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CITRIX Staging DB

Good afternoon 

When integrating CITRIX with FNMS, Is it a"must' to have a staging DB?

 

regards

Manish

(5) Replies
DAWN
By Level 5 Flexeran
Level 5 Flexeran
In more recent versions of FNMS, for Citrix 7.8 + you have the option to send the data directly to your Inventory Beacon during the Agent run without the need for an Intermediate DB. Please Refer to the FNMS Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference documentation available from your Online Help for details on configuration.
Hi Dawn Thanks for the feedback, i have been through the doc, but i may be missing where it suggests that we can get data directly. Could you perhaps pinpoint where it mentions that. Abit of an aloof question 🙂
Specifically, rather than the -d directive, you'll use the -URL. You can pass in a user\pw if your beacon enforces Windows Authentication rather than Anonymous for accepting Inventory. Anonymous is typical if you are utilizing Agents on NonWindows

FnmpXenAppAgent.exe -url http://beacon01.example.com

If you have the option to setup a staging database I would highly recommend it.  It is very simple to setup and provides you an invaluable resource to validate your consumption data against actual Citrix XenApp imported data.

If you are just starting with Citrix XenApp consumption you will find it doesn't work as straight forward as you might like.  You want to use this the staging DB to  verify your Farms and Title list, and raw consumption against what is being put in the [dbo].[ImportedRemote* tables and compliance consumption to trace consumption all the way through the system.

Hi Manish,

Dawn covered the use case already with the -url command line option, but just to expand a little with some more detail as I’ve been through this with a client in the past couple of weeks.

The two options for getting XenApp data from the XenApp agent are as follows:

  1. FnmpXenAppAgent.exe -d “<connection string to Staging Database>” … [ other options]
    • This is the most common way and the staging database is often located on the beacon
    • The data is written to the ImportedRemote* tables in the destination DB

  2. FnmpXenAppAgent.exe -url  http://mybeacon.com … [ other options]
    • Here, the agent generates an XML file with an extension of .raa
    • The file is sent to the beacon uploaded via ManageSoftRL and is stored in Incoming/RemoteApplication
    • The file gets uploaded to it’s parent and eventually is handled by the top tier servers where data is written to the ImportedRemote* tables of the FNMSCompliance database

So – here’s the important part:  No matter which option you select above, you need a beacon which has a defined Inventory source connection of type Citrix(XenApp) to the DB where the XenApp staging data resides.

So:

  • If you chose the first option above, then the beacon just defines the connection as normal – i.e.  a beacon pointing to an SQL source (staging db local to the beacon) of type Citrix(XenApp)
  • The second option though, is *only applicable in an on-prem implementation of FNMS* as you need to have a beacon that can reach the FNMSCompliance database

So – my advice would be:

  • If the environment is FNMS could – you have no option other than using a staging DB local to the beacon in the client environment.
  • If you are fully on-prem, then you could consider the short-cut of using the .raa files – particularly if this was the only need for a staging DB otherwise.   You would still need a beacon and define an inventory source connection to the FNMSCompliance database of type Citrix (XenApp).   If you needed a staging db for other flows as well (business adapters, ADDM inventory etc), then I’d stick with using the staging DB as you can always utilise the staging DB for troubleshooting in general.

regards,
Murray