Monitors all seven layers of OSI model, giving us visibility across all hardware and all applications
Pros and Cons
"The auto-configuration or auto-Thresholding is very important because it saves a phenomenal amount of labor and setup costs and time."
How has it helped my organization?
There was a specific problem that I was having where my technical staff was telling me that I had to buy new servers. Our business model depends on subscribing users at a certain rate or level per server. If I can't jam 50 people onto one server, my business model wouldn't work. And we got stuck at 25 and we couldn't figure out why. Why was the server slow? Why could we not get more on there?
Using eG, we were able to figure out that it was actually a disk problem. The disk itself was overloaded. Imagine, on these cloud platforms that we've built, these are very complicated platforms. There's thousands of moving parts. Somebody calls up and says it's slow, there are so many variables that you can't do it without a tool like eG. We narrowed it down, using eG, to the hard disk and within that, we narrowed it down to the fact that one type of traffic was very high. And eG told us all that in, like, four clicks.
We put a technician on site, we opened up the server, and we discovered that the battery for the write cache controller was not plugged in. The write cache controller dramatically affects disk performance. We didn't know it wasn't plugged in. It looked like it was plugged in, and because we plugged it back in, we avoided a $20,000 purchase on new servers. We would not have found the problem without eG. That's one example.
What is most valuable?
The auto-configuration or auto-Thresholding is very important because it saves a phenomenal amount of labor and setup costs and time.
The fact that it's end-to-end monitoring; it goes across all seven layers of OSI model, so the physical transport, the hardware layer, and the application layer and everything in between. That's very important to us, giving us visibility across all hardware and all applications.
What needs improvement?
I've been working with them a long time and the ones that I've asked for, they've done.
It'd be nice if the price was lower. That would be an improvement.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. One of the risks when you're installing software in a multi-tenant environment - we're a high-availability platform where there's thousands of users. If you make a mistake or the installation program crashes the server, or you have to have a maintenance window to install it because it requires a reboot; all of those factors make a software package less attractive. Disrupting thousands of people can be very difficult and very painful.
With eG, if I need to install the monitoring agent on a server, I do not have to do a reboot, and because I've installed eG agent probably 600 or 700 times, I'm very confident that it will not be intrusive and that it's not going to cause a problem for the customer's environment or for our environment when we install it. We don't have to declare a maintenance window to do any work with eG. It's transparent and that's a result of it being very stable.
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I'm not aware of the limits. It's very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Their tech support people were awesome; they got us up and running in about a day.
I've called them many times over the years. They're some of the smartest guys I know in the business; a lot of respect for them. I know the owner. I've met him, Srinivas. He was a former scientist with HPE. He's co-authored something like 14 patents. Their head of technology support, Bala, I've met in person several times. These guys were all around the core of the company when it started.
Since then, I don't frequently talk to them in person anymore because the company has grown, but the staff that they've brought in have been very, very good. The guys are very intelligent. Never had an issue with them not knowing what to do.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When I started researching the market, I found that there was a lot of high-end "800-pound gorilla" products that were very expensive, and they should come with a consultant in the box. Things like HPE OpenView, for example, take a phenomenal amount of setup effort and cost, and they're expensive. They're several hundred thousand dollars, just to buy. And you have the low-end products, like WhatsUp Gold; it does some basics but it doesn't give you some of the features that eG does. eG was right in the middle. It was priced right.
How was the initial setup?
It's very simple. Takes less than five minutes.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I had multiple choices and I evaluated several other products, including HPE OpenView, Microsoft System Center. It was Microsoft System Center which we probably could've gotten for free because we're a Microsoft Gold Partner. I also looked into another one from IBM. The name escapes me at the moment.
We evaluated several.
What other advice do I have?
To get the value out of eG, you have to embrace it fully, from end to end, and you have to abide by or deal with the alerts or the alarms as they arise. eG forces you to become a better search provider, or maintain a higher level of quality within your platform, or within your IT.
Because it gives you visibility that you can't have without it, you're able to see problems much more clearly, sometimes before they affect users. And the worst thing you can do with any alerting software or monitoring software: when something goes red, don't ignore it. Deal with the alarms and alerts as they arise and strive for the "three nines" or the "four nines" of normal performance.
It delivers a huge amount of value and most people don't understand that. The people that haven't done the research or tried another product, like we have, don't get it.
Your choices, as a customer or consumer, would be the low-end stuff for a few hundred dollars - and you get very limited output. Or you spend half a million dollars on the product, just on licensing, and maybe another $250,000 on consulting fees to implement it, and you'd be left with a product that's still not as good as eG.
You can implement eG for probably $50,000, $60,000, depending on the size of your infrastructure. And it's all about value. It's all about bang for your buck. It delivers at a much higher level for the money than anything else out there. It has for a long time.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Topology view provides a visual representation of a service and quickly allows identification of errors or degraded performance.
Pros and Cons
"The topology view which provides a visual representation of a service and quickly allows identification of errors or degraded performance."
"The UI looks a little dated and could do with a refresh."
How has it helped my organization?
An end-to-end view of infrastructure performance and the end-user experience greatly improves the responsiveness of IT, increases system availability, and improves user satisfaction.
What is most valuable?
The topology view which provides a visual representation of a service and quickly allows identification of errors or degraded performance.
The ability to diagnose issues directly from the alert screen is very valuable because it quickly leads to the root cause of performance issues.
What needs improvement?
The UI looks a little dated and could do with a refresh.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Some minor scalability issues have been seen but product tuning by eG resolved these issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service and support are superb.
Technical Support:
Customer service and support are superb.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We evaluated four solutions which specialise in Citrix monitoring and chose the product which provided the greatest depth of visibility and ease of use.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup and configuration are quite straightforward. Like all monitoring and alerting solutions, some effort is required to tune the product for optimal results.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation was done in-house with assistance from eG support. As noted above, eG support is excellent.
What was our ROI?
ROI has not yet been calculated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If using eG for virtual desktops, carefully calculate whether per named user, per concurrent user, or per server (for XenApp/RDS) is the most cost effective licensing model.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated four solutions which specialise in Citrix monitoring and chose the product which provided the greatest depth of visibility and ease of use.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are both a customer and a partner of eG Innovations.
Quickly showed us what part of the network was down, but UI and dashboards need improvement
Pros and Cons
"It gives good insight into inside of what's going on with Exchange."
"Dashboards are difficult to create, and not so useful."
How has it helped my organization?
We haven't really had an issue per se, but there was a time when we had some network devices that were down, and eG showed us pretty quickly that that part of the network was down.
What is most valuable?
The Exchange monitoring module. It gives good insight into inside of what's going on with Exchange.
What needs improvement?
One thing that I don't like about eG is like the interface. It's not really that user-friendly to make a change, or to navigate through. It's just not intuitive, in my opinion.
I think the biggest thing would be to make it easier for an admin to go in and make changes. Specifically when there's an alert, to be able to drill through more easily than the way you do it now. For example, when you're looking at something in the interface, the ability to move on to the next item, you can't do it through a right-click, or it's not easy to find how to get to the next step. You have to just know where things are. There are no links to things intuitively.
Specifically, I would say, they need to completely change the look and feel. That's the main thing. The product, for the most part, works. But dashboards are difficult to create, and not so useful. So, look and feel, and then dashboards. And easier to set up. Easier to navigate.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not yet needed to call tech support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had nothing before.
How was the initial setup?
It was very complex. It just took a long time to set up. For whatever reasons, sometimes things wouldn't work in the beginning. And there are so many steps to take. It's just a complex product. To get it to work is not easy.
I would say that you need a good amount of time to implement the product, so just be patient.
I would give it about a seven out of 10 because of the complexity of making changes, the complexity of setting up, and non-intuitive menus and links.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
eG Innovations – Citrix improvements Boy have I been overdue with this blog, I’m sure it is over a month that I gotten the information about an upcoming change with eG Enterprise. At first I couldn’t share the information, NDA and so on, but after that ship sailed I kind got busy with other things…
Today I got a question about eG and possibilities there, so I logged on and bam I got hit in the face with the new features… So here it is the long long over due article about eG innovations.
eG Innovations
First a quick introduction for those not familiar with eG. eG Innovations brings to the market a end-to-end monitoring product. Their solutions shows severity of issues in relation to other components in a layered model. Read my previous blog to learn more, one of them is found here.
Version 6.1
So let’s see what version 6.1 brings you for Citrix improvements, I think you like it.
There are several new features;
Deep visibility into the Citrix logon process
Application launch monitoring
Frame hawk monitoring
GPU monitoring
Monitor latency to user end point
Integration with Netscaler HDX insight
Monitoring Netscaler sessions
Monitor Netscalers by syslog
Monitor XenMobile v10
Real user monitoring for Web applications
There are more enhancements in version 6.1 but let me write about that in another blog and keep this Citrix focused.
Logon process
Back in the Citrix Edgesight days we had that cool report, with the Enterprise license, that showed the breakdown of the user logon process. In Citrix Director those metrics are also available per user grouped in the console for the last three sessions. Citrix director gives a nice basic overview but nothing like that cool Edgesight report. With version 6.1, eG Enterprise is showing all those cool metrics that you once had in the report.
High level logon process information
Client side startup times
Server side startup time
The high level logon process information will show you exactly what Citrix Director is also showing, that is the logon duration in total, the profile load, the group policy processing duration and the logon script execution duration.
It show enough for basic troubleshooting but sometime you want more.
If you want more we look at the different metrics like the Client start-up metrics. how long did it take for the ICA file to download to the client, how long did it take for the client to load the Citrix storefront page, Is you DNS name resolution having issues. That kind of data is valuable, every week I have a meeting with customer where they are how can we monitor from the client to the server so that we can solve issues a employee has.
If the client side is load fast and there are no issues there perhaps the server side is having issues. So metrics like how long did it take to pass credentials or how long did it take to create printers… those are metrics that will give you insight in what is happening.
Application launch
Sometimes logon is fine everything works fine but the user is complaining that it takes ages to get a desktop. What we see often is that users automatically start applications at logon and what if those applications are slow to load, that would slow down your perception of the desktop logon process. So we need to dive into that.
Per application you will see the average time it took to launch the application and the maximum time it does. Of course you can see these numbers also in reports and so on.
So troubleshooting will show you information over time and you can find out whether it was a one time hickup or something that is building up over time.
Framehawk
Citrix bought Framehawk a while back and for certain use cases Framehawk is a solution. The New version of eG now has next to the default Citrix monitoring a new section dedicated to Framehawk monitoring, so can see the Framerate, network bandwidth, latency and network loss. The last one is very interesting working with Framehawk for that would prove it’s doing it’s job.
GPU Monitoring
The boys of eG have been busy it seems, the also added GPU monitoring to the new version. So now you can monitor the GPU in a host, XenServer and vSphere, not he host itself or at the vm where you add the GPU.
This will help you solve issues and see if there are enough GPU resources available for your virtual machines and for your users.
Monitor latency to user end point
Integration with Netscaler HDX insight
Monitoring Netscaler sessions
Monitor Netscalers by syslog
Monitor XenMobile v10
Real user monitoring for Web applications
Monitor latency to the user end point
When looking at latency the issue always is whether it is a client side issue or a network issue. Users working on remote location will always be caught up with IT guys saying you Internet provider connection is slow or crappy that’s why the session is bad.
Now you can compare the screen refresh latency to the network latency and see if they align, more data to build you opinion on and more triggers to give alerts to show something is going wrong.
Integration with Netscaler insight
In version 6.1, perhaps not such a small announcement, also the integration with Netscaler HDX insight is there. This broaden and deepens you visibility in the Citrix session of a user.
When you setup a end to end visibility now you have the visibility from one console all adding up for you to monitor, Much more user friendly than the Citrix Director console is offering.
There are more cool metrics to show there but that’s for you to find out. Version 6.1 also offers to monitor the syslog of the Netscalers so that next to the user session details you will also see the details of the Netscaler device itself and how it is preforming.
XenMobile 10
Availability of the XenMobile server
Responsiveness of the server
Login failures
Suspicious login attempts
Device load of the Xenmobile server
Status of devices
Devices hosting blacklisted applications
Jail-broken devices
Perimeter breaching devices
Out of of compliant devices
It’s a vast list of enhancements for XenMobile 10 in eG Enterprise version 6.1. Hope this will also come for other vendors like AirWatch.
Last but not least, Real user monitoring for web applications.
Real user monitoring for web applications
eG used to have an emulated monitoring solution where you can create a flow to start an app and do things there. That would give you an insight in how transactions etc. would run and you could see if there were delays. Now they bring to market real user monitoring, They monitor where users connect from, how long certain actions take and will report that in a nice dashboard.
If you are in web apps business or your company expands several countries this might be very handy even for a Citrix environment alone. You can now see which users from which countries or cities are having load issues and where you traffic is coming from.
I hope this quick overview of version 6.1 of eG innovation Enterprise gives a nice insight in what they offer today, visit them at https://eginnovations.com to find out more.
Look out for my next blog about the new version of ControlUP another cool monitoring product and did you read up already about all the VMware Horizon 7 announcements I made earlier?? Good times ahead when all these vendors keep adding the good stuff to their products
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
We use it to monitor all of our Windows platforms and servers
Pros and Cons
"Its ability to monitor failures and to restart a Windows service when it fails."
"The interface could be improved as it is not real intuitive. It is not user-friendly."
What is our primary use case?
We use it to monitor all of our Windows platforms and servers.
How has it helped my organization?
In my applications, I am just a user of it, I do not install it or modify it. We have a print application, and that print application, if something happens and/or something goes wrong, it will alert us to the problem so we can fix it in a short period of time.
Otherwise, our help desk would be flooded with calls from the users. This way we find that we are alerted to problems before it gets to that point.
What is most valuable?
Its ability to monitor failures and to restart a Windows service when it fails.
What needs improvement?
The interface could be improved as it is not real intuitive. It is not user-friendly. The interface, you have to get used to it. It takes awhile to get used to their interface and their administration panels.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable product. No problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues. It monitors hundreds of servers without a problem.
How are customer service and technical support?
I would give their tech support a four or five out of 10, because the problem is their tech support is in India. Sometimes it takes time to get back to you and explain the issue. We usually speak with the second tier support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
It came down to how much things cost. At the time, it was very cheap compared to the other products out there.
How was the initial setup?
Its pretty straightforward, but to get down into the lowest levels, it is not intuitive. You have to work at it to sometimes find what you want.
We had training. We had WebExs with them and that did help.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was not involved in the evaluation, but I am assuming it was a group of products.
What other advice do I have?
There are a lot of valuable features.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
"Single pane of glass to review status of the full environment."
"Application TCP latency is an area with room for improvement, but I believe this is already on the roadmap."
How has it helped my organization?
Improved logon times due to specific GPO shortcuts that were timing out.
Maintains overall performance, as it is now closely monitored through dashboards. IT now don't have to find the issue; they just check the eG Console and then resolve any alerts.
What is most valuable?
Single pane of glass to review status of the full environment.
In-depth visibility into the Citrix stack
Overall end-to-end service.
What needs improvement?
Application TCP latency is an area with room for improvement, but I believe this is already on the roadmap.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have not encountered any scalability issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service is fantastic!! They are very responsive and always follow up to ensure a solution has been provided.
Technical Support:
eG seem to take ownership of any raised issue, even if it is not on their side. They will assist and escalate internally to get the correct level of technical support for the individual call.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
PRTG was offered as a managed service through a service provider; limited visibility and in some cases NO visibility for certain infrastructure servers / hypervisors.
Citrix visibility was very basic then, too (OS only). Only about 1/3rd of the company was being monitored, so when a fault did occur, we still had to try to work out where it was.
It was good to know there was a problem, but it didn't assist us in finding it! eG now does both and we cover visibility across all tiers of the infrastructure.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward; most of the complexity was trying to get visibility of the SAN storage. It turned out the model of EMC we used didn't have built-in CLI capabilities. eG Support kindly pointed this out.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
You may get some monitoring products with certain licensing you may own. Some of these can take ages to configure and setup, along with needing a license to drive the software. Once you start down this path, then other limitations of visibility can creep in that make you then look for ANOTHER product to fill the gap. Before you know it, you are managing five different monitoring products, flooding you with alarms. Think ahead and plan for a single-pane monitoring solution now.
What other advice do I have?
If you want directions and can work a compass, then buy a compass. Otherwise, get a GPS and throw away the map book!! Go eG Enterprise!
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Having seen the capabilities of eG Enterprise at various clients, I consult too. We now run a separate company (eGSolutions) and are the reseller of and support eG Enterprise for NZ and Australia markets.
Mobile version will allow us to drill down to any metric or measurement as you would be able to in the real system. Now we just have to implement end to end monitoring to be able to use this tool.
In my last review I wrote about the new version of eG Enteprise emerging at VMworld. Since then the folks at eG Innovations haven't been doing nothing. One thing they did was release a mobile app to take your monitoring with you.
In a world where our office is the world we need access to our data in different ways, our users rely on a highly available environment and they don't care if you are in New York, London or Amsterdam. With the eG app you can monitor your environment from just there and take action when required.
Read about what I think about the mobile app..
Mobile app
So lets assume you are a Citrix administrator and you're dying to know, all day long, what the launch time is for your end users.
Like many apps you get the push question and of course with monitoring you want push notifications. So click on Yes and head on to the data.
Once you logged on to your environment you will see all components that you have configured in your eG Innovations environment. Instantly you see the Green/Yellow/Red or Blue signs that give a clear status. Something is going on with Storefront and the emulated client. The emulated client is a process to test the connectivity on a regular bases so you know when something is wrong with connecting to your Citrix desktop.
As I said there is something wrong with Storefront, so let's click on that one and dive in. There is one Storefront server configured and it's giving issues. So let's take a look.
The issue we are seeing is with the Storefront services and so we have to go deeper and deeper in the system. Think about this, your have to watch a daft TV show with your wife and your are actually deep diving in your environment solving an issue, how cool is that... I just saved you evening, who cares about The voice of, this is our interest.
The last one we get to is Common resources, once we open that we see the real issue... okay I won't stop you with a lot of text, go on.
The Common resources are the measurements like ICA Lauch call, Average time and that kind of stuff. Very interesting for the averages have to be low enough to keep your end users happy.
When we click on the ICA Launch average time we see a graph that show the averages over a period of time. You can specify the time period from 1hr to 12hrs, so you can troubleshoot and see if the issue was there before or just appeared.
When extending it to 3hrs you see the graph like here below. Of course the troubleshooting doesn't stop here, from here you would go to the emulated client and see which step in the process is doing this. I think for now you have a good idea of what is possible.
As you can see you can drill down to any metric or measurement as you would be able to in the real system, just now you can do this from you couch on your mobile phone.
I think eG Innovations has created a nifty tool to make our lives a lot easier, now we just have to implement end to end monitoring to be able to use this tool.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Disclaimer: Despite me actually using this tool to monitor our own demo center (PQR Experience Center) I have to tell yu I'm not a standard customer but a partner of eG Innovation. Still the tool speaks for itself I think :)
