The ComTrade Citrix Management Packs and Smart Plug-Ins, now with integrated support for Citrix XenDesktop on top of Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenServer support

October 7th, 2010, Citrix Synergy 2010, Berlin – ComTrade (formerly HERMES SoftLab), announces the upcoming release of a ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. This new Management Pack adds extensive support for Citrix XenDesktop.

Desktop virtualization is rapidly growing in popularity as a more secure, flexible way to deliver Windows desktops to business users in any location. As customers of all sizes move to desktop virtualization, they require solutions that integrate with their existing Microsoft management infrastructure. ComTrade’s Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop is an availability and performance management solution that extends the end-to-end service monitoring capabilities of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to include Citrix XenDesktop 5 infrastructure.

The new release of XenDesktop represents an important next step to realizing the benefits that desktop virtualization can deliver across all users in the enterprise. ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop presents extensive system data to operations personnel in a standard and familiar way.

“ComTrade is fully supporting virtual desktop revolution with our new ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop,” said Gregor Smrekar, general manager for ComTrade International Business. “Our Management Packs and Smart Plug-Ins for Citrix have always been envisioned as a comprehensive solution suite for Citrix management. We started with Citrix XenServer and Citrix XenApp and today we are announcing full support for Citrix XenDesktop 5 on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager.”

“Citrix XenDesktop 5 is an important milestone in adding innovative capabilities, management flexibility, and helpdesk efficiency to XenDesktop to drive mainstream adoption of virtual desktops,” said Rana Kanaan, Senior Director, Product Management, Citrix Systems. “ComTrade’s Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop delivers immediate integration of these new capabilities with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, enabling IT to leverage existing management systems and skill sets for an end-to-end view of virtual desktop management.”

Organizations with operations management standardized around Microsoft System Center Operations Manager are now able to equip their staff with out-of-box monitoring knowledge, tasks, and reports created specifically to enable day-to-day supervision of Citrix XenDesktop for Windows desktop and application delivery. ComTrade’s Management Packs were developed to provide comprehensive health, performance, and topology information, all natively integrated into the Operations Manager platform.

On display at Citrix Synergy, October 6–8, Berlin, Germany.

The ComTrade Citrix Management Packs and Smart Plug-Ins, now also with integrated support for Citrix XenDesktop on top of support for Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenServer, will be on display in the ComTrade booth #507 at the Citrix Synergy, October 6–8. ComTrade management products are also available for testing and review from the ComTrade web site at managementproducts.comtrade.com.

ComTrade Management Pack for Citrix XenDesktop – Key Benefits and Highlights:
Rich topology views expose XenDesktop component dependencies and allow their direct correlation with the rest of the IT infrastructure.

Configurable monitors watch for end-user, desktop, application, and virtual infrastructure-level events that could impact the overall health and performance. The resulting alerts carry specific event information and relevant troubleshooting knowledge.

Predefined performance views and reports track the historical performance and help predict future trends.

A configurable list of actions can be taken against target XenDesktop infrastructure, truly enabling autonomous day-to-day operational management of the XenDesktop estate.

The Citrix XenDesktop Management Pack brings immediate value to any Operations Staff, Citrix Specialist, or IT Manager:
– Desktop and application availability: synthetic launch checks across the user entry points reveal issues that directly impact end-users and form the basis of service-level reports.
– Agent-less hosting infrastructure oversight: key resources of hosted user desktops can be monitored without any agent software installed on them, ensuring ease of deployment, stability, and no impact when extending or upgrading the Citrix desktop virtualization infrastructure.
– Improved infrastructure health: XenDesktop virtualization infrastructure availability is confirmed through rigorous connectivity probing and active service checks. Whether issues reside in the underlying virtualization layer or within a specific application, misbehaving components are quickly detected, easily isolated and rapidly solved.
– Complete end-to-end monitoring: Performance and availability information from XenDesktop infrastructure is integrated with that of the back-end application layers. OpsMgr becomes the operations bridge for different subject matter experts. This end-to-end approach ensures coherent IT responses and efficient management of desktop delivery.