Scenarios | Terminal Services Log

Archive for the ‘scenarios’ Category

Monitor Concurrent Usage for Remote Desktop Services and Citrix XenApp

When we are talking with customers about concurrent usage reports, we are usually discussing on of these two scenarios:

- Tracking concurrent usage (CCU) to ensure Citrix XenApp license compliance

- Tracking concurrent usage to ensure our servers are not under/over utilized

In January 2010 we released a new version with Concurrent Usage Reports, let’s take a look at some of these features.

Concurrent Usage report is available under User Reports. Let’s take a look at Concurrent Users per Month. It show the maximal number of users that were connected in one month. It also shows average number of concurrent users.

[]

Concurrent usage reports have the „drill-down“ ability. So let’s click on October and see what happens.

[]

Concurrent users per day shows the maximal number of conncurrent in a day. It also shows average number of sessions for each day. Chart shows a regular pattern. System is heavily utilized over weekdays and slightly utilized during weekends. Let drill-down.

[]

Concurrent users per day reportsshows system utilization in a day per hour. System is most heavily used from 11AM – 4PM, a normal day in a typical office. By clicking on a desired hour you will see log of all sessions that occured in this time period.

When we are talking with customers about concurrent usage reports, we are usually discussing on of these two scenarios:

Tracking concurrent usage (CCU) to ensure Citrix XenApp license compliance
Tracking concurrent usage to ensure our servers are not under/over utilized

In January 2010 we released a new version with Concurrent Usage Reports, let’s take a look at some of these features.

Concurrent Usage Reports are available under User Reports. Let’s take a look at Concurrent Users per Month. It shows the maximal number of users that were connected in each month. It also shows the average number of concurrent users.

Concurrent usage reports have the „drill-down“ ability. So let’s click on October and see what happens:

Concurrent Users per Day shows the maximal and average number of concurrent in a day. On the chart above we can see the regular pattern: System is heavily utilized over weekdays and slightly utilized during weekends. Let’s drill-down.

Concurrent Users per Day report shows system utilization in one day per hour. System is most heavily used from 11AM – 4PM, a normal day in a typical office.
By clicking on a desired hour you will see log of all sessions that occurred in this time period.

Conslusion

These new concurrent usage reports will allow you to gain valuable insights on how your server or server farm is being utilized. You can use these reports to make sure you are license compliant but also to check which servers are heavily utilized and in which periods.

January 7th, 2010 | Tags: ccu licensing, citrix, concurrent licenses, concurrent usage, concurrent users
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Monitor ‘Per Device’ licenses on your Terminal Server / Citrix

In Terminal Services Log v.2.5 we released a new feature that allows you to monitor application licenses per device. One of the most popular applications being licensed per device for Terminal Services is Microsoft Office. (Learn more about Office licensing on TS). So let’s see how to configure this…

The first thing you need to do is to configure a new license type.

Go to File > Preferences
Switch to Licenses tab
In the Application Name column select application you want to monitor (e.g. Microsoft Office Word)
In the License Type column choose Device License
Enter the Number of licenses you have

Add other Microsoft Office Applications if you want to monitor these. Let’s say I have 5 licenses of Office Standard. Standard includes Word, Excel and Outlook but it does not include Access, so I have added 5 licenses for Word, Excel and Outlook and 0 licenses for Access.

How license compliance works for per device licenses? Our application will calculate the number of unique devices that were used to run these applications in a given time period and selected server…

Finally, let’s check if I am license compliant for Microsoft Office…

Okey, looks good… my users are only using applications we have licensed. (They cannot even use Access since it is not installed.)

Let’s consider another situation. Let’s say I purchased Office Professional licenses, and I do have 5 Access licenses at hand. The report would then look like this:

So as you see, my users are not using Access, and we are over licensed for Access. Next time I might want to reconsider the optimal Microsoft Office suite for my needs.

Conclusion

Our license compliance reports help you to determine the ideal number of licenses you need to purchase for your users on a Terminal Services / Citrix server. If you are over licensed, we help you save the money when renewing licenses for business applications, and when you are under licensed… well we are also saving money for you, as might need to purchase some licenses to resolve the problem before you are fined.

Our application allows you to monitor Per User / Per Devices licenses and we will be adding more types in future versions of our application. For more details about licensing of your business application you should check with your vendor.

November 9th, 2009 | Tags: features, how to
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

Sending emails using SMTP server that requires authentication

A number of our customers have SMTP servers that require authentication. I am happy to inform that we included this long awaited feature in Terminal Services Log 2.4.1. Now you can use your internal or one of publically available STMP servers to send your email alerts.

Here is an example how to configure our application to use Google Mail as SMTP provider:

Check “Enable e-mail sending”
Check “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”
Check “Use encrypted connection (SSL)”

Type the following:

Server (:Port): smtp.gmail.com:587
Sender (email): your_email_address@gmail.com
Username: your_username (or your_email_address@gmail.com)
Password: your_password

Check this guide for more details on how to use GMail services from 3rd party tools.

July 13th, 2009 | Tags: how to
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | 1 Comment »

Optimize backup strategy on a Terminal Services farm

Last week a client (a multinational corporation) contacted us with the following request:

[...]
I would like to determine optimal time for backing-up our databases.

The problem the client was facing was that his users were connecting from different continents and different time zones. So the usual “best practice” of backing-up databases during night could not be applied in this case.

The solution for this problem was really simple. Terminal Services Log was already installed, so we analyzed gathered data and here are the results. The first step was to analyze week activities and to determine weekdays when server was least used.

As shown on picture above, server is least used on Tuesday and Wednesday (due to nature of the business this company works on weekends). Daily activity report reviled that the optimal time for backup is 1AM – 6AM (GMT).

Our reports clearly show that the best time for performing backups, and in case this customer needed to plan a day or two for weekly backups he should probably choose Tuesday or Wednesday night when this farm is least used.

February 22nd, 2009 | Tags: backup
Posted in Terminal services, scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

How to use TSL to track logged users when backup job is starting?

Our client had a problem with one of servers in their farm. The backup job could not be run if someone was accessing certain files on the computer. If file was opened the backup would fail.

Although most modern backup programs are able to backup an open file, our customer is backuping-up a very old database format, and even a modern backup program cannot handle it.

This is the error we were receiving. Backup could not be performed due to inability to lock the database.

Performing Backup jobs on a Terminal Sever can be complicated. An automated script is going to log-off all users at midnight. Users cannot login 12:00AM – 3:00AM to prevent them accessing server and opening a databases that is being backuped.

To ensure everything works smoothly we used our product Terminal Services Log to analyze user activities on server and check if there are no active sessions (if a user was not included in the log off script).

By using Users and Sessions report we were able to locate what the users that were still active in backup time… For these ‘problematic users’ we change idle logoff timeout and included them in the midnight auto log off script.

After correct configuration backup is running normally .

December 15th, 2008 | Tags: backup, case studies
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | No Comments »

Terminal services log – usage scenarios

Terminal services log is the first and only application that will provide exact information about users activity on Terminal Server/Citrix, showing for how long an user was connected on server, how much of that time he was idle (not working anything) or active (working something on server).

TSL 2.0 provides information about application usage. Data collected is displayed in forms of charts and grids that can be exported to PDF and Excel.

By using our product you can have detailed usage reports of all terminal servers in your organization. Here are some business problems you might be facing in your own company.

Example of all users summary report (summary for total time, active/idle/disconnected)

Users and sessions

Let’s say you want to see all the users that connected to your server in a particular time frame:

Our application comes with a built in report that lists all the sessions on your TS/Citrix server, including the information about the time they started-ended and information about total time user spent in active / idle /disconnected state during that session.

What are my users doing on the server?

Now you want to check summary for all user activity on terminal server. This way you will have insight how much of the time users are really working something on the server. TSL will allow you to have precise time in how much of the particular user was active, idle or disconnected from the server.

If only desktop for the end user is remote desktop connection, and for 7 hours of the 8 working hours some of the users were idle or disconnected then you will know that something is not good with employee, maybe he is not satisfied, maybe he just don’t like to work.

Application summary

Summary of all applications usage (note on the screenshot there is summary for applications for Microsoft Office)

I would like to know if an employee is always late…
This want be a problem any more, TSL will allow you to capture exact time whan a user logged on your server. TSL will also capture the time user logged off.

If suspect that someone is connecting to your TS/Citrix server outside regular working hours you can use a built in report to see which users connected to your termianal server and processes they run during that session.

Conclusion

With TSL application logging you have powerful insight in all activities on your Terminal Server/Citrix. If you suspect that there is something fishy going on, TSL is the proper tool for you. It controls users and their sessions but also processes. With just one application you can monitor and anylze the productivity of your employees.

July 22nd, 2008 | Tags: scenarios
Posted in scenarios | By: Frane Borozan | 2 Comments »

Terminal Services Log