.

Note: If you are

diagnosing multiple servers then this can be a lengthy

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 You can select collect system diagnostic

information, for local analysis and or to send off to Citrix Technical Support for problem analysis

 On the desired server click

Diagnose Problems

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 Choose the type of systems

information to collect

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 Verify and the settings are as desired

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 Verify everything completed

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 The MetaFrame Access Suite node allows you to view the applications, zones, and servers in multiple farms in your enterprise.

 The console is populated when you Run

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 Expand the MetaFrame

Access Suite node to find the items found during the

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MetaFrame Access Suite Console

 By right clicking on an item you are able to perform additional tasks

 The following is just a few tasks associated with published

applications:

– View connected users

– Disabling the use of an application

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MetaFrame Access Suite

 The following is just a few tasks associated with a server:

– View Users

– View Sessions

– Trace Sessions

– View Sever Health

– View information

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 The following is just a few tasks associated with published

applications:

– View connected users

– Disabling the use of

an application

– View information

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Access Suite Console

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Enhanced Delegated Administration

 _{With Enhanced} Delegated

Administration,

you can restrict an administrator’s

permissions to perform certain tasks to selected objects (servers, applications,

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 You can now delegate tasks to MetaFrame administrator accounts based of objects

(Applications, Policies, Printers, Servers, Zones…)

– You delegate tasks by associating MetaFrame administrator accounts with permissions to perform selected tasks.

– Permissions you set on nodes (Policies, Printer Management, and so on) apply farm wide.

– Permissions you set on folders (Applications, Servers, and any folders within) apply only to the applications and servers contained within the selected folder.

For example, you can create two separate “session administrator” accounts and give one account permissions to manage user

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Enhanced Delegated Administration

 You must be logged on to the Presentation Server Console as a full authority administrator in order to create, delete, and configure MetaFrame

administrator accounts

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 You can also delegate tasks based on server farm zones.

 Delegating farm administration tasks based on zones allows you to leverage qualified staff in

different geographic areas to manage the servers in those areas.

For example, if you have a zone that is located in a different time zone,

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Enhanced Delegated Administration

 To delegate tasks based on server

group(s) or zones, you must take the following three steps:

– Under the Servers

folder, create a new folder for each zone or group of servers for which you want to

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– Move the server

icons from the

Servers folders to the new zone

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Enhanced Delegated Administration

– Select each folder and

delegate tasks as appropriate

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– Add, Remove or Edit the

desired Administrator with the appropriate Tasks

– _Click_OK_{when finished}

 _Note_{: You can use}_Zones on a farm's Properties

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MetaFrame Presentation

Server

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Zone Preference and Failover

 A new policy rule

enables you to direct user connections to

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 When users open

applications, the policy

directs their connections to the server with the highest zone preference and lightest load

 Note: The Zone Preference and Failover rule is a

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Zone Preference and Failover

 MetaFrame Presentation Server directs user

connections to zones according to the connection order assigned to each zone in the Zone Preference and Failover policy rule.

 The connection order levels, in order of preference, are:

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 There are ten levels of backup groups, from 1 to 10

 Backup Group 1 has highest preference among the backup groups

– No Preference. Use for zones that users are directed to after Backup Group 10.

– Do Not Connect. Use for zones to which you do not want users to

– Backup Group. Use for zones to which you want

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Zone Preference and Failover

 It all works like this:

– When a user launches an application, the zone data

collector first queries the zones in the user’s Primary Group

to locate the server in that group with the smallest load

– If the application isn’t available in the Primary Group zones, the data collector then queries the zones in Backup Group 1 and so on, following the connection order you set

 Note: This cuts down on the amount of IMA calls are send across busy WAN links

Tip!

- To reduce network traffic in large

farms with multiple zones, Citrix recommends that you use the Zone Preference and Failover policy rule to direct users’ requests for

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Zone Preference and Failover

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 Expand the User Workspace folder

 Expand the Connections

folder

 Select the Zone preference and failover policy

 Select the Enable radio

button to turn on the Zone Preference and Failover

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Zone Preference and Failover

 Click to select the desired Zone in the

Zone list box

 Click to select the

desired zone preference in the Set connection order for selected

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 Once you have configured the policy you will be ready to assign users to it, via client IP address, client name, users.

 Select the desired method

 Click OK when finished

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Management Console for

MetaFrame Presentation

Server

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Extended Policies

 New policy rules give a broader control over:

– Bandwidth limits

– Zone connection

preferences

– Audio options

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Extended Policies

 You can use new policy rules to do such things as:

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Extended Policies

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Extended Policies

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Extended Policies

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Extended Policies

– Control audio sound quality used by client devices

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Extended Policies

 Once you have

created your Policies you can now apply them to...

– Client IP Address

– Client Name

– Severs

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Extended Policies

 Once you have created your

Policies you can apply them to...

– Client IP Address

– Client Name

– Severs

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Extended Policies

– Client Name

– Severs

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– Client Name

– Severs

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Extended Policies

– Client Name

– Severs

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MetaFrame

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