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AppDynamics Monitoring Extension for Citrix NetScaler

Use Case

Citrix NetScaler is an all-in-one web application delivery controller (ADC) that makes applications run up to five times faster, cuts web application ownership costs with server offloading, and makes sure that applications are always available with its application load balancing capabilities.

NetScaler VPX provides the complete NetScaler web and application load balancing, secure and remote access, acceleration, security and offload feature set in a simple, easy-to-install virtual appliance.

The AppDynamics monitoring extension for NetScaler provides metrics collected by the NetScaler appliance about the usage of its features and corresponding resources using the NITRO API. These metrics can be classified under the following groups:

  1. Core System Metrics

  2. Service Resource metrics

  3. Load Balancing metrics

Prerequisites

Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.

The NetScaler extension connects to the Citrix Netscaler appliance using the NITRO REST API.

The extension needs to be able to connect to the NetScaler NITRO API in order to be able to collect and send the metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product, or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

  1. To build from source, clone this repository and run 'mvn clean install'. This will produce a NetScalerMonitor-VERSION.zip in the target directory
  2. Unzip the file NetScalerMonitor-[version].zip into <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/
  3. In the newly created directory "NetScalerMonitor", edit the config.yml configuring the parameters (See Configuration section below)
  4. Restart the machine agent

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

  1. Configure the NetScaler parameters by editing the config.yml file in <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/NetScalerMonitor/.

    Here is a sample config.yml file

    # Please refer to Extensions Troubleshooting Document (https://community.appdynamics.com/t5/Knowledge-Base/How-do-I-troubleshoot-missing-custom-metrics-or-extensions/ta-p/28695) for instructions on how to configure metric prefix

#Metric prefix when SIM is enabled
#metricPrefix: Custom Metrics|NetScaler Monitor|

#This will create this metric in the tier, under this path
metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<Tier ID>|Custom Metrics|Netscaler Monitor|"

# Configure your Netscaler ADX servers here
servers:
 - name: ""
   host: ""
   port: ""
   username: ""
   password: ""
   encryptedPassword: ""

#Please refer to the Password Encryption Documentation for instructions on how to configure an encryptionKey & encryptedPassword
encryptionKey:

numberOfThreads: 20

  2. Configure the path to the config.yml & metrics.xml by editing the in the monitor.xml file in the <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/NetScalerMonitor/ directory. Below is the sample

    <task-arguments>
    <!-- config file-->
    <argument name="config-file" is-required="true" default-value="monitors/NetScalerMonitor/config.yml" />
    <argument name="metric-file" is-required="true" default-value="monitors/NetScalerMonitor/metrics.xml" />
     ....
</task-arguments>

  3. Restart the machine agent.

Metrics

Here is a summary of the metrics published by this extension. You can add/remove metrics of your choosing by modifying the provided metrics.xml file by using the correct stat names as per the Citrix documentation

Metric ClassDescription
Load Balancing
MetricDescription
tothitsTotal number of hits
totalrequestsTotal number of requests
totalresponsesTotal number of responses
cursrvrconnectionsNumber of connections to the server behind the virtual server
curclntconnectionsNumber of client connections
stateCurrent state of the system. Possible values: - Down: 0 - Up: 1 - Unknown: 2 - Out of Service: 3 - Transition out of service: 4 - Down when going out of service: 5
Service Resource
MetricDescription
throughputThroughput in mbps
avgsvrttfbAverage time to first byte
totalrequestsTotal number of responses
totalresponsesTotal number of responses
cursrvrconnectionsNumber of connections to the server
curclntconnectionsNumber of client connections
activetransactionsNumber of active transactions handled by the service
stateCurrent state of the system. Possible values: - Down: 0 - Up: 1 - Unknown: 2 - Out of Service: 3 - Transition out of service: 4 - Down when going out of service: 5
ServiceGroup
MetricDescription
stateInitial state of the service group. Possible values: - Disabled: 0 - Enabled: 1
System
MetricDescription
cpuusagepcntCPU Utilization Percentage
memsizembCurrently allocated memory in MB
memusagepcntPercentage of memory utilization

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document for how to use the Extensions WorkBench

Troubleshooting

Please follow the steps listed in the troubleshooting document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly via GitHub.

Version

Name Version
Extension Version 1.0.3
Product Tested On NetScaler VPX 10.x on AWS
Last Update 01/08/2021
Change List ChangeLog

Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.