What’s New with ControlUp + IGEL: 2021 Update

In 2019, we announced a collaboration with IGEL to deliver best-in-class, real-time monitoring combined with their secure, flexible endpoints,  bringing greater end-to-end visibility into IT infrastructure than ever before. 

In 2020, that collaboration grew, with ControlUp monitoring the performance metrics of IGEL devices and displaying the devices in ControlUp’s real-time dashboard. But there was more! We launched our IGEL integration with a set of Script Actions that enabled administrators to manage their endpoints from a single pane of glass. Customers could enable the ControlUp-IGEL integration using a custom IGEL partition, which installed the necessary bits into the IGEL OS that ControlUp needed to get the real-time data.  

That was then. This is now.

It’s 2021, and ControlUp and IGEL are taking their collaboration to new heights. 

For starters, you can now enable our integration with IGEL without using a custom partition (yeah, we’re pretty excited about it, too)! Adding IGEL devices to your ControlUp console is now seamless and super-easy. With the release of ControlUp v8.2, we’ve made IGEL a first-party operating system and will now automatically display IGEL management actions if an IGEL device is detected.

All of this combines to give our customers the crystal-clear visibility they need to make educated decisions about their environments. With the rapid release cadence of Citrix, VMware, and others, this is now increasingly important.Sometimes these features have a cost in the name of additional hardware resources.. Determining where those resources are needed—whether on the server side or client side—is typically a black box.

With ControlUp, your IGEL devices have their metrics available historically via ControlUp Insights. By correlating events, such as environment upgrades, you can review performance data with the dates of the events and witness the impact. A real-world use case I witnessed was when Citrix made a change to some graphics settings. This caused graphical artifacts, lag and poor performance—the complete opposite of what the customer was expecting!

The cause of the poor performance ended up being the endpoint. Its hardware was old and was a bottom spec at the time of purchase. Solutions like IGEL extended the life of this device for a few years, and things were great… until this graphic policy change. The hardware had hit its physical limit and with ControlUp we could see the uptick in CPU on the devices with the policy change, capping out the Citrix process at 100%.

Without ControlUp, identifying this problem would have been more than a little tricky. In the past, there probably would have been some finger-pointing or head-scratching while trying to suss out the issue. One thing is for certain, however: pinpointing the problem would have cost the customer both time or money or both.  But with ControlUp monitoring their IGEL endpoints, we spotted the issue easily and had the customer back up and running in no time.

ControlUp + IGEL: unparalleled simplicity, unparalleled visibility, unparalleled user experience.

Trentent Tye

Trentent Tye, a Tech Person of Interest, is based out of Canada and its many, many feet of snow. FUN FACT: Trentent came to ControlUp because, as a former customer, the product impacted his life in so many positive ways—from reducing stress, time to remediation, increased job satisfaction, and more—he had to be our evangelist. Now an integral part of ControlUp’s Product Marketing Team, he educates our customers, pours his heart and soul into the product, and generally makes ControlUp a better place. Trentent recently moved to be closer to family. He does not recommend moving during a pandemic.