Validation and Problem Solving

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

Because the Citrix XenApp server adapter has a number of moving parts, validation and problem solving may also involve multiple steps.

After initial implementation, the simplest validation is simply to inspect the additional installer evidence (for App-V applications) and file evidence (for VDI applications) that are collected by the adapter, and displayed in the web interface for IT Asset Management. Keep in mind that to complete the end-to-end process, you may need to
  • Manually link the evidence to an appropriate application
  • Ensure that the application is linked to a suitable license
  • Record entitlements on the license, typically by linking purchases to it.
Also remember that you must be importing information from Active Directory prior to importing inventory through the Citrix XenApp server adapter.

When more detailed analysis is required, you may use the following checks.

XenApp server agent

The XenApp server agent, installed on your XenApp server, records a log file in the same folder where it is installed. The log file is replaced at each inventory collection (that is, each time the scheduled task triggers the agent). Review the log for details of any problems. To increase the level of detail, run the agent with the command-line option -v 1.

To see all the information that the XenApp server agent has collected, run the agent without a -d option (the path to the staging database) and instead using a -o option with a path to a convenient local folder. This saves a plain-text XML file of the collected inventory that you can inspect in your preferred text editor. This is a valuable check point when some inventory is being returned, but particular expected applications seem to be missing. If these are missing from a file output with the -o option, look for reasons preventing agent access to the source information. Examples might include credentials or access rights to folders containing packages.

If you use the -o option, don't forget to replace it with the -d option for normal operations!

Staging database

When records missing from the web interface for IT Asset Management are present in the output of the XenApp server agent (see previous section), next use Microsoft SQL Server Administration Studio to inspect the contents of the staging database. Recall that the contents of the staging database are over-written with each inventory collection by the XenApp server agent. This means that there may be legitimate differences between an output file obtained in the previous section, and the database contents examined in this section. Such differences may come about if there is additional access granted to Citrix Virtual Apps (formerly XenApp) applications (the source data) in between the time the agent is run to output the test file, and the time it is run to populate the staging database. In general, however, there should be a high degree of correlation between the two data sets.

The inventory beacon intermediate file

Next, you can validate the data set that the inventory beacon collects from the staging database. Simply trigger the connection to the staging database in test mode, as described in Create Connections for Data Upload. This allows you to inspect the zip archive, which would otherwise be uploaded to the central server, in %CommonAppData%\Flexera Software\Beacon\IntermediateData on the inventory beacon. Provided that you make comparisons before the next run of the XenApp server agent, you should find 1:1 correspondence between the data in the staging database and the intermediate file.

Uploads and imports

If the required data has made it into the intermediate file on the inventory beacon, you may need to debug uploads from the inventory beacon to the central server (for example, see IT Asset Management Help > Inventory Beacons > Inventory Beacon Reference > Troubleshooting: Inventory Not Uploading).

Keep in mind that there is a delay between the upload from the inventory beacon to the central server, and the appearance of the data in the web interface for IT Asset Management. There must be an inventory import and compliance calculation that occurs between these two events. If you are a member of the Administrator role, in the web interface you may manually trigger an import and compliance calculation.

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

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