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HERMES SoftLab Citrix Xen Smart Plug-in for HP
Operations Manager and HP SiteScope/BAC
The ultimate management solution for Citrix
XenApp, XenServer and XenDesktop environments.
SPI for Citrix Xen in combination with HP
Software provides the first power-user grade management solution for
Citrix XenApp, XenServer, and XenDesktop environments. Supporting both
agent-based and agent-less HP technology, the SPI for Citrix Xen is
designed to provide both maximum deployment and functional flexibility.
Organizations with operations standardized around HP Operations Manager
or HP SiteScope/BAC are now able to equip their staff with out-of-box
monitoring knowledge, tools, and reports to handle the day-to-day
supervision of Citrix infrastructure.
HERMES SoftLab’s SPI for Citrix Xen helps IT
departments confidently deliver applications, desktops, and servers
cost-effectively. By integrating Citrix infrastructure topology, health,
and performance information with the HP Operations Manager and HP
SiteScope/BAC management platforms, the SPI for Citrix Xen enables IT
departments to maintain high service levels and to ensure top-notch
end-user experiences. Managing IT infrastructure using a holistic
approach through a single console maximizes existing investments in
staff, processes, procedures, and tools, and provides greater insight
when problems do occur. The SPI for Citrix Xen enables your existing IT
monitoring team to take over day-to-day Citrix infrastructure oversight,
allowing Citrix specialists to focus on more important tasks.
From the ground up, the SPI for Citrix Xen is
designed to deliver immediate and long-term value to different groups in
the IT department:
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Operations staff is empowered to perform day-to-day
monitoring tasks across the entire IT estate including Citrix. Fault
identification, confirmation, and correlation, as well as basic operator
intervention based on built-in and company knowledge is standardized and
formalized around a single enterprise management console.
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Citrix specialists, relieved of the day-to-day
supervision job, are able to focus more on mid and long-term
sustainability of the Citrix infrastructure. Health and performance
information can be analyzed from a high-level perspective and drilled
down to individual components for detailed analysis and root cause
identification.
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IT managers have access to aggregated Citrix
infrastructure information for trending analysis, planning, and
infrastructure growth justification. Understanding current issues and
their impact also helps prioritize resolution. At the end of the day,
successes are fully documentable.
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CIOs get reliable information on how well the Citrix infrastructure is
supporting business. Operating costs are kept under control with the
operations staff handling Citrix day-to-day work, so Citrix experts can
be utilized for new strategic initiatives.
SPI for Citrix Xen supports Citrix XenApp,
XenServer, and XenDesktop infrastructure. It works on top of HP
Operations Manager and HP SiteScope / HP BAC. The exact solution
structure is depicted below:
Figure 1: SPI for Citrix Xen Solution
Structure
SPI for Citrix Xen enables IT to deliver Citrix
XenApp-hosted applications with exceptional service levels by actively
monitoring XenApp infrastructure from both end-user and infrastructure
perspectives. The SPI for Citrix Xen natively integrates with HP
Operations Manager for an agent-based approach, and with HP
SiteScope/BAC for a pure agent-less monitoring approach. The agent-based
approach enables more advanced capabilities like user logon process
monitoring, while the agent-less approach delivers a well-balanced set
of general XenApp monitoring functions. Both integrations are completely
independent, allowing for maximum deployment and functional flexibility.
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Infrastructure health: XenApp infrastructure
availability is confirmed through rigorous connectivity probing and
active service checks. Incorrectly closed sessions or badly behaving
applications are quickly uncovered allowing proactive management
preventing unwanted side effects.
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Application availability: Synthetic application
launch checks quickly detect unavailable applications with root-cause
identification down to the Web Interface, XML broker, or XenApp server
level. Availability can be reported across all Citrix applications
without the complex script maintenance.
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Real end-user experience: End-user latency issues
can be confirmed and isolated to specific components from the initiation
of the logon process through log-off. Rich trending reports enable
proactive solutions before users are impacted. No user/client side
agents are required.
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End-to-end monitoring: Performance and availability
information of XenApp is integrated with other back-end application
layers, acting as an operations bridge for different subject matter
experts. This end-to-end approach ensures coherent IT responses and
efficient business service-level management.
SPI for Citrix Xen unifies the management of
physical and XenServer-based infrastructure around a single console. It
expands the reach of HP Operations Manager to include a comprehensive
understanding of the link between XenServer’s physical and virtual
compute and storage resources. Based on a non-invasive agent-less
architecture, the SPI for Citrix Xen requires a single agent to remotely
manage one or more XenServer pools. SPI for Citrix Xen is a key
component in the delivery of effective Service Management for
organizations deploying Citrix XenServer, and in the standardizing of HP
Operations Manager as their operations bridge.
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Unified management: Unifies the management of
physical and XenServer-based IT infrastructure around a single console,
leveraging investments in operations personnel, processes, and
procedures.
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Agent-less: Agent-less management approach requires
no agent software on the hosts, ensuring ease of deployment, stability,
and no impact when extending or upgrading XenServer infrastructure.
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Capacity planning: The correct sizing of XenServer
infrastructure and optimal VM placement are key to successful server
virtualization. Correlation of historical performance information across
hosts and VMs allows for detailed utilization and bottleneck analysis.
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Intuitive topology: Auto-discovered service view
reveal XenServer topology and logical dependencies between physical and
virtual compute and storage resources. Out-of-box integrated tools allow
interaction with discovered elements, increasing operator productivity.
SPI for Citrix Xen enables IT to stay on top of
operational complexities in the Citrix XenDesktop infrastructure. While
simple to use from an end-user’s perspective, delivering a virtual
desktop requires complex interactions between several distributed
XenDesktop components. To ensure flawless operation of the startup,
authentication, connection, and personalization phase of the desktop
delivery process, SPI for Citrix Xen reaches across the complete
XenDesktop infrastructure, consolidates collected health and performance
information, and presents it in a way that is easy to understand and
manage.
SPI for Citrix Xen already supports a good portion
of the typical Citrix XenDesktop deployment. XenServer pools, XenApp
controllers, Data Store and License Server are completely covered, while
support for XenDesktop farm components (Data Collector and Desktop
Delivery Controllers) and Provisioning Server is on the product roadmap.
For more information about SPI products send us
e-mail:
spi-info@hermes-softlab.com
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KEY BENEFITS
