For those of you that are not aware, NetScaler Insight Centre is a Virtual appliance (VPX) which collects information about traffic flowing through your NetScaler devices. The information it  collects can be used to present the data in a series of reports. They can be used to monitor both Web traffic as well as ICA and VPN / Access Gateway sessions. The collection of this information is known as Web Insight in the case of Web Traffic and HDX Insight for ICA/VPN.

When collecting HDX Insight data, information can be captured and queried about various elements of the ICA Protocol stack. For example; IE Virtual Channel Data consumption, reporting on  how much bandwidth Printing is using, are users downloading files using resource redirection. More common stats are latency times which is a great indicator for laggy experience, Etc. All very useful information when monitoring a XenApp /XenDesktop deployment.

The NetScaler Insight center appliance can display all this information via its Web GUI, however since version 7 of XenDesktop it can now be integrated with the Director.

This all sounds great, however, there is a BUT! –  Licensing!. Citrix tells us that the feature is available for Platinum customers but i that NetScaler Platinum, XenApp/XenDesktop platinum or both:-

First lets look at NetScaler, below is a the Citrix eDoc guide to what you get at various NetScaler Licenses levels.

Web Insight Web Insight reports are displayed for NetScaler appliances running releases 9.3, 10, 10.1, and 10.5. The details about the version and the license available on these appliances are provided in the following table.

Note: indicates that the NetScaler Insight Center does not report the details for response time, load time, render time, server processing time, client network latency, server network latency, and water fall chart.

HDX Insight HDX Insight reports are displayed only for NetScaler Platinum and Enterprise appliances running release 10.1 and 10.5. The details about the license available on these appliances are provided in the following table. This indicates the amount of historical data held based on licence level.

XenApp / XenDesktop

In addition to the above NetScaler Licenses to Integrate the Insight with Director you will need XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum licenses as a minimum.

Summary To allow users to monitor HDX Network information in Director they need XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum plus at least Enterprise NetScaler Licenses. If you require more than an hour of historical data you will need Platinum NetScaler and XA/XD Desktop licenses.

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