Often when I go on site to do a bit of work, the first part of the day is usually taken up with finding out about the existing environment. Previously, this used to take quite a bit of time, and I was always worried about missing something important, but over the years I’ve discovered various automated methods for avoiding the pain associated with this discovery phase. With regards to AppSense Management Suite, the tool you need to help with this discovery is called the Configuration Profiler, and it’s nice and simple to use.
When I’m working with Citrix XenApp, Citrix PVS and Citrix XenDesktop, you can’t go wrong with using the PowerShell scripts provided by Carl Webster on his website to document the settings, and that’s what I usually begin my discovery with (being a Citrix guy as well as an AppSense bigot, it’s not often I find myself on a site without some Citrix investment!) However – on to the point in hand, as we are here to discuss the AppSense Configuration Profiler.
Environment Manager is the part of the AppSense suite where you will usually find you need most insight, as often the configurations here have become very complicated and convoluted due to environmental complexities, company growth or just bad planning. However, the Configuration Profiler tool is available in the Application Manager and Performance Manager consoles too, so it’s good practice to run it against all three parts of the Management Suite to get a full insight into how your customer environment works. Naturally, you’ll need to load the appropriate live configuration for the relevant console before you run the profiler against it. Once it’s loaded, hit the configuration profiler button
Next you will see the following screen that prompts you to select the type of report that you wish to output. More often that not you’ll want the Complete Report option which will output every single item from the AppSense configuration. If you do want a slightly more targeted report, you can create the required criteria at this stage. For example, entering a value of Users1 for the Computer Group criteria produces a report containing only those elements with a reference to the Users1 computer group.
.Next, click OK to run the report.
The report is generated and displayed in a document viewer within the relevant console. Within the document viewer, the following options are available:
Search – Find specific text within the report
Save – Saves the report in a PRNX file
Print – Send the report to a printer
Page Setup – Define the margins and orientation of the report
Colour – Change the colour of the report background
Watermark – Define and add a watermark to the report
Export Document – Save the report as a PDF document or as an image file
Send via Email – Save the reports as a PDF or image file and attach to an email.
It’s as simple as that! I usually export the document to a PDF and then read or print it as appropriate. In some places I’ve worked, this was part of the documentation process for handing over AppSense-enabled systems to support teams.
So hopefully now you should be able to use the Configuration Profiler tool to give yourself a head start in the information gathering phase, if, like me, you end up at different customer sites on a regular basis – and don’t want to rely on a checklist you’ve put together from memory!
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