The streaming technology of Citrix Provisioning Services enables IT admins to provision and re-provision computers in real time from a single shared-disk image. This makes provisioning easier by eliminating the need to manage and patch individual systems.
Previously, IT admins had to log in to the hypervisor to debug and triage issues with PVS target devices. Citrix Cloud Director simplifies this by providing PVS-related metrics on the Machine Details page, helping IT admins to troubleshoot PVS issues straight from the Director console.
Let’s take a look at an example of how an IT admin can leverage these metrics to troubleshoot PVS target devices. One common scenario IT admins face is when a particular machine’s user session is experience intermittent lag or unresponsiveness. The IT admin can search for that machine in Citrix Cloud Director, to land on Machine Details page.
The Machine Details page provides relevant Citrix virtual desktops metrics for administrators to monitor and to use for troubleshooting. We’ve added a new panel — PVS Target Device Metrics — to help IT admins monitor and resolve PVS-related issues from the Director console.
Let’s drill down into the metrics shown in the PVS Target Device Metrics panel above and look at what they show:
Network
- Network Bandwidth Utilization: Average bandwidth utilization across all NICs. Individual NIC Utilization is calculated as follows: NIC Utilization = ((Total Bytes\Sec * 8)/current bandwidth) * 100.
- Server Reconnect Count: This metric shows if there is a network issue, if there is PVS server rebalancing, or if there is frequent shutdown and/or restart of the PVS stream service.
- Total UDP Retry Count: Number of UDP retries to the PVS Server. This metric gives IT admins visibility into any network issues with the PVS stream servce (for example, a bad switch configurations).
Boot
- Boot Bytes Read MB: Bytes read while booting in MB.
- Boot Byes Written MB: Bytes written while booting in MB.
- Boot From: Boot medium (vDisk, Local Disk, etc.).
- Boot Retry Count: Number of retries done to boot the machine.
- Boot Time: Time taken to boot the machine in seconds. By default, there is a five-second time duration between retries. If this count moves into double digits, there’s a significant increase in boot time and the IT admin needs to take action.
- Target Software Version: Version of PVS Target Device software.
- vDisk Name: vDisk from which PVS Target Device is booting.
Cache
- Write Cache Type: PVS vDisk can be set to the types mentioned in this Knowledge Center article.
- Write Cache Volume Drive Letter: Drive Letter for write cache types involving drives.
- Write Cache Volume Size MB: Total configured volume size for Write Cache in MB.
- Cache File Size MB: Current cache file size in MB (Cache on device RAM with overflow on hard disk).
- Ram Cache Usage MB: Current RAM cache size in MB (Cache on device RAM with overflow on hard disk). We recommend cache on the RAM with overflow to the hard disk only if necessary. This metric is useful in setting/optimizing the proper size of the RAM cache.
These metrics empower IT admins to make informed decisions about changes, if any, that are needed to the PVS environment. For more information, check out the Using the Status Tray on a target device page on Citrix Docs. And please note, metrics for Server Reconnect Count and Total UDP Retry Count are available only for PVS target versions later than 1912 LTSR CU.
