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Applications

November 12, 2019
Contributed by:  C R

The application analytics and management feature of Citrix ADM enables you to monitor the applications through application-centric approach. This approach helps you to:

  • Check the score and analyze the overall performance of the applications

  • Check for any issues that persist with server or client

  • Determine the security risks

  • Detect anomalies in the application traffic flows and take corrective actions

    Note

    Applications refer to one or more virtual servers that are configured on the instances (Citrix ADC).

You can monitor the applications for the time duration such as 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure you have added Citrix ADC instances in Citrix ADM

  • Ensure you have valid licence for your Citrix ADC instances. For more information, see Licensing.

  • Ensure you have applied license and configured analytics on virtual servers. For more information, see Enable analytics on virtual servers.

Application Management

As an administrator, you must add discrete applications and custom applications based on a category. You can then manage and monitor the applications through application overview dashboard.

For example, consider that you have a single/centralized Citrix ADM for your online businesses with its respective Citrix ADCs and servers in different geographies.

Application

The application analytics and management feature of Citrix ADM enables you to monitor the applications that are configured for load balancing and content switching. As per this example, using the application-centric approach, you can group the applications for each datacenter under a category and manage them in the application overview dashboard.

Applications can be:

  • Discovered applications

  • Custom applications

Discovered applications

The application dashboard is displayed with all the configured virtual servers that are licensed.

Custom applications

You can add all the required applications under a category and then monitor those applications. You get an ease of monitoring specific applications that are grouped under one category.

For example, you can create a category for your datacenter 1 and add its Citrix ADC instance. After you define a category and add the instance for your datacenter 1, the application dashboard is displayed with a separate category, comprising all the applications related to your datacenter 1.

Points to note

  • The discrete applications that are added to the custom applications are removed from the discovered applications.

  • All applications that are not added to any category are available as “others”.

  • By default, Citrix ADM enables you to add licenses for up to 2 applications (applicable only for on-premises). Depending upon your license, you can select and apply licenses for the applications that you wish to monitor.

Create a custom application

To create a custom application:

  1. Navigate to Applications > Dashboard, and click Define Custom App.

    The Define Application page is displayed.

  2. Set the following parameters:

    Field Description
    Name Name of the custom application. For example, LB_TEST.
    Category The category that you can group the applications. Click to get the Application Category page. Select the category and click Select. To add a category:
      1. Click Add
      2. Enter a name of your choice.
      3. Click Create
    Select Existing Applications Enables you to select the existing applications added to the Citrix ADC instances.
    Add Application Displays all the virtual servers that are configured on the instances. Select the applications from the list and click OK.
    Define Selection Criteria Option to define application by virtual server range, or by origin server/service IP address range.
      - Server. You specify the server or service IP address, server name, or the port of the backend server on which the applications are running. You can enter one IP address, a range of IP addresses, or a combination of both separated by commas. For example, you can enter 10.102.29.20, 10.102.43.10-60, 10.216.43.45.
      - Virtual Servers. You can specify either one of the following: the virtual server IP address, virtual server name, or the port of the backend server on which the applications are running. You can enter one IP address or a range of IP addresses or a combination of both separated by commas. For example, you can enter 10.102.29.20, 10.102.43.10-60, 10.216.43.45.
    Create a new application from a StyleBook Enables you to create an application using the StyleBook. For more information, see Create an application using the StyleBook.

  3. Click OK.

    Note

    Currently, Application Dashboard supports only load balancing and content switching virtual servers.

    localized image

The application dashboard is now displayed with the category and all the applications are grouped underneath.

If you select Create a new application from a StyleBook option for the custom application, you must allow Citrix ADM to auto-select the virtual servers for licensing. To enable auto-selection for the virtual servers:

  1. Navigate to System > Licensing & Analytics.

  2. Under Virtual Server License Summary, click Auto-select Virtual Servers and Auto-select non addressable Virtual Servers to enable.

If you do not enable these options, the following error message is displayed.

error-message

Create an application using the StyleBook

To create an application using the StyleBook:

  1. In Citrix ADM, navigate to Applications > Dashboard and click Define Custom App to create a custom application.

  2. In the Define Application page, type the name of the application in the Name field.

  3. Select the application category from the Category section. Citrix ADM allows you to define categories to group the user-defined applications. You can also add more categories if required.

  4. Click to select Create a new application from a StyleBook and click OK.

    The Choose StyleBook page is displayed. This page contains all the default StyleBooks available in Citrix ADM.

  5. Select the StyleBook. The Configuration Details page is displayed.

  6. Type the values for all parameters in the StyleBook. You can also click View Definition to view the construct of the StyleBook before using it.

    For more information, see Use Default StyleBooks.

  7. Click Create.

You can also click Dry Run to check the configurations that Citrix ADM will attempt to create on the selected Citrix ADC instance. This option is just for your test purpose to see the final check on the configurations. Even if Dry Run option is successful, the actual configuration on the selected Citrix ADC might still fail due to various reasons (IP conflict, instance not reachable, and so on.)

Export reports of app dashboard and security dashboard

Citrix ADM allows you to take a snapshot of the current App Dashboard and App Security Dashboard pages and export them as reports. At a frequent interval of time, the App administrators might need to use these reports to update on app usage and performance penalties.

With this feature, the administrators are able to extract this data as .png or .pdf reports.

Note

Unlike other report export options in Citrix ADM, you can export the App Dashboard and Security Dashboard reports only as .pdf or .png files. Other options such as, .jpg and .csv are not supported currently.

The report downloads onto your system. From the App Dashboard and App Security Dashboard pages, you can also navigate to second-level pages and export them as reports. Currently, you can download reports of only one application at a time.

Applications

November 12, 2019
Contributed by:  C R

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