When I started my Citrix career in 2007, I was a technical support engineer helping customers of all sizes and types solve problems. While the Citrix versions of MetaFrame 3.0, 4.0, and Presentation Server 4.5 are quite different from the DaaS and VDI solutions we have today, similar high-level problem categories remain — I can’t connect to my Citrix session or my Citrix session is slow. This often leads to help desk tickets, but the reality is that many of the underlying causes of these issues aren’t even related to Citrix.

That’s where Citrix Analytics for Performance comes in. It’s a cloud-delivered service that provides deep insights and proactive recommendations through cloud ML/AI for Citrix environments both in the cloud and on premises.

Last year was a milestone for feature growth and adoption of what was already a popular offering used by some of the largest Citrix customers in the world (and SMBs, too). Now, well into 2022, we continue to move forward with continued innovation as well as enhancement ideas coming straight from our customers. Let’s take a look at what we’ve delivered.

Zombie Session Failure Insights

This is not your typical zombie from Halloween. Zombie sessions are failed sessions to persistent VMs and physical Remote PC Access machines in a hung state. With these delivery models (very popular among our customers for power users), users are requesting access to a specific VM or physical PC with no other alternatives to launch the resource (e.g. a dedicated, customized power VM in the cloud for a developer or a physical PC in the office for an engineer). Previously, there wasn’t a way to proactively identify session failures faced by users in these scenarios. Now we can surface these insights in Citrix Analytics with data that’s easily consumable.

RBAC Roles

Teams across IT can benefit from Citrix Analytics for Performance. This wasn’t possible previously because  we would have had to grant these users a higher level of access within Citrix Analytics and Citrix Cloud.

Now we have granular RBAC roles for admins in both Citrix Analytics for Performance and Citrix Analytics for Security, including read-only roles. This will empower junior admins, specific project teams, and upper-level help desk staff to be proactive and consume valuable Citrix Analytics data themselves.

Improved Clarity on Users Categorized as “NA”

Before, in Citrix Analytics for Performance, some users across onboarded sites might show categorized as “NA” without an actual performance score. This left admins with a void in clarity, and many of these sessions were merely in a disconnected state. Plus there was no way to distinguish between sessions in a disconnected state and those that weren’t. Now we are categorizing users with disconnected sessions separately outside of the “NA” classification for improved clarity.

Simplified Availability Dashboard

The Machine Availability dashboard now shows at a quick glance the exact number of VDA machines currently serving your users and available. It also shows how many of your VDA machines are unavailable currently due to various technical reasons.

Additionally, as shown in the graph chart below, you can see the historic availability for all your VDA machines. How many machines were active or down yesterday, one hour ago, or one month ago? You can see it in the graph and click to view the complete list of machines in a specific machine state at any point in the past, during say an outage investigations.

And to help correlate the impact of your VDA machine availability with user sessions, you can visually see the availability chart along with Failed Sessions, Total Sessions, or Successful Sessions to understand machine capacity or outage impact on your end-user sessions.

Endpoint Network Metrics

As Citrix professionals, we know that underlying network conditions have a large impact on the overall session performance. Unfortunately, many end users are not aware of their network quality, especially when traveling. Citrix Analytics now surfaces endpoint network metrics obtained from the Citrix Workspace app client software over time for each session. This empowers IT teams to better understand how factors like bandwidth, round trip time (RTT), latency, Wi-Fi signal strength, and more can affect overall session performance.

Try Citrix Analytics for Performance Today!

Talking about new features is one thing. Experiencing the value for yourself is something totally different. We encourage you to try Citrix Analytics for Performance today via a demo and trial. Visit https://analytics.cloud.com/ to try out the Citrix Analytics service today or contact your trusted Citrix partner or sales team. Take your Citrix DaaS and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environments to the next level of performance and availability and make the most out of your current and future investments.

Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.