Creating a low disk space alert with EdgeSight

EdgeSight is most useful when it actively alerts you about issues with your farm, rather than keeping it to itself and waiting for someone to notice.  By default it will take in lots of Alerts but not have any useful actions.  If you have not already done this, consider going to Configure > Alerts > Actions and creating an Alert for each event you are bothered about (in Configure > Alerts > Rules), sending an email if nothing else.

By default Edgesight DOES monitor disk space, even in Basic mode.  You can pull off a nice report on free disk space in Browse > System Disk Usage, which is lovely as long as you do this on a regular basis.  If you don’t, and don’t have any other monitoring software, you could have Citrix servers operating with almost no space free. 

This is how to monitor for disk space alerts using the Event Log record a full server will generate anyway:

• In EdgeSight, log in as an Admin and click Alerts (under Company Configuration) > Rules
  
• Click New Alert Rule
• Select System Alerts and click next
• Select Windows Event Log and click Next
  
• Give the rule a name (“Disk Space Alert”?), enter System as the Event Log Name, with Type as “Warning”, Source as “srv” and Event ID as “2013”.  This should match alerts you will get on a Windows system with a full drive.
  
• Click Next and Next (not Finish – you need an Action too), then select the part of the server tree you want to monitor – probably “All” at the top to select everything.  You might need to click this again on the next screen to select it properly.  Do this and click Next again.
• Select “Create a new Alert Action” and click Next. 
• Now you decide what to do – SNMP might be useful here, or sending an alert MS SysOps.  I’m just sending an email, so select “Sent an Email notification”
   
• Enter a name for the Action and a subject, then select an address to send to.  Click Test Action to check you get something.
  
• Click Next and Finish and you should see your new alert under Rules and Actions
• You should now get emails when someone fills your servers up!

XenApp 6 and Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2

No-one who has had a production XenApp 6 system since mid-last year would claim they have had no issues, but with all the latest hotfixes from MS and Citrix we do seem to be getting closer to stability, and a big part of this is Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2. 

This is something of a relief after I tried using the beta of SP1 last year – that broke XenApp altogether!

Citrix have said that they support the use of XenApp 6 with 2008 R2 SP1, and I can confirm that I have SP1 servers in production already and they are working perfectly – well, at least no worse than the non SP1 servers!

Citrix do have a page of known issues with SP1, though they appear to be fixed if you have installed the first XenApp 6 hotfix

Known issues: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126711

Hotfix: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX125388

Apart from any general improvements and security fixes Microsoft have made, there are several which appear to be included in SP1 and are especially useful for XenApp 6 servers:

• KB975777 (delays shutting down systems)
• KB979530 (connections denied during heavy logon and logoff conditions)
• KB980663 (stop error during heavy logon and logoff conditions)
• KB2265716 (server stops randomly if heavily using group policy and SCOM)
• KB2383928 (remote sessions to not completely exit)

I would still install this post-SP1 patch by the way:

• KB2465772 (causes XenApp to stop randomly with lots of 7011 errors about services being unresponsive – a very long standing problem for us)

Personally by the way, I would probably rebuild servers with SP1 installed from the start, rather than add SP1 onto a server which has been in use for a long time.  But then XenApp servers like being rebuilt now and then.

As a note, when I installed Service Pack 1 on a server which was already operational and had the EdgeSight Agent running, I then got an EdgeSight Operational Alert:

Error:  An unrecoverable, fatal database error has occurred.  Shutting down the Citrix System Monitoring Agent.

Nice.  EdgeSight carried on working afterwards though.

EdgeSight 5.3 and the empty reports

I’ve just got EdgeSight 5.3 working, running with SQL Server 2008, after an unlikely amount of messing around.  This surprised me as when I last installed this, using SQL Express instead of full-blown SQL 2008, it all went well. 

This time I at first tried to be too up to date and used two Windows Server 2008 R2 machines for the website and SQL parts, backed by SQL Server 2008 R2. Turns out that SQL Server 2008 R2 is too advanced for EdgeSight 5.3 – it only supports 2005 and 2008.  I wasn’t sure if Windows Server 2008 R2 was any good either, so went back to 2008.

Then I tried using a separate shared SQL Server which didn’t have Reporting Services on, planning to use SQL Express with Advanced Features (including Reporting Services) on the website box.  That didn’t work out either as the version of Reporting Services you get with SQL Express can only report on local databases.

So I finally use a shared SQL 2008 (non-R2) server that does have proper reporting services on it, and it still doesn’t work.  It looks like it will, Reporting Services setup went fine, but whenever I look at the reports, they’re blank.  And I notice at the bottom of the page in IE it says “error on page”.  Never a good sign.

Double clicking on this error gets some errors, generally from the “rsproxy” page, which mean nothing to me…

I also got an error that parametersController was null or not an object.  Very helpful.  Googling this got me learning too much about Reporting Services without finding anything useful.

Then I saw this Citrix article about an older version of EdgeSight which told me the problem…

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX119547

Basically, its a trailing slash in the Reporting Services URL.  In EdgeSight, I clicked Configure, then Reporting Services, Report Server, took the end slash off the URL, entered my password and clicked Save Changes.  The reports were recreated on the SQL box, which took a few minutes, I did an IISreset on the EdgeSight server and its all working – several weeks after I started trying! 

I like the fact this has been a known issue for Citrix since version 5.0 and the interface still doesn’t strip off any slashes at the end of the Reporting Services URL…

Installing EdgeSight Server 5.3 with SQL Server Express 2008 Express on Windows Server 2008 R2

EdgeSight is an essential part of a modern XenApp implementation, though only Platinum customers get the full blown version.  In Citrix’s usual way these are named “Advanced” and “Basic” – there’s never a “normal” one anymore, is there?!

Anyway, if you need the Advanced features you can install a test system for a couple of weeks and join a freshly installed XenApp server to it – you get a 14 day grace period followed by a 7 day allowed “violation” period before it stops working.  Bear in mind you can have multiple EdgeSight servers, though an individual XenApp server can only see one at a time.  Whether to have the EdgeSight Agent installed on every server is an interesting question – it does create an overhead – but without that overhead you might not realise your server is overloaded.

Below are basic instructions on installing an EdgeSight 5.3 server to monitor a XenApp 6 farm, though to be honest they are mostly the same as the instructions for EdgeSight 5.2 for XenApp 5 on Server 2008 R1.

I’m using SQL Server 2008 Express.  Express does work with EdgeSight, with the exception of Scheduled Reports, which rely on the SQL Agent, a feature of full blown SQL Server.  Bear in mind that the use of SQL Express is not supported, and depending on how much data you keep its 2gb limit on databases could be a serious issue.  For a temporary system to run in Advanced mode for a fortnight though, its going to be fine.

In this example I installed EdgeSight and SQL on a single server – this might not be a good idea.

I did this install with UAC turned off.

 

Preparing SQL - Install SQL Express 2008 with Advanced Features

You need the Advanced Features if using Express as you need Reporting Services.  If you’re installing full SQL Server, install the Reporting Services components.

Download from:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B5D1B8C3-FDA5-4508-B0D0-1311D670E336&displaylang=en

Run the installer (as Administrator). Click Installation on the left and then select “Next sql server stand-alone installation…”

Ignore the warnings about SP1 if you’re on Server 2008 R2 – you can install this afterwards

Accept the license terms and continue through install accepting the defaults.

Run install and select Reporting Services, Database Engine, Client Tools.

Accept defaults on the Instance Configuration screen, choosing a named instance of SQLExpress. Click Next, Next.

Click “Use the same account for all SQL Server services” and enter a domain user created for the purpose.  This domain user should be an administrator on the server. 

Click Next. Set to Mixed Authentication and set the SA to something you will remember.  Setup the administrators to something sensible. 

Click the Data Directories tab. Set all Data directories to c:\MSSQL except backup - set to c:\MSSQL\Backup.  Okay, so you don’t need to do this, I just like to keep the data somewhere easy to get to, not buried in Program Files.

Accept the rest of the defaults until you get to the main Install, which should take a few minutes. Close the installer when finished.

Download and install the “Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components” for the version of SQL 2008 you have installed (its part of the feature pack). The x86 version (should you need it – if this is Server 2008 R2 you should be using x64 software though) is at:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123702&clcid=0x409

The x64 version is at:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123703&clcid=0x409

This is because the SQL-DMO Objects are required but not installed in SQL Server 2008.

Finally, update your SQL installation to the latest service pack.  At the moment this is SP1 (x64 edition) – this will take a while.

 

Installing Edgesight

Turn off IE ESC – Enhanced Security Configuration.  This is because the last stages of setup use the local browser, though you could use a browser on another system if you really wanted to.  It is turned off in Server Manager or group policy – click here for detailed instructions.

Download EdgeSight 5.3 or extract the XenApp 6 media and run Autorun

If getting it from the XenApp 6 media, click Manually Install Components, Server Components, Application Performance Monitoring, EdgeSight Server

By default a server will not have the necessary pre-requisites and will probably come up with these messages:

Go to Server Manager, select Role Manager. Click Add Roles, select Web Server and go on to choose its components. Select Application Development (with default sub-components), Windows Authentication, IIS 6 Management Capability. Click Next and Install.

In Server Manager again, add a Feature – Message Queuing, with default options.

Reboot and try again.

Select Website and Database assuming this is a new system

Accept the EULA

Enter your SQL details and click Test Connect. If you have used the full version of SQL you probably just need to put the server name, otherwise SQL Express or another named instance will need the instance name. Use the sa password to connect and test the connection.

Assuming this is a new installation, create a new database. If not, you should be able to join an existing one.

Enter a domain username and password to connect to the database.  Personally I make this an administrator on the server and a sysadmin of the SQL Server instance.  I’m not sure if these steps are needed I’m afraid. 

Choose defaults for the recovery model and paths, and click Install.

At the end, click Finish to load the website. Make sure again that IE ESC is off!

Click Next to start creating your Company (which is the way that EdgeSight will organise a group of servers).

Enter the name of your super administrator – this can be a group or a person but should be something you will remember. EdgeSight can be tied to active directory but you will need to be able to get in this account too.

Enter the SMTP details for the server to send out mail as well.

Enter your licensing details and the level of EdgeSight Agent to support.

The license server needs to be v4.5 or higher. If you have platinum XenApp you can use the Basic And Advanced Agents. If you have Advanced or Enterprise you can only use the Basic clients unless you have specifically bought Advanced EdgeSight Agent licenses.

Note you do not actually need to get these details right to click next, so if your license server is not ready (or will never be ready and you are just building a temporary server) you can continue in the grace period for 14 days. You will get a message on every screen in EdgeSight saying there is a problem with the license server until valid details are entered. 

Click Next when done and you will see the main login screen. Enter the Super User credentials to log in.

Open another IE window on your server and go to http://localhost/Reports_SQLEXPRESS/Pages/Folder.aspx?SelectedTabId=PropertiesTab

Fill in as below:

Go back to your new EdgeSight website and enter the username and password you just gave admin rights to the database. Enter the URL as:

http://sqlservername/ReportServer_SQLEXPRESS/

Obviously, put in the name of the server instead of “sqlservername”. 

You should then see a popup window which will run through setting up EdgeSight in Reporting Services. It will error at the end if using SQL Express with “Error publishing default schedules…” – this is because SQL Express does not support this functionality.

Configuring a XenApp Server to use the EdgeSight Server.

Install the client on the server and reboot (yes, you need to reboot).

Go to control panel and switch the view from Category to Small Icons or Large Icons.

Click Citrix System Monitoring Agent

Click Mode to change between Advanced and Basic, depending on your license.

Click the EdgeSight server tab and enter your server name – should still be port 80 unless you changed it. Obviously, it needs to be able to contact that server on that address.

Click OK and within about 5 minutes you should see an email about the new instance that has been discovered, assuming you set up the emailing details properly.

In the EdgeSight website, look in Configure > Devices to try to find your device. If you can’t see it, look in Configure > Unmanaged Devices

This should be enough for a basic implementation of EdgeSight.  There is a lot of work to do if this is going to be a fully fledged systems monitoring a lot of systems, and the size limitations of SQL Server Express will mean that in long term use you might need to adjust the Data Grooming settings.  By default they keep data up to 30 days – I’ve had to set this down to 7 days before.  If its full SQL, kiss goodbye to a lot of disk space instead.

You can also link it into Active Directory and administer it with your normal account, but hang onto the Super Administrator username and password in case it has trouble connecting to AD in the future.