Citrix Workspace Environment Management (WEM) is an often times overlooked application that provides your VDI and application users with better desktop performance and application response times as well as the fastest logon times possible. And lets be honest, who here hasn’t had their users complain about slow logons.
If you are currently using Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops Service or Virtual Apps and Desktops Premium on-premises then you already have access to Citrix WEM at no additional cost.
Citrix WEM provides an array of benefits for your application and VDI environments including CPU management, memory management, improved logon speed, can block rogue processes and help mitigate ransomware, and can integrate with Citrix User Profile Manager to provide a comprehensive solution.
Improved Logon Duration
Using the included default optimization templates in WEM many users see a decrease in their logon times by 20-40%. These logon times are streamlined due to the way WEM applies personal settings such as printers and mapped drives to the desktop. Personal settings and other configuration changes are made after the initial logon process is complete so that your users log in to their desktop and get to work sooner. Faster logon times, makes you as the administrator a hero. Don’t worry, we won’t tell that you didn’t speed days and weeks tweaking every last setting to get your users that quicker logon time and only applied the pre-built template that was included.
The default System Optimization Settings template can be used to decrease user logon times
CPU Management
WEM has the ability to optimize CPU management and help avoid the 100% CPU spikes that can take place in your virtual app or desktop environments. When processes consume more than 25% of CPU for longer than 10 seconds WEM can decide whether or not to drop the priority on the offending process for as long as the process is consuming more than 25% of the CPU. Allowing other processes with a now higher priority to have the CPU power they need. This process prioritization also allows WEM to determine which processes user processes and make them a higher priority so that your users always have the CPU power they need.
In addition to the automatic prioritization, you as the administrator can manually designate processes that should always be a high or low priority process. Have that one poorly application that always uses way too much CPU but isn’t that important, make it low priority. Users always complain that Outlook gets slow when they have 30 browser windows open and 15 PDF documents, set Outlook as high priority. Look at that, you’re the hero once again.
Memory Management
RAM Management in WEM watches those same CPU processes and determines when processes are idle to scale back memory usage. When CPU activity falls below 1% for 30 minutes for example WEM can decrease the RAM usage by 80 – 90%. Which in turn frees up memory for other users and allow for higher usage density on hosts and XenApp servers. Not to worry though, you can exclude specific processes from the RAM optimization list so that they always have the resources they need, such as anti-virus.
Lets review, you can reclaim unused RAM so that is available for other users and processes and potentially increase usage density on application servers and hosts which means you get more out of your existing hardware and resources meaning you don’t have to add that additional capacity you were going to need to budget for and your users have a better experience. Sounds like you are the hero on multiple levels this time. Your users and executive team will thank you.
Celebration In Your Honor
As you are hoisted on the shoulders of your coworkers and praised by the higher-ups of your organization just remember to check out all the other ways Citrix WEM can help improve the user experience and make your IT Management life a little easier all with a tool that you may not have known you already had access to. Don’t worry our secret is safe with us.
You can find more information on Citrix WEM at the below links.
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/tech-zone/learn/tech-briefs/workspace-environment-mgmt.html
https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/06/28/with-wem-take-your-xenapp-xendesktop-environment-to-eleven/
https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/tech-zone/learn/tech-insights/workspace-environment-mgmt.html
Need help implementing Citrix WEM for your users? One of the engineers at Xenwerx would be happy to help you streamline your virtual apps or desktops deployment with WEM and let you take the credit with your users so you can be the hero for your company. Reach out to Xenwerx today or your Citrix Partner and start taking advantage of what WEM can do for you.