Citrix Deepens PS Performance Visibility

Citrix Systems release of new load testing software brings technology purchased via recent acquisitions closer to its own core Presentation Server offerings.

Citrix on June 5 unveiled the new Citrix EdgeSight for Load Testing 2.5 release, which came with the March purchase of thinGenius and provides active load and regression testing specifically for Citrix Presentation Server. Citrix EdgeSight 4.5, acquired last year with Reflectent Software, beefs up the performance monitoring of Presentation Server by incorporating new instrumentation in the Citrix ICA protocol.

The new load testing software release “allows customers to do regression testing of applications before going into production,” said Derek Slayton, director of product marketing and management for Citrix.

“We see that as a growing trend. Customers want better tools to predict how applications will behave before they throw them over the transom,” said Slayton, in Westford, Mass.

Before new applications or software updates are deployed on production Presentation Servers, Edge Sight for Load Testing 2.5 can be used to determine how many users the Presentation Server can support, how the application will perform under load in production, how many servers are required and how configuration changes will affect performance.

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“If youre issuing a patch on an application, you should see how thatll perform before you throw that into production. Thats been complex and costly to do in the past. Now we have a purpose built load and performance regression testing tool for Presentation Server environments,” said Slayton.

The new EdgeSight 4.5 release, which includes a component for end points and for Presentation Servers, provides a more intuitive, graphical representation of performance data and deeper integration with Presentation Server infrastructure.

The passive performance and availability monitoring software takes advantage of new Presentation Server metrics and the new ICA instrumentation.

A configurable performance and alert dashboard shows dynamically changing data in red, yellow and green and allows users to click on metrics for a deeper dive into changing performance.

“The Alert Console shows whats going wrong and provides an early warning to potential problems. You can zoom in by day or hour, and drill through to get right down to the user or machine level and see what the context of the alert is to do corrective action,” Slayton said.

The new release also adds support for 64-bit servers and Microsoft Vista end points.

EdgeSight 4.5 is due June 12 and EdgeSight for Load Testing 2.5 is due the third week of June.

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