Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp: Monitoring Products Available

A while back I wrote an article: “12 Monitoring Products for Citrix XenServer – including options for hybrid infrastructure and mobile, XenDesktop, Cloud, iPad”, since then I’ve moved into working in Product Management for HDX, providing the graphics technologies for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. I’ve had numerous requests for a similar list of monitoring options for HDX within a Citrix XenApp or XenDesktop environment. Many of those applications, which I suggested for XenServer are also appropriate, but there are also many products available which are particularly tailored to the needs of a XenDesktop or XenApp user.

So off the top-of-my-head, in alphabetical order, a non-comprehensive list of some of the products I see customers using to monitor XenDesktop/XenApp and HDX:

1. Aternity
2. ComTrade Management Packs (SCOM)
3. ControlUp (from Smart-X)
4. eG Innovations
5. ExtraHop
6. Goliath Monitoring
7. Graylog2
8. GroundWork
9. HDX Monitor
10. LiquidwareLabs
11. ManageEngine
12. Nagios: Plenty of plugins for virtualisation
13. SysTrack from Lakeside
14. Tevron Solutions
15. Splunk
    1. uberAgent for Splunk for XenDesktop and XenApp
16. Xangati
17. Citrix XenCenter when using XenServer
18. Citrix XenServer Work Load Balancing (WLB) – contains monitoring functionality and is now included free for XenApp and XenDesktop users

You can check if a monitoring vendor has had their product certified as Citrix Ready over on the Citrix Ready Marketplace, here. This certification process assures customers that the monitoring product has been verified as compatible with Citrix products.

Factors to consider when choosing a monitoring product:

• Upgrade path, retaining your data and report format upon upgrade is a vital feature for many
• Data lock-in: Will you be able to retain your data if you change product
• Heterogeneous environments: Do you, or may you want to _in the future_, monitor multiple hypervisors, non-Citrix infrastructure (F5) etc.

Places to find out more:

• Jo Harder’s excellent article highlights useful features to compare between monitoring products, as well as covering a few of the popular third-party XenDesktop/XenApp options available.
• There are plenty of threads to search on the Citrix discussion forums discussing monitoring products e.g. here, or you can start a new thread. These forums are great for getting feedback and opinions from Citrix staff and also customers of their experiences with products.
• There are also similar threads (such as this one) on the Citrix User Group Forums.
• I maintain a list of tool resources on my blogsite, here. These lists contain many tools with monitoring/benchmarking functionality.