By If you’ve tried or trying to monitor the new Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.18 product version with the Citrix SCOM Management Pack for XenApp and XenDesktop, you are familiar with it’s challenges. Our good friend Stoyan faced the similar challenge recently, and to give everyone out there a helping hand, he noted his solution down for everyone to refer to! Here’s how Stoyan solved the challenge:
Challenge
All of you, who are using this management pack know that the latest version available at the time of writing (v3.14) supports max. Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.16. The thing is that Citrix released their most recent version of XenApp and XenDesktop (7.18) a couple of months ago.
So if you have done an upgrade to this version without coordinating this your Operations Team first, then most certainly you are in a situation, where your Citrix XAXD environment is not monitored by SCOM. So, how to solve this? Before answering this, let’s us first shortly describe how the management pack discovers the XAXD Delivery Controller.
In order for the management pack to identify a particular server as Citrix XAXD Delivery Controller and create an instance of this class (ComTrade.Citrix.XenDesktop.DeliveryController.ComputerRole.Discovery ) in SCOM, the management pack does a registry based discovery by checking the value of the following registry key on your delivery controller:
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Citrix Desktop Delivery Controller\VersionMajor
If you have done an upgrade and you are in this situation, then the value of the “VersionMajor” key should be either “1808” or “1903”.
I personally contacted Citrix many times regarding this topic and asked about the progress on the development of the new management pack version. Unfortunately, I was told that is not sure when it will be released, nobody could give any estimation. Unable to find detailed information on the discovery I gave up looking for a solution.
Workaround
Shortly after the last Contact to Citrix, while answering SCOM related questions on the Microsoft Social Technet Forums I came across a thread, describing the exact same problem and introducing possible workaround:
Citrix XAXD management pack
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0ab74665-c1df-43c8-9a19-388f7ecff0e6/citrix-xaxd-management-pack?forum=operationsmanagergeneral
It seems that the registry discovery run by the management pack uses a GreaterEqual expression to check the value of the VersionMajor registry key and the value does not match the predefined values for the previous XAXD Versions, the discovery discards the results. That being said, the workaround would be to edit the value of the key and enter a value, corresponding to the older versions, which on its turn should allow the discovery to run fine, identify the managed system as XAXD Delivery Controller and create an instance of the ComTrade.Citrix.XenDesktop.DeliveryController.ComputerRole.Discovery class.
According to the post the value, which can be used to trigger the discovery of the delivery controller is “7”.
Test results and important notes
Besides the user, who presented this in the forum (huge thanks for this), who confirmed that the workaround works just fine for the “1903” version, I can also confirm that it works with the “1808” version also. There were no side effects of changing the value of the key on the delivery controller and the XAXD environment in general. Still, please be aware of the following important points:
- First of all, this only a workaround, not a real solution the problem. Considering this you need to be very careful with changing the value of the registry key and remember that this on your own risk.
- Always backup your registry first before doing any changes. This is very important rule and fully applies also in this case.
- Make sure you revert the values of the VersionMajor registry key before doing further upgrades or uninstalling Xen App XenDesktop.
- Make sure you revert the key back to its original value also before upgrading the Citrix SCOM Management Pack for XenApp and XenDesktop, in case a new version is released.
Conclusion
The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Community is very comprehensive and is an origin of many helpful ideas and solutions. The Microsoft SCOM Social Technet Forum in particular is a place, where you can seek help for technical problems, but is also a source of wide range of information on important and interesting topics. This particular one is the best example for this. Hopefully it will help you out in getting your Citrix XAXD 7.18 environment monitored again!
Cheers!
AnalyticOps Insights 