Best Practices for troubleshooting performance issues in Citrix

Issue

What are some Best Practices for troubleshooting performance issues in Citrix?

Cause

Sometimes it is possible that it is caused by Capture Server Performance or latency issues.
This guide is to help narrow down the said bottleneck.

Solution

This may help fine-tune some of the options in the Citrix environment

• Active Directory — Citrix users may be part of an Active Directory Domain that is exclusive. Local area clients may not be authenticating through the same domain. Check various Citrix and non-Citrix accounts by logging each type into a Citrix station and a local area Capture installation to confirm this.
  Furthermore, some Citrix users may authenticate to a different subset of domains than other Citrix users. Thus, performance issues could be tied to this particular subset of users.
• Network segmentation — Citrix users are on a different segment, therefore, more "hops" are required to access Capture resources like the Capture share, Capture database server and temporary image file folder(s).
  Careful analysis should be performed using network traces to check for any delays resulting from this. Perform a TRACERT check to confirm that packet routing is, in fact, different from local Capture clients. Tracert's should be perform from the Citrix server to the SQL Server (if applicable) and also to other Capture resources such as file shares, temp image shares, etc. (these could be NAS devices). Routers should be checked for any filtering that may be performed such as Pattern Checking. This has been known to cause delays, as Batch databases contain macros that are checked by this feature.
• Check performance from the Citrix server itself. Run the Capture module to isolate the issue to a Citrix client connecting to the Citrix server.
• Database performance — If using SQL Server, run a SQL Server Profiler trace against the database to determine if queries are taking a long time. For these types of issues, all stations typically experience a performance issue.
• Load Balanced Citrix Servers — some issues can be caused only when a Citrix user launches a Capture module installed on a particular node in a Citrix cluster. Perform relevant testing to confirm this.
• Validation module — If the issue is isolated to Validation, check to see if the Validation module is performing any database validations, or if any custom scripting is being performed that may be accessing other resources on the network. Try mapping drives to those resources to bypass authentication delay issues and re-test. Try importing a test (Tutorial) Batch Class without any scripts/Workflow Agents and attempt to reproduce the issue.

Level of Complexity 

Moderate

Applies to  

References

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