Resource Manager is a tool provided with Citrix Metaframe that allows you to monitor and report on your Citirix servers and application performance. It can be used to identify, diagnose and solve problems and allows you to produce reports that identifies the requirement for more resources such as servers etc which is a great bargaining tool if you are in a meeting about where to spend the IT budget. Here I explain how to configure this handy tool.

The Resource Manager stores its data in an Oracle or SQL database. We will be using the SQL option in the following examples.

First of all create an SQL database and then you need to setup the connection from the Citrix server you are going to allocate as the Resouce Manager server. Below are detailed instructions of how to do this.

Setting up an ODBC connection to Resurce Manager Summary Database.

1.) Create an ODBC connection to SQL or Oracle server.
2.) Click system DNS tab.
3.) Select SQL server and finish.
4.) In the name field type rmsummarydatabase. This must be called rmsummarydatabase otherwise it will not work.

5.) Select the database in the drop down server list.(RM4)

6.) Better to use With SQL server authentication and supply a login id and password. ENSURE ALLOW SAVING PASSWORD IS ON.
7.) Leave all the rest as default and then at the end click the test Data Source button.

8.) Click OK.

Now you need to activate the Resource Manager Summary database in your farm.

1.) Open up CMC, click on RM and then the summary database tab.
2.) Click on the configure database button, select the server you have configured the ODBC on and select database enabled.

3.) You will then get the warning. Say Yes.

4.) Once the first connection has been successfully created the tables, functions and stored procedures are automatically created.

Managing Summary Data

 To keep the database size down you can set it up so that the information is only written to the database when required. To do this from the Citrix Management Console right click a server and select metric summary schedule. You can set to only write during certain days and hours as below.

Receiving alerts.
Alerts can be setup when certain conditions (metrics) are met. You have a choice of how to receive alerts, by email, SMS or SNMP. Below I show you how to setup the email alerts as this is the most common way administrators want to receive the alerts.

1.) Open up the Citrix Management Console, click on Resource Manager and then the email tab.
2.) Fill in the name or ip address of your SMTP server and fill in an account that has permission to send emails (If you are sending to internal addresses only as the sending and receiving email addresses are in the same email domain you may not need to fill in any authentication details.)