www.dabcc.com

SysTrack 3

Lakeside Software

Written By: Douglas A. Brown dbrown@dabcc.com

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Introduction

Do you know how many users you can fit on a box? Would you like to see trending over a

specified period of time? Do you have applications that leak memory? Do you have the report

that your boss is clamoring for? Do you know what you need to know before you need to know

it? If not then SysTrack from Lakeside software might be for you. There are many third party

tools available to help you manage your Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server / Terminal

Services environment, however, for the purpose of this white paper; I have chosen SysTrack as it

is one of the more full featured products available. In this whitepaper you will learn about the

many features and benefits that SysTrack can bring to your organization.

Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server Enterprise, formally known as XPe, was designed to

accomplish all the above for Enterprise customers running Resource Manager, but in my opinion

it falls short of this objective. SysTrack goes way beyond what Resource Manager can do today.

SysTrack also provides significant value to customers who are not currently running XPe with

Resource Manager enabled, customers running other versions of MetaFrame Presentation

Server, and customer’s running only Microsoft Terminal Services.

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Features / Benefits Now let’s talk about some of the more basic but very powerful features of SysTrack 3.

Real-time monitoring Have you ever wanted to know what is going on with your farm and/or a particular

system at a particular moment?

With SysTrack you can take a look at any terminal server, server and/or workstation’s health

in real time by examining any number of the counters that may matter to you as the

administrator.

As an administrator you are able to set thresholds for each counter and SysTrack will display

the status of the counter in an easy to read window. When a counter exceeds a specified

threshold, you can be informed via an email, page and/or SNMP, or you can have SysTrack

take action automatically.

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When an alert is triggered, the administrator can then click one button to find more

information on the counter as well as the problem at hand. This helps administrators solve

an immediate problem as well as spot impending ones.

Graphical Analysis: trending data Have you ever wanted to view the performance trends of a system?

With SysTrack, an administrator can trend system performance over a period of time from

one hour to three years by graphing any of the 40 different system counters from system

usage, disk free space, network usage, active session, etc. SysTrack maintains detailed

records for seventy-two hours (by default), summary records for thirty days (by default), and

trending data for three years (by default).

This information can be presented to the administrator in the form of a Standard deviation

and/or Regression analysis. The standard deviation report helps spot trouble areas in their

environment while the regression report details the trend thus allowing you to view

bottlenecks that cause slowness and decreased user productivity.

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Application Tracking Have you ever wanted to see exactly how many resources an application uses, if the

application is monopolizing too many resources?

With SysTrack, an administrator can view a vast amount of detailed information about an

application. This is crucial in scaling and troubleshooting the applications in a production

environment. You can view how much of the CPU an application needs, the amount of IO it

creates, even the amount of memory it uses through a simple to use Application Profile

window. This information can be viewed by the system as a whole or for a particular user of

the monitored application.

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User Auditing Have you ever wanted to view what users are doing on what system and when? What

is their most frequently used application? How much time are they spending on each application? Do you have to conform to government regulations requiring you to

track this type of information?

With SysTrack an administrator can know all this and more. SysTrack allows an

administrator to view which system(s) and application(s) a user uses and for how long. It will

also report on the users favorite applications and rank them in the order of popularity. This

information can then be organized by workgroup or department in order to allow an

administrator to guarantee that the servers publishing the desired application are available

and “beefy” enough to support the current application and allow for future growth.

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Advanced Features and Benefits In the previous section, I talked about a small portion of the vast value SysTrack brings to an

organization. Many problems are not easily analyzed with the tools that ship with Terminal

Services and/or Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server even if Resource Manager is installed and

configured properly. In many situations, an administrator needs much more information than the

base tools provide. In today’s world of government regulations and corporate compliance, a

company is required to produce detailed audits of hardware, software and user usage. SysTrack

can do this straight out of the box and with very little administrator configuration required. With

this in mind let’s take a closer look at just some of the additional features found in SysTrack 3.

Service & Application Alarming (Action)

Have you ever wanted to better manage business critical services? Do you have services that if fail to run and/or hang, will cause downtime for the end-users? With SysTrack an administrator can monitor and thus manage Windows applications and

services. Microsoft Windows, Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server and the applications

installed in your environment rely on the Server to function properly, and in return, if a Service

is not responding and/or failing to start, you will experience issues. SysTrack monitors the

functioning of services and can alert you when a service fails, or becomes non-responsive.

Diagnosing a system failure is more difficult when the preceding application or service failure

is unknown or unexplored. To combat this, SysTrack’s service status monitoring can reveal

the history of service operations and present vital clues about the health of a system.

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For example the Print Spooler service and/or Citrix Independent Management Architecture

(IMA) Service are required to be running in order for your farm to run and print. It is not

uncommon for the Print Spooler to fail to start and/or fail periodically thus leaving the end-

user without the ability to print. The IMA Service is required in order for the end-user to logon

to a Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server. This means that this failure is a business critical

problem that needs to be monitored in real time. SysTrack 3 helps overcome both of these

problems by alerting the administrator of a failure and thus allowing the administrator to take

action to cure the issues immediately.

Troubleshooting with the Blackbox Data Recorder Have you ever wished you could go back in time to see what was happening on a

server and/or the system in order to troubleshoot a problem?

With SysTrack an administrator can use the Black box Data Recorder to view what happened

in the past on a server or workstation in as little as 15 second intervals. The Black box Data

Recorder works by analyzing historical data such as CPU, memory, disk and network

counters, the then current applications running, to provide the administrator the information

needed to pinpoint a problem and take the appropriate action.

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A great example of this feature is when an end-user calls and complains they were unable to

logon to the network and/or experienced intermittent lockup or slowness. With SysTrack an

administrator can use the Blackbox Data Recorder to “replay” what was happening on a

system during the time period the end-user experienced the problem. This eliminates the

need to ask the user what they were doing at the time of the system issue, or worse yet,

having to wait for the problem to happen again. This is great tool to pinpoint a problem area

and then help find the solution to the underlining issue.

Memory Leak Detection

Have you ever wondered why your system memory is getting lower and lower? Why does your system perform much better after a reboot and why you are you having to

reboot so often? Which applications are leaking memory?

SysTrack can detect memory leaks in applications running on a server and/or working.

SysTrack allows an administrator to configure it to generate an alarm and can be notified via

email, a console pop-up message, pager or SNMP. This feature is very helpful in

troubleshooting applications that fail to return all the memory they use to the system.

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A good use of this capability would be to silo off an application with this type of memory

problem to its own server. You can then configure the server to reboot on a scheduled basis

in order to recycle the system to its full memory potential while an upgrade is installed and/or

the application vender is contacted for a fix. This can be very important as memory leaks in

one application can affect the system performance and thus the performance of the other

applications of the server.

Event Log Alarming

Have ever been annoyed by event log errors that you just don’t have the time to

mange? Is the process of browsing through all the events in a log so time consuming you just don’t do it?

With SysTrack an administrator can be alerted when an event log entry is logged. SysTrack

has an Event Log Monitor that periodically inspects all of the logs on a system and checks

them to see if anything new has happened since the last time the log was inspected. A newly

discovered event is analyzed via the criteria configured by the administrator that defines the

action to be taken, such as sending out an SNMP trap, a Windows Pop-up message or an

email to a specified party. It can even launch a script where the administrator can stop and

start the service, reboot the server or any thing else they may want to do to rectify the

problem.

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A great example of this feature is to monitor print spooler failures events. If one is found, the

administrator can be emailed and the system can automatically stop and restart the spooler

service thus keeping it as healthy as possible.

Hardware Inventory

Have you ever wanted to know what hardware is installed where? What BIOS version

system x is using? How much memory system Y has installed compared to system B? How much free space is on system Z? Have you ever wanted a complete list of

all the hardware details for your entire environment? Needed a quick report of which systems have not yet had the latest hotfix applied?

With SysTrack’s System Information, an administrator can be presented with sever and/or

workstation system specific information such as Operating System, system manufacturer,

BIOS version, CPU, the amount of RAM currently installed, the network interface card and its

configuration settings, storage devices and information on over 300 other hardware

components and configurations.

This feature is very helpful when troubleshooting hardware issues and as well as for change

control. It is also great for providing an accurate inventory of what is installed and where for

the purpose of upgrades and system maintenance.

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Software Inventory

Have you ever wanted to know what software is installed on a machine? Which

versions of application x is installed in your environment? Have you ever wanted to know if you have too many versions of applications Y installed thus surpassing your

owned license count?

With SysTrack you can compile a complete catalogue of software found on the servers and

workstations in your environment. SysTrack provides the administrator the computer name,

the vender of the application, the software name and the version of the software found.

This feature is very helpful when planning for and implementing system and environment

wide rollouts. It is great for planning upgrades to existing software and insuring software

license compliancy.

Change Management Reporting Have you ever wanted to know what changes have been made and when? Do you see issues after administrators install applications and/or Windows updates and don’t

know which change caused what?

With SysTrack administrators can use the System Changes History feature to view a record

of changes (modifications, additions or removals) made to the system, changes to

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applications and changes to the system settings. The history will also reflect changes made

to operating system components through updates, patches or device updates.

The System Changes History is helpful in locating which systems have undergone patches to

the operating system or applications, new system settings, or hardware upgrades. When

managing a server farm and end-users workstations, having access to this information is

invaluable in troubleshooting problems that arise after system and/or application upgrades.

For example, an administrator installs a new applications and a Windows Update and then

after rebooting the server and allowing the end-users to log back, begins to receive calls from

end-users experiencing issues With the System Change History feature, the administrator

on call can view what changes were last made which allows him or her to roll back to a more

stable time and thus creating a happy and productive end user. The administrator can then

take the problem changes in to a lab to figure out what caused the issues.

Web tracking (per user, terminal id and per site)

Have you ever wanted to know which web sites users are visiting and when? Have you ever needed a way to block and/or be alerted of improper web site usage?

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With SysTrack an administrator is able to track the amount and type of Internet traffic that

comes from end-users and servers. SysTrack’s Web Site Visit History chronologically

displays the date/time stamp of when the site was visited and by whom.

This feature provides a number of benefits to an organization. It can be used to give the

administrator an understanding of when web browsing activity occurs and track activity for a

specific user and/or the system as a whole. An administrator can also create an alarm to

notify them if any prohibited web sites are being visited and by whom.

Security (application/web control)

Have you ever wanted to block an application from being used by all and/or a certain

group of users? Have you ever wanted a better way to lock down a desktop in a Terminal Services and/or Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server environment?

With SysTrack, an administrator is able to utilize the SysLock feature in order to specify a list

of applications that will be blocked on a system and/or a list of the applications that are

allowed to execute by a user and/or group of users. When the application is blocked, a

message can be sent to the end-user informing them of the blockage and/or sent to their

supervisor alerting them as to the user’s blockage.

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A great example of this feature is to allow only the applications an end-user needs to be

productive while at the same time allowing an administrator full access to the machine. This

creates a wonderful mechanism for locking down a Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server

and/or Microsoft Terminal Services environment.

770-Precanned Reports

Have you ever been asked to generate a summary report of all systems in your environment? Have you ever wanted to view a list of the most popular applications?

Have you tried to generate a report with Resource Manager only to find it is not one of the few that come in “the box”? SysTrack 3 ships with over 770 canned reports to meet just about every type of business or

technical need you may have. The reports can be “branded” with the company logo, and

other header information to give the report a personal look and feel. SysTrack’s reporting

facility also includes its own batch facility where reports can be automatically processed and

created in HTML format to display via a web page.

There are so many “out of the box” reports that it would be outside the scope of this

document to go into additional detail. Additionally, if an administrator requires a report that is

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not already on the list of canned reports, they have the ability to use the Report Builder to

create custom reports based off of any/or all of the data generated and saved with SysTrack.

This feature is pretty self explanatory. However, to give you just one example of the value of

over 770 canned reports, I would like to give one from my personal experience. At DABCC

I’m very curious to know how often my employees are logged on to the system and which

applications they run the most. I am also interested in my server’s health while to insure that

everybody is productive. With SysTrack I’m able to generate a number of reports that explain

every single bit of data I would ever want to know about their behavior or the system’s

behavior. I’m also very curious to known which web sites they are visiting to make sure they

are truly productive and not just “browsing” the web.

Uptime & Downtime Reporting both System and Application wide Have you ever wanted to know exactly how long a server has been online and/or available for your end-users? Have you ever been asked by your boss to generate a

report on server availability? Do you run a “managed services” business that guarantees x amount of uptime?

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Just one of the many reports SysTrack ships with is the Availability Report. With SysTrack

an administrator has the ability to create availability reports that will show exactly how long a

system or application has been on and off-line.

A great example of the use of this feature is for an administrator to generate a report with the

uptime and availability of a server. They can then guarantee to their customers and/or

supervisor that the servers are available to publish applications when end-users require

them. If these reports show a negative uptime it might be time to add servers to the farm

and/or dig deeper to see what is causing the uptime issues. The use of the Blackbox

Recorder would be a great place to start.

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Conclusion Throughout this paper I have spotlighted just a few of the business critical features that SysTrack

3 brings to a Citrix MetaFrame and/or Microsoft Terminal Services environment. These features

allow an administrator, and thus IT, to respond to issues that adversely affect the performance of

the companies systems and in return the end-users productivity. They also allow administrators to

spot trends in an environment that lead to problems and help in planning for the addition of

servers and/or resources to maintain the availability required for productive users. One of the he

main reasonability’s of an IT department is to provide resources on demand and in my opinion;

SysTrack gives IT the ability to do just that.

In conclusion my questions are “Do you know what is going on in your network? Do you know

what causes the problems you face? Do you have the right tools to help you resolve these

problems?” If you answered no any of the questions, then in my opinion you should take a look

at SysTrack. It may be the solution you are looking for.

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