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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE DESKTOP MANAGEMENT OCT 8, 2015

Determine Number of Citrix Users

Steven Krueger 2

When planning for the future, customers often want to know how many unique users are actually
using their Citrix environment(s).

If a customer is using the User/Device licensing model, then the customer can begin by running
C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\Licensing\LS\udadmin –list from the command line of the Citrix
License Server, based on Citrix Documentation: License administration commands.

For customers who cannot use this option, such as customers who have concurrent or mixed licensing
models, customers who have multiple sites/farms, or customers who want to define a specific time
period to monitor users, this blog provides the steps for an organization to determine exactly how
many users accessed a Citrix environment during a specified period of time.

Security Logs are a great place to find login/authentication information. As users must go through a
web server to access a XenApp/XenDesktop session, the Security Logs on a StoreFront/Web Interface
server provide details on each user who logs into a Citrix environment. Specifically, Event ID 4624
specifies when a successful logon occurs, according to Microsoft Support: Description of security events
in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2.

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Thus, by viewing the Properties of Event ID 4624 on the Security Logs of the web servers,
Blog homeaccessed a Citrix environment. Organizing
administrators can view account names that successfully
multiple logins from multiple web servers, however, requires exporting the Security Logs into a
customizable spreadsheet tool such as Microsoft Excel.

Unfortunately, saving Event Logs as a .csv file, or opening the file directly in Excel, does not produce all
of the necessary information from the Event Viewer, including account names. A workaround to getting
the account names from the Security Logs into Excel is to save the Logs as a text file, copy the data to
Microsoft Word, and then recopy the data to Excel. These steps are described in detail below.

Note: Before attempting the steps below, determine the period of time to evaluate users (i.e. August 1,
2015 to August 5, 2015) and the StoreFront/Web Interface servers that allow users to access Citrix (i.e.
WebInterface1, WebInterface2, StoreFront1, StoreFront2). Microsoft Word and Excel are also required to
complete the exercise below.

1. Navigate to the Event Viewer for a Citrix web server in the environment and follow the steps below to
obtain the logs that show account logins:

1. Filter the Security Log for the period of time to scan under Custom Range (i.e. August 1, 2015 to
August 5, 2015)

2. Input the Event ID as 4624

3. Search for Keywords matching Audit Success

Note: For large environments, the Custom Range field may need to be split into smaller logs (i.e.
one log for August 1, 2015 to August 2, 2015 and a second log for August 3, 2015 to August 5,
2015).

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2. Save the log as a text file (i.e. WebInterface1.txt) and complete the steps below to get the necessary
data to Microsoft Excel:

1. Open the text file (i.e. WebInterface1.txt) with Notepad

2. Copy all of the data from Notepad and paste in a blank Microsoft Word document

3. Copy all of the data from Microsoft Word and paste in a blank Microsoft Excel sheet
Note: If all of the data does not fit on one page of Microsoft Excel, copy a subsection of the data
from Microsoft Word into a Microsoft Excel sheet. Then, copy another subsection of Microsoft Word
into another Microsoft Excel sheet. Continue until all of the data from Microsoft Word is input into
Microsoft Excel.

3. From Microsoft Excel complete the following steps to remove unnecessary data:

1. Delete Rows 1-3

2. Delete Column C

3. Delete Column A

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4. Highlight all of the data in Columns A and B and then click Filter to filter Column A by Account
Name:

5. Copy the account names (Column B) to a new worksheet in Column A.

Note: When repeating Step 5 for other web servers, please paste the copied account names into this
worksheet. Do not create separate worksheets for each web server.

6. Repeat Steps 1-5 for each Citrix web server in the environment.
7. Highlight Column A and Remove Duplicates to remove users who logged in multiple times.

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8. View users who accessed Citrix (i.e. 5 users).

Note: Review the list of users to ensure that no computers accounts are listed.
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Additionally, I would like to thank the following people for their contributions: Nick Rintalan, Andy
Winiarski, Dan Ruggiero, and Lee Milam.

Until next time,

Steve Krueger,
Citrix Lead Sales Engineer

Tagged under:

Customer Experience Desktop Management NetScaler NetScaler

NetScaler Gateway StoreFront XenApp XenDesktop

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2 Comments Citrix Blogs 

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Mertz • a year ago

This works with a small amount of data, but not a large text file. Word/Excel can't
handle the amount of data. PowerShell does a great job of pulling out just the names.

$outputfile=c:\output.txt
Get-Content "LOCATION OF FILE" | Select-String "Account Name:" | out-file
$outputfile

Example:
$outputfile=c:\output.txt
Get-Content C:\CitrixSecurityLog1.txt | Select-String "Account Name:" | out-file
$outputfile

This will drop just the lines with Account Name into a text file. That file you can easily
copy and paste into Excel, delete the first three columns so the only thing left is the
names and then follow the instructions for removing duplicate data.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Paul Parker • 2 years ago

There is a far, far easier way to achieve this in minutes. Try Layer8 from Logfiller.
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

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