Citrix states in their article: CTX108086

Document ID: CTX108086, Created on: Dec 7, 2005, Updated: May 16, 2006

Products: Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows 2003, Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 for Microsoft Windows 2000, Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 for Microsoft Windows 2003, Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 for Microsoft Windows 2000

Summary

When you call Citrix Technical Support, the engineer you speak with may ask you to provide information about a given server or server farm as background information in order to properly troubleshoot a problem.

This data can be collected and packaged quickly by running the Collect Diagnostic Information tool from the Access Suite Console.

Requirements

Access to the Citrix Access Suite Console for MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 and Citrix Presentation Server 4.0.

Background

Running this wizard in the Access Suite Console gathers the following information about a given server or selected servers (Select All is the recommended practice):

• Collect Events Logged – Collects the last seven days worth of events from the Application and System event logs.

• Collect Hardware Configuration Information – Collects details of the CPU(s), Logical Disks, RAM, Printers, Network Adapters, and Modems for the selected servers.

• Collect Server Farm Information – Collects details about the servers, zones, and applications in the farm to which the selected servers belong.

• Collect MetaFrame Presentation Server Computer Information – Collects information about the MetaFrame Presentation Server sessions, hotfixes and installation information (such as version and product level) for the selected servers.

• Collect Software Environment Information – Collects information about the applications installed/published on the selected servers.

Procedure

Log on to any farm server. Open the Access Suite Console from the ICA Bar. If it is not already running, go to Start > Run and type icabar and press Enter. The Access Suite Console is the white icon with red and blue dots (Presentation Server 4.0) or a red dot on a yellow square (Presentation Server 3.0).
Select the server or servers you wish to collect information from and navigate through All Tasks to Diagnose problems to Collect Diagnostic Information - see below. (Note: To run the trace on ALL servers in the farm, select the Servers node, then select all servers manually in the right pane):

Select all five of the information categories and click Next:

Review/Confirm your server and category selections and click Next:

Click Yes to allow the information collection process to begin. Depending on the amount of servers you are collecting data on, this can take anywhere from a minute to 15 minutes.

When the process is complete, you will see a dialog which says “All tasks were completed. To close this dialog box, select Finish.”
This data is now saved to the user profile of the person you are logged in as. All files are output as *.vbs.log files and are readable with any text viewer.
Now you can manually compress and send this data to Citrix Technical Support. By default it is saved to x:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Citrix\CdfData\.
Alternatively, you can go back to the Access Suite Console, select the same servers, click All Tasks, Diagnose problems and select Package Collected Information. This prompts you to provide the case number (“Support number”) for your support case with Citrix Technical Support (usually an eight digit number. For demonstration purposes, let us assume the case number is 12345678).

Next you are asked to select or clear certain data sources depending on what you are asked for or want to provide to Citrix Technical Support. You can view this information by Server or by Collected Information (again, Select All is recommended):

Next you need to decide what you want to do with this information:
Send to Citrix using the Windows FTP client (credentials will be supplied by the support engineer)
Send using a third party FTP client, or
Simply package the data (into a .cab file), but do not send to Citrix

If you have (successfully) FTP’d the data, then the process is complete.
Note: If you decide to send the diagnostic information by email, you must navigate to the output directory to find this .cab file. If you followed the defaults for this wizard, then the output file will be located under x:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Citrix\CdfData. This location is one directory up from where the five .vbs.log files are output.

More Information

This article is a compliment to articles such as the following:

• CTX104578 – Using Citrix Diagnostic Facility and the Access Suite Console for Tracing, CDF, and the Access Suite Console for Tracing”. CDF Traces can provide invaluable information about what is (not) occurring in a Citrix server farm and many more details to help pinpoint the problem.

• CTX107927 – Brief Troubleshooting Guide An excellent general guide to troubleshooting all of Citrix’s current and recent products.

• CTX107572 – Troubleshooting Tools for Citrix Environments This lists off the main Citrix, Microsoft and third-party freeware and shareware tools for troubleshooting issues in Citrix farms.

• Click here for the expanding series of Troubleshooting Case Studies for various Citrix products.

• The freeware Sysinternals tools FileMon and RegMon are particularly useful for supplementary tracing changes and access logging to files and registry keys respectively.

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