uberAgent 7.3 and New Features for Citrix Monitor: Citrix Observability

Citrix now offers a range of solutions to monitor the performance and security of their End User Computing (EUC) infrastructure. With the integration of uberAgent into its product portfolio, Citrix has made a significant leap forward. This solution perfectly complements the upcoming new features for Citrix Monitor.

Since spring 2024, the EUC monitoring solution uberAgent has been officially part of Citrix’s product portfolio. At Microsoft Ignite, Citrix announced that many existing customers will be able to use the solution developed by vast limits for free from December 2024. In this blog article, we present the key features and applications of Citrix uberAgent.

What is Citrix uberAgent?

Citrix uberAgent is a comprehensive solution for monitoring physical computers, virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), and server-based computing environments. The solution specifically addresses User Experience Monitoring (UXM) and Endpoint Security Analytics (ESA). With lightweight software agents on the endpoints to be monitored, uberAgent collects detailed information about application performance, network availability, and system status. This data is filtered and forwarded to a backend system such as Splunk. Administrators can then view metrics on performance and potential security risks via central dashboards.

The applications of uberAgent are not limited to Citrix infrastructure. IT departments can also use it to monitor Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environments and Windows 365 Cloud PCs.

What features does Citrix uberAgent offer?

• Application Performance Monitoring: uberAgent tracks application start times, analyzes resource usage, and detects unresponsive applications. This information helps IT departments understand the behavior and performance of applications under real conditions.
• User Experience Score: The User Experience Score of uberAgent rates the status of monitored applications, devices, and user sessions on a scale from zero to ten. Color-coded visualizations in the Experience Score Dashboard provide a quick overview of the current status of individual components, making it easier to identify weaknesses and continuously optimize the EUC environment.
• Endpoint Security Analytics: With uberAgent’s security features, IT departments can monitor process starts, DNS queries, and network connections to detect potential threats and proactively address security incidents. The solution works seamlessly with existing Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) systems.
• Network and Browser Performance: uberAgent provides detailed insights into the quality of network connections and browser performance, such as HTTP response times. This information helps IT departments optimize network and web application settings.
• Resource Usage: uberAgent’s endpoint agents also monitor CPU, memory, disk, and network usage by applications and users. This allows bottlenecks to be quickly eliminated and capacity planning optimized.

What’s new in uberAgent 7.3?

In early September 2024, Citrix introduced the latest version of uberAgent. Version 7.3 brings several improvements and enables even better integration with other Citrix products. uberAgent 7.3 collects additional metrics for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) and Citrix DaaS, including information on database size and license usage. Administrators can now also retrieve more detailed real-time information on NetScaler and NetScaler Gateway, such as response times of NetScaler Virtual Server and the number of AAA sessions per NetScaler Gateway. The latest version of uberAgent also allows events from the Windows Event Log to be collected and forwarded. An easy-to-use dashboard supports the analysis of event logs.

What are the requirements for using Citrix uberAgent?

All Citrix customers with an active Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Universal, or DaaS Subscription will have access to uberAgent for VDI from December 2024. This allows them to monitor their Citrix VDI and DaaS workloads as well as all endpoints connected to the Citrix environment. Customers with a Citrix Platform license can also use uberAgent to monitor other workloads and all physical devices in the company. uberAgent is optimized for collaboration with Splunk and offers over 60 pre-configured dashboards and apps for visualizing the collected data. Customers can use uberAgent with Splunk Enterprise from version 7.0 or Splunk Cloud. They benefit from Splunk’s advanced filtering functions and UI components. Alternatively, the data from the uberAgent agents can also be forwarded to other backend platforms such as Elasticsearch, Apache Kafka, and Azure Monitor. However, additional effort is required for formatting, analyzing, and visualizing the data. Ready-to-use dashboards are currently only available for Splunk.

How does uberAgent work with other Citrix observability solutions?

Citrix currently offers three observability solutions with Citrix Monitor, Citrix Analytics, and uberAgent, each providing specific functions for monitoring and optimizing IT environments. Citrix Monitor enables monitoring and detailed analysis of user sessions, login times, and application starts. The next version of the solution will also provide real-time insights into the operational status of Citrix components such as Citrix Provisioning Service (PVS) and StoreFront. This allows administrators to quickly identify and resolve potential issues in their infrastructure.

Citrix Analytics is a cloud-based service that evaluates data from various Citrix products and third-party sources for performance and security analyses. The service includes two different solutions: Citrix Analytics for Performance helps improve system performance and user experience, while Citrix Analytics for Security detects potential threats and can proactively address security incidents. Both solutions use integrated machine learning algorithms to identify anomalous behavior by users or systems.

Citrix uberAgent complements the agentless approaches of Citrix Monitor and Analytics with a lightweight agent that provides detailed information on performance, application usage, and security events. The solution extends observability functions to physical and virtual endpoints. IT departments can, for example, determine the exact causes of slow application starts, such as a delayed DLL load sequence or many disk I/Os on the endpoint. Citrix has now announced that the functions of Citrix Analytics will be integrated into the Monitor, Director, and uberAgent components in the future. The process is expected to be completed by mid-2025. Citrix customers will then receive a comprehensive view of the performance, availability, and security of their EUC infrastructure through these solutions.