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Discovering the true value of Citrix ADM service with Advanced licenses

Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM) service is a cloud-based solution that helps you to manage, monitor, orchestrate, automate, and troubleshoot your Citrix ADC instances. It also provides analytical insights and curated machine learning (ML) recommendations for your application health, performance, and security. Customers enable licenses on their virtual servers to get these analytical and ML-based insights.

We currently offer Citrix ADM in two tiers — Express (free) and Advanced (paid) for customers who have Citrix ADM licenses. Citrix ADM licenses are sold as hybrid entities that you can use with on-prem Citrix ADM or in the Citrix ADM service. This makes license usage extremely flexible and, with hybrid licenses, safeguards license purchases made for on-prem Citrix ADM, in case the customer wants to move to Citrix ADM service. Each Citrix ADM license is enabled at a per virtual server level, which unlocks analytics for app performance, usage, and security once the virtual server is licensed.

Customers can sign into Citrix ADM service and explore its functionality with the Express tier for as long as they want before they moving to Advanced licenses.

Why Move to Citrix ADM Service Advanced License Tier?

Express tier is an excellent starting point to explore Citrix ADM service. However, it has limitations on certain features, use cases, and storage as shown in the table below. You get analytics for only two virtual servers, and your storage limit is 500MB. Citrix ADM service will truncate your data when it goes beyond 500MB or one day of data retention, and you will lose events, alerts, analytics. and insights data for Citrix ADC instances and apps.

Feature

Citrix ADM Service Express

Citrix ADM Service Advanced

Storage limit 500MB or one day of data, whichever occurs first Default 0.5GB storage per license (VIP). Storage add-on SKU available for additional storage allocation.
Analytics for Applications Yes. Only for two virtual servers. Yes. Analytics as per VIPs licenses purchased.
Unlimited Configuration Jobs No. Only two config jobs. Yes
Unlimited StyleBooks Config Packs No. Only two StyleBooks config packs. Yes
Network Functions Yes. Only for two virtual servers. Yes
Network Reporting Yes. Only for two virtual servers. Yes

As shown above, you can unlock additional benefits with Advanced licenses. The Advanced tier opens the door to many more use cases and automation that will ease the burden on your admins and deliver valuable insights about app performance and usage to your app owners.

How Customers Use Citrix ADM Service Analytics with Advanced Licenses

With the power of Citrix ADM service licenses, customers are always finding new use cases. The table below shows some of the most common use cases, and in this blog post, we’ll look at a few in more detail.

Citrix ADM App Analytics Portfolio (click image to view larger)

App Slowness Root-Cause Analysis: Troubleshoot app slowness with detailed recommendations

App owners have access to a list of all apps with anomalous response times, supporting root cause analysis of app slowness. A machine-learning model learns the baseline response time for each app and highlights those with response times that deviate from the norm. Citrix ADM service also gives insight into contributing factors — client network latency, server network latency, and server processing time.

A slower app due to high server processing time.

App SSL Configuration Analytics: Identify the security posture of your SSL configuration

App owners can get insights into their licensed apps’ SSL rating (as per Qualys SSL Labs). They can also view their current app SSL configuration and the configuration changes needed to achieve an A+ rating. Finally, Citrix ADM service enables app owners to make their applications A+ with a single click by binding the Citrix ADC secure front-end profile on applications’ virtual servers.

Upgrade to an A+ SSL rating with one click. (click image to view larger)

App SSL Certificate Lifecycle Analytics: Identify expiring certificates and automatically renew

Application owners can view the SSL certificates bound to their apps and track their expiry. By leveraging Citrix ADM service’s Venafi integration, owners can automatically renew expiring certificates and prevent outages due to expired SSL certificates.

App Maintenance Analytics: Identify the optimal time period to define app maintenance

Application maintenance is crucial and requires apps to be taken offline. But finding the best time to do this can be difficult. In the absence of data, app owners rely on hunches and intuition to make maintenance timing decisions. This isn’t always the best approach because apps evolve and their usage patterns change. With app maintenance analytics, app owners can identify the top five maintenance windows for the apps based on least requests, data volume, and throughput usage pattern. That helps to minimize productivity losses and user-access issues during app maintenance.

The best time period for app maintenance for this app is Wednesday 23:00 to 23:59, based on lean usage analytics. (click to view larger)

App Server Errors Analytics: Identify backend server issues that affect app performance

With Citrix ADM service, app owners can identify all backend server issues that degrade app performance and receive recommended mitigation measures. Citrix ADM service identifies server issues like 5xx errors, overloaded app server surge queue build up, low active usage of bound services, service flaps, and servers with anomalous response time.

With 5xx errors, app owners will know if their users are facing accessibility issues due to server-side errors. Similarly, app server surge queue build up in front of virtual servers can diminish the end user experience because users would have to wait longer before getting a response from the server.

App Configuration Optimization and Analytics: Optimal configuration for your application

App owners can identify opportunities to improve app performance through optimal configuration for persistence session usage, blocking HTTP packets with large headers, and configuring optimal queue size for TCP Out-of-Order (OOO) packets.

Additional Benefits of Citrix ADM Service Advanced Licenses

Storage: In Citrix ADM service Express, data is truncated beyond 500MB. But with every Citrix ADM service Advanced license, customers receive an additional 0.5 GB storage entitlement. For example, if customer XYZ has 1,000 Citrix ADM licenses deployed in Citrix ADM service, they are entitled to 500GB of storage. Customers can also complement their additional storage needs with separate storage purchases.

Unlimited Automation: Automation is at the heart of app delivery. Citrix ADM service StyleBooks and Config jobs help to make it easier and quicker to bring up Citrix ADC instances and app configurations. With Citrix ADM service Advanced licenses, you can deploy unlimited configuration jobs and StyleBook configuration packs.

Unlimited Reporting: The Citrix ADM service’s network reports help you monitor and understand the performance of your network entities like Citrix ADC instances, virtual servers, services, and service groups. With the Express edition, you can generate network reports for only two virtual servers. Citrix ADM service Advanced helps unlock unlimited network reporting for as many entities as you want.

Product Roadmap Influencer: Moving to Citrix ADM service Advanced, opens up the opportunity for you to participate in product roadmap discussions and connects you directly with Citrix product management teams, so you can influence the direction of the product and help us to tailor it for your requirements.

Find Out Your Current Entitlements

Citrix ADM service is offered as a hybrid license, which means you can use your ADM licenses either on-prem or in Citrix ADM service. If you purchased Citrix ADM licenses after 2019, you also have entitlements on to Citrix ADM service. If you’re unsure, check with your Citrix account team. Also, from your Citrix ADM service account, you can navigate to Accounts → Subscriptions → See Entitled virtual servers to see total Citrix ADM licenses available in your account.

If you have Citrix ADM license entitlement for Citrix ADM service, you can use the migration tool to simplify a move to Citrix ADM service.

Learn more about Citrix ADM, and check out our product documentation and our reference architecture on Citrix Tech Zone.

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