Citrix Xen Smart Plug-Ins

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.

Deliver applications, desktops, and servers with confidence

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.

Benefits for IT department groups

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:

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 solution structure

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:

SPI for Citrix Xen Solution Structure

Figure 1: SPI for Citrix Xen Solution Structure

CITRIX XEN PRODUCTS

 

CITRIX XenApp SUPPORT

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.

.KEY BENEFITS

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

 

CITRIX XenServer SUPPORT

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.

.KEY BENEFITS

  • Unified management: Unifies the management of physical and XenServer-based IT infrastructure around a single console, leveraging investments in operations personnel, processes, and procedures.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

 

CITRIX XenDesktop SUPPORT

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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