What is citrix-environment-diagnostics?

This Claude skill provides a comprehensive diagnostic framework for Citrix environments, enabling automated health assessments of VDAs, Delivery Controllers, and StoreFront services. It offers actionable PowerShell scripts and performance thresholds to ensure infrastructure stability, optimize resource utilization, and accelerate troubleshooting for IT administrators.

When should I use citrix-environment-diagnostics?

citrix-environment-diagnostics is useful in the following scenarios: • Routine Health Audits: Conduct periodic checks of VDA registration rates and Delivery Controller states to maintain high availability and prevent system downtime. • Troubleshooting VDA Failures: Quickly diagnose root causes for unregistered VDAs by analyzing registration failure reasons, DNS issues, and load distribution patterns. • Infrastructure Verification: Validate database connectivity, service status, and SSL certificate validity across StoreFront and Licensing servers during maintenance windows. • Performance Monitoring: Analyze session counts and machine utilization by catalog to identify resource bottlenecks and optimize load balancing across the Citrix site.

name	citrix-environment-diagnostics
description	Comprehensive Citrix environment health assessment and diagnostics. Use when analyzing Citrix site health, checking VDA registration status, verifying Delivery Controller services, assessing StoreFront availability, or performing environment audits. Covers infrastructure health, database connectivity, resource utilization, and component status verification.

Citrix Environment Diagnostics

Overview

This skill provides guidance for comprehensive Citrix environment health assessments, including VDA status, Delivery Controller health, StoreFront availability, and overall infrastructure diagnostics.

Instructions

When performing Citrix environment diagnostics:

1. Verify Connectivity and Access

# Load Citrix PowerShell snap-ins
Add-PSSnapin Citrix.* -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# Test connection to Delivery Controller
Get-BrokerSite

Confirm PowerShell access to Delivery Controllers
Validate administrative permissions
Check network connectivity to all components

2. Assess VDA Registration Status

# Get overall VDA registration summary
Get-BrokerMachine -MaxRecordCount 10000 |
    Group-Object RegistrationState |
    Select Name, Count

# List unregistered VDAs with details
Get-BrokerMachine -RegistrationState Unregistered |
    Select DNSName, CatalogName, LastConnectionFailure, LastDeregistrationReason

# Check VDA load distribution
Get-BrokerMachine -RegistrationState Registered |
    Select DNSName, LoadIndex, SessionCount |
    Sort LoadIndex -Descending

Key metrics to verify:

Registration rate should be >95%
Load index should be <8000 for healthy VDAs
Check for patterns in failed registrations

3. Verify Delivery Controller Health

# Check controller status
Get-BrokerController | Select MachineName, State, DesktopsRegistered

# Verify site database connectivity
Get-BrokerSite | Select Name, ConfigurationLoggingDatabaseName

# Check broker service status
Get-BrokerServiceStatus

Validate:

All controllers showing "Active" state
Database connections established
Services running on all controllers

4. Assess StoreFront Status

# On StoreFront server - check store status
Get-STFDeployment
Get-STFStoreService | Select FriendlyName, VirtualPath

# Verify authentication methods
Get-STFAuthenticationService | Select FriendlyName, VirtualPath

Check:

Store accessibility from client networks
Authentication provider configuration
SSL certificate validity

5. Review Session and Resource Utilization

# Active session count
Get-BrokerSession -MaxRecordCount 10000 | Measure-Object

# Sessions by delivery group
Get-BrokerSession -MaxRecordCount 10000 |
    Group-Object DesktopGroupName |
    Select Name, Count |
    Sort Count -Descending

# Machine utilization by catalog
Get-BrokerMachine -MaxRecordCount 10000 |
    Group-Object CatalogName |
    ForEach-Object {
        [PSCustomObject]@{
            Catalog = $_.Name
            Total = $_.Count
            Registered = ($_.Group | Where-Object {$_.RegistrationState -eq 'Registered'}).Count
            InUse = ($_.Group | Where-Object {$_.SessionCount -gt 0}).Count
        }
    }

6. Check Licensing Status

# Get license server information
Get-BrokerSite | Select LicenseServerName, LicenseServerPort

# Check license usage (requires License Server access)
Get-LicInventory -LicenseServerAddress <LicenseServer> -LicenseServerPort 27000

7. Document and Report Findings

After completing diagnostics:

Summary: Overall environment health status
Issues Identified: List any problems found
Metrics: Key performance indicators
Recommendations: Remediation steps for any issues
Next Steps: Follow-up actions required

Health Check Thresholds

Component	Healthy	Warning	Critical
VDA Registration	>98%	95-98%	<95%
Load Index	<5000	5000-8000	>8000
Controller State	All Active	1 Inactive	Multiple Inactive
DB Response	<100ms	100-500ms	>500ms

Common Issues to Check

VDA Registration Failures: Time sync, firewall, DNS resolution
High Load Index: Resource contention, runaway processes
Controller Issues: Service failures, database connectivity
StoreFront Problems: Certificate expiry, IIS configuration

Reference Materials

For detailed information, refer to:

citrix-knowledge/domain-knowledge/comprehensive-citrix-knowledge.md
citrix-knowledge/runbooks/ for step-by-step procedures
citrix-knowledge/troubleshooting/ for common issue resolutions

citrix-environment-diagnostics

When & Why to Use This Skill

Use Cases