Category: Tools

How to Enable Continuous CDF Tracing in Provisioning Services 7.0

This article describes how to enable continuous CDF tracing in Provisioning Services 7.0.

Requirements

CDFMonitor

Background

With the introduction of Provisioning Services 7.0, the Provisioning Services logging mechanism has changed from persistent log files to CDF tracing. Provisioning Services no longer logs streaming event to a log file. You must configure CDF tracing to capture persistent logging for determining the root cause of a problem.

Procedure

To enable continuous CDF tracing in Provisioning Services 7.0, complete the following procedure:

  • Download the Provisioning Services specific configuration file from this article.
  • Extract the files to the C:cdfmonitor folder.
  • Replace the CDFMonitor.exe.config that comes with CDFMonitor with the one downloaded from this article.
  • Open a command line interface and open the C:cdfmonitor folder.
  • Run the following command:
    cdfmonitor.exe /installservice

    CDFMonitor runs as a service that persists even after the server restarts. Continuous CDF trace is then captured on all modules. The trace file will grow to 100 MB in size and will rotate between five files. The moment the CDFMonitor service is restarted, a new CDF trace file is created.

Download

You can read more instructions and download the special CDFMonitor.exe here.

DSCheck Maintenance Assistant

Citrix has released a new tool (for GUI lovers amongst us techies) for DSCheck options and queries to make our live easier. Be aware that the tool (even with GUI) can break your environment so USE CAUTION!!!

DSCheck Maintenance Assistant is designed to facilitate the process of running dscheck commands on a XenApp server. The tool provides a graphical user interface for dscheck.exe that the XenApp administrators can use to clean and validate their datastore.

Prerequisites

  • Install .NET Framework 2.0 or later
  • log on as a user with Local Administrative privileges

Installing DSCheck Maintenance Assistant

DSCheck Maintenance Assistant is a standalone application. You need not install the application; also you can run the application from any folder local on the XenApp server.

Download

You can download the tool here and read more about the options and how to use them wisely.

Citrix Diagnostic Toolkit updated

Citrix support has updated the Citrix Diagnostic toolkit on May 13th (2013).

In this release we’ve added data collection options and tools for XenDesktop, Receiver, VDA, and PVS. We have updated the install wizard and changed the look and feel of several START menu options and shortcuts.

When installing Wire Shark on Windows 8 systems, follow the instructions on this LINK to address known compatibility issue with Pcap driver and Windows 8.

Symantec Endpoint Protection or antivirus programs with real-time scanning enabled, can delay the (packaging) sequence. See “The Packager” section below for details.

You can download the toolkit here:

Citrix XenApp Hotfix Log Creator

Citrix has released a new tool to verify what hotfixes are installed on your XenApp server.

The XenApp Hotfix Log Creator is a simple command base executable that can be used to provide a quick log with all the hotfix information of a Citrix XenApp 6.0 or 6.5. Very simple to use and if combine with tools like psexec.exe it can be used to capture the same information remotely. Continue reading “Citrix XenApp Hotfix Log Creator”

HDX Monitor 3.0 tool released

HDX Monitor 3.0 is a helpful monitoring and diagnostic tool for HDX components.

Background

HDX Monitor 3.0 tool provides detailed information about the various HDX technologies, their performance, and diagnostics information. The following are the HDX technologies covered by this tool:

  • Thinwire (Graphics)
  • Direct 3D (Graphics)
  • Media Stream (aka RAVE)
  • Flash
  • Audio
  • USB Devices
  • Mapped Client Drives (CDM)
  • Branch Repeater
  • Printer
  • Client
  • Smart Card
  • Scanner
  • System

Prerequisites

  • XenApp 6.5 or greater or XenDesktop 5.5 or greater.
  • This tool may be installed on any machine on the same domain as the target system including the XenDesktop VDA or XenApp Server.

Download

Download the tool here.

Citrix Diagnostics Toolkit

The Citrix Diagnostic Toolkit is a collection of applications and utilities used for troubleshooting commonly reported problems. C.D.T. includes execution scripts created specifically to automate tasks that a support engineer would have a customer perform to generate data files used to determine root cause of a problem report.

A key benefit is reducing the diagnostic time by expediting delivery of diagnostic data to Citrix Support for analysis.

What is included? Continue reading “Citrix Diagnostics Toolkit”

New version of XenDesktop Site checker tool

Citrix has released an update on the cool tool XenDesktop site checker.

The XenDesktop site checker uses the XenDesktop Powershell SDK to enumerate XenDesktop 5 site brokers, services, hosts, assignments, catalogs, and provisioning tasks and schemes. It checks whether or not services are running and service instances are registered, and provides the ability to enable logging for each service. It also provides advanced management tasks that aren’t available in Desktop Studio, and provides detailed information about each component that it checks, and logs any script that is executed by the tool.

New Features in this release

How to generate diagnostic data for upload to Citrix Auto Support

In this post is already explained what Auto Support is and what it does. Well if you didn’t know how to collect the data needed to upload to Auto Support look no further. Here’s described what you need to do to get the correct data for uploading to Auto Support.

Did I mention that Auto support is THE greatest online support tool ever made? NO, well you need to read this post again :).

XenApp / Xen Desktop: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX130147

XenServer: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX125372

NetScaler: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127900

For XenApp & XenDesktop, you can upload the data to Auto Support directly from the Scout tool. For XenServer & Netscaler, simply save the Support Data bundle you generate, and then you can upload it via the Auto Support website.

As for most Citrix downloads and tools you need a My Citrix ID. If you do not have one, you can set one up for free at http://www.citrix.com/English/myCitrix/loginNewUser.asp

Citrix auto support now available

 

Citrix Auto Support, which is available to use now (an earlier version was known as TaaS). The tool we as support experts use is now open for all!

This is kind of a big deal, so I hope you’ll read to the end.

Citrix Auto Support is a simple, online troubleshooting platform and health-checker for your Citrix environment.  It’s exactly the same tool that our own tech support experts use every day to diagnose and fix hundreds of known issues. And now we’re making it available to all of our customers.

How does it work?  An easy, 3-step process

1. Upload the log file – Just sign in with your Citrix ID (or create one, its free) and upload your log file.

2. Wait a few minutes – the file will be parsed and measured against hundreds of parameters. You’ll receive an email telling you that the results are ready.

3. Review the results –

  1. An easy red/amber/green list of issues and actions, such as:
    • Known issue detection
    • Best practice recommendations
    • Existing patches
    • System update information
    • Crash dump analysis (for NetScaler)
  2. A snapshot of your entire environment Servers, versions, settings, CPU usage, storage, etc.

The products it supports. XenServer, XenDesktop, NetScaler and now XenApp (beta).

Citrix Auto Support is free and waiting for your log file uploads. Give it a go.

With many thanks to David McGeough (Citrix Auto Support Marketing Manager) for this.

Citrix CDFControl tool updated

Citrix has updated their great tool CDFControl to version 2.6.0.4.  With this great tool you can troubleshoot many Citrix products (and problems).

New in this version:

  • Enhancement to always scroll to most recent item added to the events view
  • Fixed bug where imported server list file (.sl) would sometimes have truncated server names
  • Enhanced automatic error detection with new checks for recent issues
  • Added event filtering, for post parsing analysis
  • Fix to suppress any console window popups that occurred when using the “-noprompt” command-line option Continue reading “Citrix CDFControl tool updated”