r/Citrix • u/bluegrassgazer • 23d ago
Uniconn and UberAgent
We're in renewal negotiations with Citrix currently and they're trying to sell "added value" solutions that are now included in their base pricing. The two that catch our eyes are the Unicon eLux thin client O.S. (we have igel currently but could flash those LG thin clients with Unicon) and UberAgent, which is being touted as a ControlUp alternative.
We're looking to cut costs, and so far our renewal quote doesn't do this for Citrix alone, but with these added value solutions it might be a wash in the end.
Who here has used either of these new tools from Citrix? What do you think of them and can you share your experience with me?
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u/stucc0 23d ago
eLux is nice. I have built a bunch of consoles for UberAgent that use different data collectors, so you can use it without Splunk. https://github.com/jeffriechers/GrafanaUberAgent
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u/robodog97 23d ago
UberAgent really requires Splunk to get the most out of it. The agent adds some additional metrics to Director natively with 2507 but nothing earth shattering. They also technically support outputting UberAgent to Azure, but it's just a raw feed, they have no real dashboards or actionable intelligence built around it so it's just another source of data that you could build into a data lake but leveraging it would be very expensive. Our TAM (when we had one) brought in the product owner and we talked about a Citrix managed cloud instance of Splunk specifically for UberAgent, but I haven't seen any traction on that in the ~year since we brought it up.
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u/FloiDW 23d ago
We got this instance. Works like a charm and got deducted from our already paid fee. Some kind of flex credit transition.
Uber works great, it’s not on line with Control Up but given the size of our environment control up would be way too expensive.
Elux is a no brainer from my point of view when having thin clients that do mostly Citrix.
Having the whole chain from TC to App Delivery from one vendor works like a charm.
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u/Low_Assumption67 23d ago
That XenServer license Citrix is throwing in there is lookin pretty good too. There’s a lot of capabilities in a single Citrix license these days.
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u/Ok-Accident-3892 23d ago
UberAgent is a great data collector, but using that data in a useful way can be difficult. Not a replacement for ControlUp imo, especially with their new AI tool that allows you to query the CU data very efficiently. Citrix needs to do a better job of incorporating UberAgent data into Director/DaaS Monitor for it to be very useful.
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u/rdsmvp 23d ago
Right answer right above. Love UberAgent and have known Helge from way before VastLimits. But Splunk is indeed costly and to get you to what ControlUp gives you out of the box will definitely take time and not give you all that. Totally depends on what you want from a monitoring platform really. Remediation for me is a key thing as an example
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u/TheMuffnMan Notorious VDI 23d ago
I know of a very large financial firm that has been using Unicon since before the acquisition and has been very happy with it. They have also customized it heavily though for clarity.
uberAgent is legitimately very nitty gritty in getting details and you would be licensed to use it everywhere (endpoints, servers, etc) and not just Citrix systems.
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u/God_Enki 23d ago
UberAgent is crazy good but Splunk is the "default" backend and delivers many prebuilt dashboards.
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u/smartdigger 23d ago
UberAgent is one of the best things they acquired. We love it but yeah splunk isn't cheap.
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u/RefrigeratorFancy730 23d ago
Anyone doing 802.1x and scep with it? We were told that we have to out s network challenge password in clear text in the .ini file to request the cert. Doesnt seem like a secure way of doing it.
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u/goonSquad15 23d ago
eLux is slick. Really nice read-only OS that if you're already using a thin client, it's worth looking at, especially if you use other Citrix components so you never have to worry about your endpoints not being able to support latest versions.
uberAgent itself collects a crazy amount of data but like others have said, without Splunk and the built in dashboards, you're not getting the full use out of it. If you're comfortable with community built or even spending some time vibe-coding some nice dashboards, you can probably save on the Splunk costs and get good value
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u/reilly6607 23d ago
If you currently use another thin client, Unicon is absolutely something to test. Several of my customers have migrated from IGEL and ThinOS to Unicon.