Generating Usage Reports using the License Management Console
Summary
This whitepaper provides you with details about generating usage reports using the License Management Console. It is one of a series of whitepapers designed to provide you with more detailed information for tasks that extend beyond the scope of installing your licensing components and is designed to complement the Getting Started with Citrix Licensing Guide.
For a complete listing of the whitepapers, see the Getting Started with Citrix Licensing Guide in the Citrix Knowledge Center.
Introduction
The report log contains data about licensing activity that can help you understand the rate of license consumption in your environment and plan for future purchases.
Report logging is inactive by default. You can tell if report logging is inactive because the words “Not Configured” appear in the Report Log section of the File Locations page in the License Management Console.
Important: Before you can generate any historical reports, you must enable the report logging feature. Report logging is turned off by default because report logs can grow excessively large.
To enable report logging
1. In the License Management Console, click Configure License Server. The License Files page appears.
2. Click File Locations.
3. Under Report Log, click Change.
4. Enter the path to where you want to create your report log and specify a meaningful name for the report log (for example, C:\Program Files\Citrix\Licensing\LS\July05.rl). The name must have an .rl extension. Do not enclose paths in quotation marks when entering them in the License Management Console.
5. Click Change. The report log is created and appears in the License Management Console.
Historical Reports
You can create reports for past license activity; these reports are known as historical reports. By running historical usage reports, you can view license availability and consumption information over time. The License Management Console lets you choose the type of product, date range, summary period, and data type you want to use in the report.
The term summary period refers to the amount of data to group together in the chart. For example, if you set the summary period to “day,” the highest value for the day appears in the chart rather than the variations throughout the day. The term data type refers to the units in which the data is measured—in hours, as a percentage, or as a quantity.
Historical reports are based on report logs, the encoded record of license usage generated by the license server. The first step in generating product or summary reports is to choose one or more report logs upon which you will base the report.
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Generating a Report
After choosing the report log, you can generate either a report based on a specific product or a report summarizing past license activity. If you want to combine data from two report logs in one report, you can do so by choosing both report logs.
To generate a product or summary report
1. Click Historical Usage. The Report Logs page appears.
2. Click Add. The Add Report Logs page appears.
3. From the Available Report Logs list, choose one or more report logs you want to use as the basis for your report.
4. Click Add. The report log that you choose appears on the Report Logs page.
5. Click one of the following:
Product Reports
Lets you generate reports for a specific product.
Summary Reports
Lets you generate reports based on past licensing activity for all products licensed by the license server.
6. Choose the report settings you want used in your report. For more details, see the License Management Console online help.
7. Click Generate Report.
To generate a user report
1. Follow Steps 1 to 4 from the previous procedure.
2. Click User Reports. The User Reports page appears.
3. Choose the product license and the dates, and click Proceed with Selected Product and Date Range. The Generate User Reports page appears.
4. Click Generate Unique Named User List for Selected Product and Date Range. The User List Report page appears.
5. Click Close to close the user list.
6. After you return to the Generate User Reports page, click Edit List. The Edit Named Users page appears.
7. On the Edit Named Users page, choose the users you want in the report and click Add Selected. Alternatively, you can click Add All to add all the users to the report.
Note: Citrix recommends that you limit reports to 40 users or fewer. Reports with more than 40 users can be difficult to read.
8. Click Submit.
9. Choose the summary period for the data you want to review; for example, month, minute, hour, or day.
10. Choose the type of data you want for the report:
Peak Count
The maximum number of licenses checked out during a specified time period, sorted by user name.
License Usage Time
The amount of time a license is in use, sorted by user name.
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10. Click Generate Report. The report appears in a new window.
To generate a list of users using your licensing system (User Report)
1. Follow Steps 1 to 4 in the previous procedure.
2. From the User List Report page, click View CSV Output File.
3. Depending on your operating system or browser, save or open (and save) the file. You can import the .csv file into another application to manage the comma separated values (for example, Excel).
Saving a Product Report
You can save the output of product reports in Report Interchange Format (RIF). After you save a report as RIF, you can import it into programs such as Microsoft Excel. You can also change the appearance of the reports by changing the font, the line weight, and the report color scheme.
You can generate a list of users and their licensing activity from products, such as Password Manager, that employ Named User licensing. To generate such reports, use the User Reports feature in the License Management Console. In products that do not employ Named User licensing, such as Presentation Server, you can use this feature to generate reports according to device.
To save a product report in RIF format
1. After generating a product report, click View CSV Output File on the report page.
2. Save the report on your local device or another network location.
Note: You can import RIF files into Excel by changing their extension from .rif to .csv.
Changing the Name or Location of a Report Log
Before you can change the location of the report log, create any new directories that you need. Citrix recommends that you keep the report log on a local drive of the computer on which the license server is running. Do not store the report log on a network share.
Note: When you change the name of an existing report log, a new report log is created. Therefore, there are two logs—one with the old name and the other with the new name. The License Management Console uses the log specified in File Locations to capture historical information. You can move the other log (with the old name) to another location for archiving.
To change the name or location of the report log to be used to capture historical information
1. Click Configuration. The License Files page appears.
2. Click File Locations.
3. Under Report Log, click Change.
4. Type the new name or path (and name) in the Report Log path box and click Change.
Note: You can also temporarily change the location of the report log by using the lmswitchr command. For more information, see the Licensing: Using License Administration Commands whitepaper in the Citrix Knowledge Center.
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Overwriting a Report
You can configure the report log to be overwritten automatically or to save all data (appending it to existing information) every time you restart the license server or the CitrixLicensing service. To do this, you must change the REPORTLOG option in the Options file (you cannot do this in the License Management Console). For more information, see the Licensing: Controlling Access to Licenses (The Options File) whitepaper in the Citrix Knowledge Center. This paper also contains information about deactivating report logs (also configured in the Options file).
Maintaining the Report Log
Report logs are required to generate historical reports. However, if report logging is active, logs can grow excessively large if they are not archived on a regular basis. Excessive report log growth can negatively impact your licensing system in two ways:
• By consuming hard drive space
• By slowing down report generation
The size of an organization’s report logs can vary according to the number and frequency of users connecting to products using the license server. Report log size grows every time a license is checked in and out. The following formula lets you project the growth of your report log:
The number of users connecting to the Citrix products pointing to a license server times the number of check-ins and check-outs you anticipate they will have in a day = the anticipated size of the report log.
However, Citrix recommends that you estimate growth by watching report log growth over a period of time in your environment and not relying on this formula.
You can address excessive report log growth by performing one of the following:
• Archiving report logs using a standard file compression tool, such as WinZip, starting a report log with a new name, and moving the archived report log to a new location. (After you archive a report log, you can no longer write to it.)
• Changing the location of report logs. See “Changing the Name or Location of a Report Log” in this whitepaper.
• Specifying that the report log overwrite itself whenever you restart the license server.
Caution: Do not let your report logs grow larger than 50MB. Report logs larger than 50MB can seriously degrade the speed at which the License Management Console generates reports.
Citrix recommends that you rotate and archive your report logs regularly. When you save a report log, give it a meaningful name. Incorporate the time interval in the name of the report—it is easier to choose report logs from the License Management Console to base reports on when their names provide this type of information.
Ideally, save your report logs according to blocks of time over which you will want to run reports—weekly, monthly, and so on.
Important: If you clustered your license server and you rename the report log, do not give it the same name as either of the servers in a license-server cluster. If you do, the logs cannot be backed up properly.
Changing the Appearance of a Report
You can customize the appearance of your reports by changing the colors, fonts, and lines used to display them.
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To change the appearance of a report
1. From the Report Logs page, click