WHITE PAPER //HERMES SoftLab/

LOGON PROCESS
MONITORING FOR
CITRIX XENAPP
Understanding logon phases and their most common
issues
WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

Contents
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

1. About Logon Process Monitoring ...............................................................3

2. The Bottom Line ..........................................................................................6

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WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

1. About Logon Process

Monitoring

User logon is a complex and resource intensive process on a Citrix XenApp system. It is initiated
when a XenApp farm load balancing algorithm selects the system where a published application
or desktop, which a user has selected, will be started and ends when the application or desktop is
running and the user is able to interact with it.

There are a number of factors that have an impact on the logon process that can get further
complicated if solutions that integrate into the logon process, such as User Workspace
Management products, are used. All this is making the user logon process very hard to
troubleshoot. Only a few of the best management tools can break down the logon process on a
XenApp system into phases and measures their duration. Thus, troubleshooting the logon process
is much easier, because you don't have to inspect the logon process as a whole; instead you
concentrate only on the phase that is particularly slow.

Below you will find elements of each logon phase and possible reasons for their slow behavior.

PHASE 1: USER PROFILE LOADING

The phase starts just after the user credentials are validated and lasts until the profile is
downloaded from the profile storage (network share).

Reasons for slow logon phase are:

• issues with network and profile storage availability,

• high network load,
• big profile size,
• first time use of this profile on the server (the cached version of the roaming profile does not
exist), or
• the corrupted profile.

Additionally, monitoring of Windows user profiles for the presence and amount of the specific file
categories is important. Various file categories should be tracked: executable files, media files,
and custom files.

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WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

PHASE 2: APPLYING GROUP POLICY OBJECTS (GPOS)

During this phase, the server applies user settings defined on the Domain Controller.

Reasons for the slow logon phase are:

• issues with required infrastructure (required services and components are either not running
or configured as expected),
• issues with network and domain controller availability,
• system time is not configured correctly,
• high network load, or
• the high amount of policy settings.

PHASE 3: USER ENVIRONMENT INITIALIZATION AND ACTIVE SETUP

During this phase, network connections are restored and profile settings, such as fonts and screen
colors, are loaded. Also, if this is the first time this profile is being used, some extra initialization is
applied. The default profile is created, first time use settings are applied for the shell (Explorer),
Internet Explorer, Office (particularly Outlook), and any other application that uses Active Setup.

Reasons for the slow logon phase are:

• issues with restoring the network connection(s),

• the corrupted profile, or
• first time use of this profile on the server (Active Setup hasn't been applied yet).

PHASE 4: LOGON SCRIPT EXECUTION

This phase is measured by how long the USRLOGON.CMD script (located in

%SystemRoot%\system32) is being executed. The script's original function is to address issues
with legacy applications that were not written with a multi-user environment, such as Terminal
Server, in mind. It uses application compatibility scripts (located in %SystemRoot%\Application
Compatibility Scripts) in conjunction with the %ROOTDRIVE% variable to address these issues.
USRLOGON.CMD script is also used as a starting point for custom profile frameworks (that is, not
supported by Microsoft), such as Flex or Jumping profiles.

Reasons for the slow logon phase are:

• issues with application compatibility scripts,

• legacy applications, or
• custom profile initialization.

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WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

Management tool should differentiate between Terminal Server (RDP client) and Citrix (ICA client)
logon. If the user used the RDP connection to log on to the server, this will be the last phase of the
logon process.

PHASE 5: CITRIX APPLICATION INITIALIZATION

The phase covers Citrix specific activity before it launches the requested application: launching
seamless windows engine shell, auto creation of client printers, and ICA client update process.

Reasons for the slow logon phase are:

• issues with the client printer (usually third party printer drivers) or
• issues with retrieving ICA client version and the rest of the update process.

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WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

2. The Bottom Line

To isolate the problem inside the logon process, the answers to the following questions should be
provided:

• Are logons slow for some users or for all users?

• If you are using Citrix, does a user with a slow logon via ICA also experience a slow logon via
RDP?
• Are logons slow at all times of the day, or just sometimes?
• Do users experience slow logons every time, or is it sporadic?
• Is there anything else that the slow logon users have in common? (Are they all in the same
domain group or OU? Are they all in the same building? Do they all have the same type of
client device or desktop image? Are they all accountants?)
• Is it just plain slow for everyone?
• If the desktop (or published application) takes a long time to load, there are several things
that could cause it:

− a huge roaming profile

− too many GPOs may be applied
− first time use of this profile on the server
− current high network and server load
− custom scripts may interfere with the logon process

Providing answers for troubleshooting Citrix and Terminal Server slow logons can be very easy
when you are using the right management tool that provides logon process monitoring, reporting,
and managing capabilities to narrow down where the problem might be.

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WHITE PAPER LOGON PROCESS MONITORING FOR CITRIX XENAPP / April 2010

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