topic Re: Citrix VAD configuration in Splunk AppDynamics

Citrix VAD configuration

Andrej_Wolkow — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 10:42:20 GMT

Is the software compatible with large Citrix VAD environments, MCS provisioned Windows Servers, 1 Image (Frontend Servers)? For example 9000 concurrent users and 9000 Java processes?
How do you use environment variables in the config files? agent.properties of the java agent, analytics-agent.properties of the analytics agent ?
Setting environment variables as APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_UNIQUE_HOST_ID via GPO is not possible since the hostname is changing for each machine. Machines can be dynamically removed and new ones added. If I add the COMPUTERNAME systemvariable to the APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_UNIQUE_HOST_ID the service won't be able to see it after reboot, because it is not visible to the process, due to windows changing the variable while the service is running. It can be a timing issue. Restarting the service is no usefull workaround.
I need the configs to use environment variables. No configuration is done per Server. All needs to be done globally.

Setting APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_NODE_NAME, APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_UNIQUE_HOST_ID, ad.agent.name needs to be dynamic
Setting APPDYNAMICS_AGENT_BASE_DIR, ad.dw.log.path for log paths needs to be dynamic
Setting those globally but with dynamic values

Using scripts to modify startups is no usefull way. Javawebstart is used for the application, so JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS is set, since this is the only working way to start the java agent with JNLP.
Instrumenting Java Web Start Applications - AppDynamics Community
Note: javaws doens't know the -J-javaagent parameter (tested with Oracle Java and OpenWebstart)

Note: A service can only access UNC paths Services and Redirected Drives - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

Re: Citrix VAD configuration

Andrej_Wolkow — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 14:52:16 GMT

For the machine agent I have found this MachineAgentService.vmoptions which can use those settings
-Dappdynamics.agent.uniqueHostId=${COMPUTERNAME}

The analytics Agent has also a analytics-agent.vmoptions but settings like ad.agent.name or ad.dw.log.path cannont be passed.

Re: Citrix VAD configuration

iamryan — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:45:04 GMT

Hi @Andrej.Wolkow,

I see you created a Support ticket. Can you please share the learnings and outcomes once the ticket has been completed.

Re: Citrix VAD configuration

iamryan — Wed, 03 May 2023 10:40:19 GMT

A workaround was reached by adding the node name to MachineAgentService.vmoptions

-Dappdynamics.agent.nodeName=${COMPUTERNAME}

^ edited to mention this is not a definitive solution, but a work around.

Re: Citrix VAD configuration

Andrej_Wolkow — Tue, 09 May 2023 12:09:28 GMT

This is not the solution. It only is one workaround to be able to run the machine agent. I currently don't have the time to describe all. Since the agents have dependend settings for each other, you can block yourself out. Also it leads to having endless logs and nodes. You also have to manually delete machines since they are dynamic. The application name can't be connected to multiple enviroments, since you can have multiple backends but only one frontend. But there is only one environment variable, so you don't have a link to the backend. Only if the software itself could figure it out. We currently don't use it in production.
So far I can not say, that the software is compatible with Citrix or Terminal Server (multi user environments) due to the high impacts and consenquenses. It's rather for middleware or backend services with static servers.

Re: Citrix VAD configuration

iamryan — Tue, 09 May 2023 14:41:45 GMT

Hi @Andrej.Wolkow,

Thanks for the update!