Managing Performance Throughout The Application Lifecycle

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Managing Performance Throughout The Application
Lifecycle

• Brad Johnson Product Marketing Director, Mercury

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Agenda

• Citrix Application Deployment, Management and
  Troubleshooting Challenges
• Citrix Application Management Best Practices
• Next Generation Citrix Application Testing and
  Monitoring Tools
• Case Study Information Network Corporation (INC)

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Citrix Access Suite Deployment and Management
Challenges

• Applications traditionally deployed with minimal
  load testing
• Concern about
• Scalability, Stability, Performance
• Citrix Server Test Kit (CSTK)
• Free tool, available for download from Citrix
  Developer Network Web site
• Script-based application load testing tool
  useful for simple testing on single Citrix
  Presentation servers
• Does not capture and replay real user
  transactions or support load testing in
  multi-server environments
• No production-level monitoring capabilities

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Traditional Citrix Application Deployment
Practices

• Over-provisioning
• One customer over-provisioned by 300 to head off
  problems
• Phased roll-outs
• Application roll out to limited users for 30
  days, monitoring utilization for potential
  problems
• Hardware sizing with CSTK
• Validate sessions with MSFT office to roughly
  size servers

None of these solutions address end-user Quality
of Experience (QoE) troubleshooting and
monitoring!
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Traditional Application Monitoring and
Troubleshooting

• Real-time application performance, availability
  and troubleshooting difficult to achieve
• Typical troubleshooting scenario
• 1 Help desk call application slow
• 2 Check Citrix Access Management Console
• 3 Check server log files
• 4 Check application
• 5 Reboot server or restart application components

Its sometimes better to just let the
application slow down instead of taking it
offline to troubleshoot the problem. When the
application is unavailable, we really get a
landslide of complaints. If we had a tool to help
us easily see the end-to-end application
performance we would know what to fix and could
address slow downs immediately. - Mercury
interview of IT manager
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Citrix Application Management Best Practices

• Focus is holistic approach to end-user QoE
• Real user performance planning and monitoring
• Key application management best practices

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Application Performance Testing

• Pre-implementation application testing is
  critical
• Simulation of real transactions is required
• Ease of creation, execution, and re-use of test
  scripts are key
• Simulation of production server load is crucial
• Some performance bottlenecks only appear under
  load

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Application Performance Tuning

• Application tuning during QA process is critical
• Some application performance problems only appear
  under stress
• Avoids over-provisioning, reduces risk,
  streamlines rollout process
• Minimal impact on users

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Application Performance Monitoring

• On-going QoE monitoring is essential
• Real user performance monitoring is important
• Establishing baseline performance metrics makes
  problems easier to detect
• Supports SLA compliance and application
  availability reporting

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A Next Generation Solution

• Citrix and Mercury have jointly developed the
  next generation of native Citrix Access Suite
  application testing and monitoring tools

Business Availability Center for Citrix
Maximizing Citrix Quality of Experience
LoadRunner Tuning Module for Citrix
LoadRunner for Citrix
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LoadRunner for Citrix

• Mercury LoadRunner is the industry-standard
  application testing product with 77 marketshare
  (IDC)
• LoadRunner for Citrix extends this expertise to
  the Citix Access Suite environment
• Only native load-testing tool that fully exploits
  Citrix ICA protocols
• Load-testing tool that accurately predicts system
  behavior and performance by emulating thousands
  of users and employing performance monitors to
  detect and help correct problems

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LoadRunner For Citrix - Main Features

• Native client-side record/replay of ICA protocol
• Performance monitor for Citrix server (with key
  metrics)
• Icon-based test scripts
• Run-time ICA viewer for watching the running
  users
• Automatic synchronization of ICA events

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Citrix Performance Monitor

• Provides information on the performance of the
  Citrix Presentation Server
• Session Average Latency
• Session Bandwidth
• Session Compression
• Active sessions
• Processor time
• Memory utilization

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Business Availability Center
Leveraging LoadRunner recorder and monitors
technology for Citrix environments
All Displayed in a Single Dashboard

• Mercury Provides

End User Management
System Availability Management
Service Level Management
Application Mapping
Diagnostics
Third Party Data
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Business Availability Center for Citrix

• BAC leverages scripts generated by LoadRunner to
  provide production application performance
  monitoring
• BAC is a modular and scalable performance
  management platform
• System availability management
• End-user performance monitoring
• Service level management
• Problem diagnostics and escalation

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Mercury End User Management
Understand the End User Experience

• Proactively resolve business process issues
  before end users experience them
• Gain real-time visibility into the Quality of
  Experience (QoE) of real users
• Triage user problems to the specific tier of the
  application - network, database, system

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Mercury SiteScope
Monitor the Infrastructure

• Availability and performance monitoring for
  systems, applications, application components,
  and network devices
• Lowest TCO and fastest time to value with
  agentless architecture
• Manages entire distributed application
  environment with over 65 supported targets and
  best practice-based solution templates

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Mercury Service Level Management
Manage by Business Service Levels

• Manage by business-centric service levels with
  real-time visibility
• Ensure alignment between LOBs and IT by measuring
  and reporting on service levels from an end user
  perspective
• Translate business goals into IT operational
  level agreements (OLAs)

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Mercury Diagnostics

Isolate and Diagnose the Problem

• Diagnose complex J2EE, .NET, and ERP/CRM
  application problems
• Isolate performance issues to the specific
  application component
• Correlate multiple problems based on user impact
  to business processes

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Mercury Application Mapping
Visibility into Unplanned Changes

• Map and model business processes and
  applications to the underlying infrastructure
• Automatically detect changes to applications and
  infrastructure
• Assess impact on business services of planned and
  unplanned changes

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INC Case Study

• Information Network Corporation (INC) is
  application service provider subsidiary of
  AmeriChoice Corporation
• Medical / dental claims processing and health
  care business solutions for AmeriChoice and other
  companies in the U.S.
• Challenge deploy Perot Systems DIAMOND 950
  claims processing and adjudication application to
  250 users, eventually growing to 750 users

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INC Case Study

• Application specifics
• Classic two-tier client/server fat client with
  Oracle back-end database
• Users located in three states
• 20,000 claims processed per day
  mission-critical application
• IT concerns
• Concerned about deployment of fat client to
  remote offices
• Bandwidth utilization between remote offices and
  HQ an issue
• Application scalability

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INC Case Study

• Citrix solution
• Implement DIAMOND on 37 Citrix MetaFrame servers
  running Windows 2000
• Simultaneous roll-out to all users without
  individual PC deployments
• Application roll-out issues
• DIAMOND application performance under load on
  MetaFrame unknown
• Elimination of performance hot spots / load
  balancing
• Limited IT resources testing solution had to be
  easy to use

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INC Case Study

• Utilized LoadRunner for Citrix for load testing
  and balancing
• LoadRunner proved scalability of MetaFrame
  solution and identified problems in the DIAMOND
  application not previously discovered
• LoadRunner installation and configuration
  accomplished in three days
• Result successful rollout now planning
  additional implementations using LoadRunner for
  Citrix

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Use Mercury Solutions to

• Minimize Deployment Risk
• Maximize user Quality of Experience
• Right-Size Deployment Infrastructure

Business Availability Center
Quality of Experience
LoadRunner Tuning
LoadRunner
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