“Why is Citrix Slow?”

The honest answer for most Citrix Administrators is they don’t know but if you give them enough time to poke around they will figure it out. They don’t know because over 60% of them (based on our own numbers) do not have a management tool at their disposal to peer into the Citrix ICA stream to quickly identify if it is really Citrix one of the many sub-systems like storage, hypervisors, web servers, SQL databases, etc. that has a problem that is just making Citrix look bad. Of those that do have a management tool, 20% by our estimation, it is most likely Citrix’s EdgeSight which is very powerful and capable of getting very granular but while not difficult to implement is very difficult to extract meaningful data if it is not loaded with the proper templates and used on a regular basis. Another large swath of Citrix customers simply don’t have the budget to have a full time Citrix admin on staff or do not have a good Citrix partner relationship to assist them.

So how do we fix that?

• In a tiered approach typically starting with an Assessment and possibly a Design deliverable, but not always.
• EdgeSight Templates & Training – For customers that own EdgeSight but do not have a firm handle on how to get full value out of the tool, Whitehat will complete a short engagement to build out and customize the templates and train the team how to pull meaningful data out of EdgeSight.
• Managed EdgeSight for every Citrix shop that needs visibility into the ICA stream and lacks a better tool, Platinum licensing that included EdgeSight, or the expertise to get a handle on the data within EdgeSight. Whitehat will stand up and manage a virtual instance of EdgeSight, develop custom templates for their environment and provide those reports scheduled or as needed to help the client side IT team understand what is happening inside their environment.
• Measuring the End User Experience. Whitehat deploys tools that capture application metrics and the end users experience that allows for a proactive response in many cases BEFORE the end user calls the support desk.
• End to End Network Visibility. Tools to let us see into every system impacting the Citrix experience, inside or outside of the firewall with predictive root cause algorithms that quickly let us sort symptom from source.

The short answer is the design has to be right to support your service levels and good tools have to be in place to see inside the Citrix ICA stream and provide visibility into almost everything that can impact Citrix performance is a good start to understanding “why Citrix is slow.” Building metrics around providing an exceptional end user experience is the “How to prevent it from happening again.” Whitehat Virtual can assist you in building that visibility into your own environment, or providing that visibility as a service. From making EdgeSight a useful tool for you to building out a full metrics and analytics suite, we can help. These tools are practical for every environment, 10 users and up. If you have Citrix, you need to be able to see what it is you are being asked to manage. Whitehat can help. 888.406.8719 or email us at Sales@whitehatvirtual.com.