Chapter 21: Ongoing Administration of the Server-Based Computing Environment


The goal of ongoing administration is to ensure that IT services are delivered according to service level requirements that are agreed to by IT management and other relevant decision makers within a company. The day-to-day operations of an IT department should be proactive and require that the proper products, services, and infrastructure are in place to identify and prevent potential problems. This chapter provides guidance on how to manage and troubleshoot server-based computing environments. Through these methodologies, achieving reliable, available, supportable, and manageable solutions built on Microsoft and Citrix products and technologies can be attained.

This chapter also examines the need to develop dedicated support systems to track and facilitate end-user problems, perform maintenance on infrastructure, track service level agreements, and communicate to the end-user community IT progress and relevant problems. In some companies this may be any combination of help desk, service desk, operations, or call center services. Regardless of what it is called or how they are combined, the need and function of these critical components must be analyzed for successful management and operation of the SBC environment.

Scheduled Maintenance Activities

There are specific tasks that should be performed on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly interval to ensure service levels are being met. General tasks are outlined in this section to provide a guide for MetaFrame XP administrators. It is very important to schedule time at defined intervals to ensure maintenance activities happen and any administrative actions are documented for reference later. Daily issues and maintenance should be tracked and reviewed so persistent problems can be identified and a timeline can be created for resolving them.

On a quarterly basis, a baseline comparison should be conducted against the information monitored and gathered throughout the period. This will identify any inconsistencies that may need to be addressed. Performing a user load trend analysis will help administrators determine proper use of server resources. If trending indicates degradation of server performance due to overload of users, expansion of the MetaFrame environment (such as adding additional load balanced servers) may be necessary. A project, which includes analysis of infrastructure and design, should be initiated and subsequent requisition of hardware, software, and resources scheduled.

Daily Maintenance Activities

Daily maintenance activities are centered on the essential tasks needed to ensure the Citrix farm is highly available and is servicing the end-user needs. These tasks should include, but not be limited to, the following:

  • Back up the datastore A Microsoft Access-based datastore (DS) can be backed up either using the dsmaint backup command utility or by copying the backup datastore file (mf20.bak) that is created every time the IMA service is stopped to a network share. This task is most commonly executed daily with a scheduled script. Third-party datastores (SQL or Oracle) require additional configurations from within SQL or Oracle management software to ensure proper backup of the datastore. See Figure 21-1 for a sample reboot script that copies the backup datastore file to a network share.

    click to expand
    Figure 21-1: Sample reboot script

  • Reboot servers Servers should be rebooted frequently to eliminate any "hung" processes or memory leaks. A simple reboot script like the one shown in Figure 21-1 can be used as a scheduled task to reboot servers with MetaFrame XPs or XPa. MetaFrame XPe has reboot functionality included and can be scheduled from the server properties in the CMC.

    Caution

    Do not reboot more than ten servers every ten minutes. Rebooting more than ten servers at a time can cause severe load on the datastore, prompting delays in IMA service start times.

    Note

    Sleep.exe is part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit and the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit.

  • Verify that all servers are communicating properly with the datastore This can be done either by running qfarm from the command line with the /app and /load extensions to make sure all servers are showing up and load values are appropriate, or by viewing the status of the server from the CMC. qfarm with the /app switch will detail which servers are providing which applications, checking to make sure all servers and appropriate applications are listed to verify communication. qfarm with the /load switch will detail all servers and their associated load levels. Load levels should be within zero to 9999 at all times. A load level of 10000 indicates a server is reporting maximum load on a particular load evaluator. If the load level is above 10000, it indicates a problem with load balancing or the datastore. qfarm used with the /online or /offline switch will display which servers are currently online or offline in the farm.

  • Perform a thorough review Review any Resource Manager performance alerts, virus notifications, and datastore backup logs or scripts for proper execution. Notifications should be configured for these whether they are e-mail or SNMP traps.

  • Assess event viewer errors Event logs should be checked daily on all servers to ensure that the operating system, applications, and system security are functioning normally. Microsoft Operations Manager is a great utility to view event logs centrally but other event log consolidation tools exist that can dramatically simplify the daily task of checking each event log by providing a unified interface, such as the products made by RippleTech (see bw.rippletech. com for more information), Sentry Pro (see www.sentry-pro.com for more information), or Gravity Square (see www.gravitysquare.com for more information).

  • Troubleshoot problems Troubleshoot daily user problems and handle emergency hardware issues such as failed hard drives, network cards, and so on.

  • Check for session states using Citrix Management Console Reset lengthy disconnected sessions if disconnect times are not enforced. Record and trend the number of disconnected, idle, and active sessions to help refine the MetaFrame session disconnect settings.

Weekly Maintenance Activities

Weekly maintenance activities focus on proactive tasks that are aimed at keeping both the farm and servers healthy. These actions should include, but not be limited to, the following:

  • Verify concurrent user need does not exceed current purchased licensing The clicense connections command provides an overview of current usage of all Citrix products. Look for a low number of available licenses to determine when there is need for additional licensing.

  • Check free space Check free space on all servers to ensure sufficient space is available for proper operation. Once a server gets below ten percent of total disk space available, the performance of the server will be affected.

  • Ensure antivirus definitions are up-to-date

  • Generate reports Create reports on downtime/uptime, performance problems, and lingering issues to understand and react to problems in the environment. Update the user community on current problem resolution and uptime of environment through e-mail, intranet (MSAM covered in Chapter 16 can provide a great solution for end-user communication), or other means.

  • Review and apply any critical Windows, application, or Citrix updates/hotfixes It is critical to stay up-to-date with the latest patches or fixes to prevent unnecessary problems. The changes should be applied to a test server first to verify operability before rollout to production servers.

Monthly

Monthly maintenance activities focus on high-level farm administration and housekeeping. These tasks should include, but not be limited to, the following:

  • Monitor bandwidth utilization for ICA sessions Review current bandwidth versus bandwidth needed to support printing, session responsiveness, and potential growth.

  • Update printer drivers, and driver mappings, and remove unused drivers The latest versions of the drivers should be used, all servers should contain the same drivers, unused drivers should be removed, and driver mappings and compatibility lists should be updated.

Quarterly

Quarterly maintenance activities focus on reviewing current farm design and monitoring performance levels. These tasks should include, but not be limited to, the following:

  • Analyze usage and growth patterns Analyze farm usage and future growth patterns to estimate requirements for expansion of the MetaFrame XP environment, then perform budgetary and growth planning.

  • Run defrag and chkdsk on all drives Third-party defragmentation utilities, such as Executive Software's Diskeeper, should be utilized to facilitate scheduled and robust defragmentation.

  • Perform test restores of the datastore from tape backup to an isolated testing environment Since the DS is an important component of the MetaFrame environment, we recommend performing periodic restores from tape backup. This restore should follow established procedures. The DS should be restored onto equipment similar to that in the production environment. To avoid network conflicts and the risk of affecting the production environment, the restored DS should be in an isolated test network (as discussed in Chapter 10). Administrators should check the operability of the restored datastore by adding a MetaFrame server into the farm and connecting to an application.

  • Perform baseline comparisons against previous baselines Baseline comparisons indicate whether the current sizing of the farm is adequate. If performance problems are identified, additional hardware and software will need to be purchased and implemented.




Citrix Metaframe Access Suite for Windows Server 2003(c) The Official Guide
Citrix Access Suite 4 for Windows Server 2003: The Official Guide, Third Edition
ISBN: 0072262893
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 158

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