Last week Jo Harder, a senior virtualization architect, released a blog post and a white paper on Citrix Monitoring 3rd party tools that complement the existing EdgeSight/Director offering. I think Jo did a thorough work covering the major players in the market and I want to thank her for allowing us to publish parts of the white paper in this blog post.
ControlUp was one of the tools Jo reviewed, along with eG Innovations, Lakeside Systrack and Splunk. The white paper includes a comparison table and overall highlights for each product. For your convenience, I am attaching here the overall highlight on ControlUp and the full comparison table:
ControlUp overall highlight
Smart-X ControlUp is a newer product that is easy to use and visually appealing. It includes several unique features, and a few basic features are on the roadmap but not yet part of the product. ControlUp is largely suitable as is, and it will likely become a formidable player in the monitoring marketplace in short order.
Comparison/Analysis of Citrix vs. Third-Party Monitoring Tools
| Vendor / Functionality | eG Innovations | Lakeside Systrack | Smart-X ControlUp | Splunk | Citrix Director 2.1 / EdgeSight | Citrix Director 7.x |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor / Functionality | eG Innovations | Lakeside Systrack | Smart-X ControlUp | Splunk | Citrix Director 2.1 / EdgeSight | Citrix Director 7.x |
| Key Monitoring Tools by Platform | ||||||
| XenApp 6.x |  |
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Dir for 6.5 only | No |
| XenDesktop 5.x | |
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Limited scalability for ES | No |
| XenApp / XenDesktop 7.x | |
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No | |
| Basic Functionality | ||||||
| Server Health Monitoring | |
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| ICA/HDX Channel Monitoring | |
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| Login Performance (inc. Profile) | |
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| Delegated Admins | |
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| Additional Modules / Components | ||||||
| Network | |
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| Storage | |
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No | Limited |
| Hypervisor | |
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Q3 2014 | |
No | |
| Others | Available | Endpoints, desktops | Endpoints, Servers | Any machine data | n/a | NetScaler |
| Requirements | ||||||
| Agent | Agent or agentless | |
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Depends | |
Built-in |
| Server/VDI-side changes | None | None | None | None | WinRM | WMI proxy |
| Console Server Resources | 2 CPUs, 4GB Ram | 2 CPUs, 4GB Ram | 8% avc CPU/800MB RAM | Depends | Depends | Depends |
| Admin Training | Yes, provided | Minimal | Not required | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Data | ||||||
| Database Type | SQL Server or Oracle | SQL Server Express or full | In-RAM/cloud | None | SQL Server | SQL Server |
| Retention Period (default) | 13 months | 3 years | Unlimited | Forever | 30 days | 90 days |
| Data Archive | Available | Via SQL | n/a | Built-in | Via SQL | Via SQL |
| Data Security | SSL, AD integration | Full/end-to-end | Login/encryption | Encryption, certificates | None | SSL optional |
| Application Monitoring | ||||||
| App Latency | |
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No | |
No | No |
| App Resources | |
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No | No |
| Launch Frequency | |
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| Launch Time | |
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Q2/15 | |
No | w/HDX Insight |
| User Sessions | ||||||
| Drilldown into Metrics | |
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| Involuntary Disconnections | |
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No | No |
| Recover Version | |
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| Printer Errors | |
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No | No |
| Network | ||||||
| Latency | |
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w/HDX Insight |
| Min/Max | |
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No | No |
| Idle | |
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No | No |
| Identify Network Failure | |
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No | No |
| Licensing | ||||||
| Users, Servers or Endpoints | Servers or users | Per desktop, server, RDS | # CCUs and admins | Daily volume | Platinum (full features) | Platinum (full features) |
| Separate License Server | No | No | No | No | |
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| Free Version | No | FastTrack (Citrix Project Accelerator) | <50 user sessions | Yes | Platinum | Platinum |
| Trial Period | 30 days | 60 days | 30 days | 60 days | n/a | n/a |
| Upgrading to XA/XD 7.x | ||||||
| Same Console | |
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No | No |
| Same Database | |
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n/a | No | No |
| Changes to Config | Reconfiguration required | Minimal | No | Yes | Migration required | Migration required |
Yoni Avital
CTO
Smart-X