Monitor Probe now with scheduling capabilities

Ensuring your virtual apps and desktops powered by Citrix DaaS are up and running requires a two-pronged strategy. The first one involves being reactive, using the alert rules from DaaS monitor and insights from Citrix Analytics for Performance - to know when issues arise, and metrics begin to deteriorate. The second strategy involves being proactive, using application probing and/or desktop probing from DaaS Monitor, and doing periodic synthetic virtual app or desktop launches to validate that your environment is working well. And now we are making the probe functionality in DaaS Monitor even better to set up and manage.

Schedule app and desktop probes to run when you want and for the period you want

After downloading and setting up Citrix Probe Agents 2209 or above, you can now configure application and desktop probing to be executed via Citrix DaaS Monitor the way you want. But now unlike earlier, you can configure the application or desktop probing in Citrix DaaS Monitor with a schedule - specifying the days of the week on which they should be run, at what time the probe should start, whether to re-execute probes periodically and finally, when the probes should stop running.

Consider an admin, who wishes to check via Citrix DaaS if the virtual desktop is working before starting the weekday morning shift (say from 9 am to 1 pm).  Then after installing and setting up the Citrix Probe agent, the admin can configure Desktop Probe in Citrix DaaS Monitor from 8:37 AM until 12:37 PM every 15 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Create a configuration similar to the image shown below.

The above Desktop Probe configuration would have the probe agent launch a synthetic desktop session at 08:37 am, 08:49 am, 09:04 am, 09:19 am and so on till 12:37 pm every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The last launch time will be 12:37 PM.

Impact of session execution from Probes on Director

When the earlier version of probe agent launched synthetic sessions, it was often considered as a logon to DaaS Monitor or Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Director - which could have adverse impact on admin usability if probes were running at high frequency. But now with the new version Citrix Probe Agent, we have optimized to reduce the number of calls made to DaaS Monitor or CVAD Director - so using the new scheduling functionality for Probes will have minimal impact on the usability of Monitor or Director console.