Citrix NetScaler 9

What’s new in NetScaler 9

Citrix® NetScaler® 9 combines advanced application delivery controller (ADC) technology that slashes server and bandwidth requirements, with integrated knowledge of the application, cutting the costs of delivering enterprise applications, such as Microsoft SharePoint®, Oracle® E-Business Suite and SAP® in half. NetScaler 9 gives IT managers the ability to instantly tap unrealized efficiency gains across all phases of the application lifecycle, without having to become an application expert.

NetScaler 9 includes over 350 new features or enhancements to existing features. The following provides a summary of the major enhancements.

AppExpert Templates

AppExpert Templates encapsulate the entire NetScaler configuration and policy for a given application in one place.

AppExpert Templates can be imported and exported, enabling customers to load complete NetScaler configurations for optimization of specific applications within minutes. Import-export also makes it easy to share application-specific configuration within and between organizations and to move app-specific configurations between different systems.

AppExpert Visualizer

The AppExpert Visualizer graphically illustrates how requests and responses flow through NetScaler, and what policies act where. It provides a graphical, tree-based, hierarchical view of the entities (e.g., content switching VServers, LB VServers, service pools, individual services and health checks) that compose the NetScaler configuration, as well as their current health. The AppExpert Visualizer simplifies monitoring and managing the complex configurations today’s Web applications require.

AppExpert Service Callouts

AppExpert Service Callouts make NetScaler policies extensible by providing a way to integrate logic or functionality from other applications into NetScaler policies. Specifically, using an AppExpert service callout, a policy can send (over HTTP or HTTPS) any part of an incoming request to an external application or service. The result returned can then be incorporated into the policy evaluation.

A simple example of this would be IP blacklisting, where an AppExpert Service Callout passes source IP data to an external database that responds with a decision as to whether or not requests from that IP address should be passed. SPAM evaluation is a similar example. Other possible uses are integration with external AAA or identity management applications, passing data to an external transformation engine or invoking UDDI registries.

AppExpert Rate Controls

AppExpert Rate Controls enable NetScaler policies to be triggered based upon data rates either coming from a given source or going to a given resource.

AppExpert Rate Controls can be used for straight-forward rate limiting such as DNS rate-limiting or rate-limiting traffic originating from a defined source. It can also control how much traffic is sent to a given resource (e.g., anything from a VServer to a specific URL), providing the ability to control how much capacity is used by users or applications. For example, if a NetScaler is providing load balancing for two applications that share a single 10 Mbps link, AppExpert Rate Controls can be used to limit each application to consuming no more than 5 Mbps.

AppExpert Rate Controls give administrators the ability to take actions beyond what basic network rate-shaping or QoS provide, and to govern resources at a far more granular level. By integrating AppExpert Rate Controls into the fully application-aware policy engine of NetScaler, administrators aren’t limited to just throttling traffic based upon IP address and port, but have the full depth and breadth of NetScaler traffic management, acceleration and security functionality at their disposal.

For example, Web site capacity can be effectively increased by content-switching requests coming from spiders, Web scrapers or botnets to a dedicated mirror-site, so that the main Web site is freed from the heavy load this traffic generates.

XML Security

The NetScaler Application Firewall module now includes an XML-aware engine that powers specific XML attack protections. In addition to protecting XML-based applications from attack, NetScaler ensures that incoming XML traffic conforms to the appropriate standards (e.g., XML syntax, schema, WSDL validation).

URL Transformation

NetScaler 9 can provide on the fly content modification of client requests and server responses to rewrite HTTP URLs. This enables the modification of displayed URLs without the need to modify the back-end server structure, and vice versa.

Body URL Rewrite is frequently used within the context of either SSL VPNs or Web application firewalls. However, it has uses beyond these as well. For example, body URL rewrite can simplify application or infrastructure change management by allowing back-end URLs to be altered without requiring changes to the application’s presentation layer, or for Akamai-zing graphics content.

L7 RTSP Traffic Management

NetScaler 9 includes the ability to manage Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) traffic at both the network and at the application level, providing the ability to granularly control RTSP traffic streams and maintain RTSP session persistence.

Entity Templates

Entity Templates provide the means for administrators to create templates for specific entities (e.g., a LB VServer, CS VServer) in order to simplify the creation of additional instances of the same entity, and reduce the potential for configuration errors.

Entity templates will prove very useful when used in conjunction with NetScaler’s role-based administration (RBA) functionality. Specifically, more privileged NetScaler administrators can create entity templates for specific functions and then delegate the use of these templates to administrators with lesser privileges. By doing this, NetScaler superusers can simultaneously constrain the actions of lesser privileged and experienced administrators, and simplify things for these same administrators.

Access Gateway Enterprise Enhancements

Access Gateway Enterprise, which is included in NetScaler, has been enhanced as follows:

• IPv6 support for XenApp client connections are now supported, meeting U.S. Federal Government requirements for IPv6 support.
• Single sign-on to file shares improves user experience by minimizing authentication prompts.
• Clientless access to Microsoft SharePoint 2003 and 2007 expands user mobility by ensuring easy and secure access to SharePoint sites from any Web browser.
• Historical charting graphical reporting provides administrators with detailed views on system activity and simplifies management by presenting trend data in an intuitive format.

IPv6 Support

NetScaler 9 provides end-to-end support for IPv6, greatly enhancing the initial NetScaler IPv6 implementation available in NetScaler 8.1. NetScaler 9.0 natively supports and manages client-side and server-side IPv6 traffic as well bidirectional IPv4 to IPv6 translation.

Akamai Integration

Working with Akamai, NetScaler 9 preserves and presents to applications source ClientIPs for requests that come in via the Akamai cloud. This is critical for auditing or fraud detection purposes.

GSLB Enhancements

NetScaler Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) enhancements include auto-synchronization of configurations across different GSLB sites, consolidated GSLB health checks and support for up to 32 GSLB nodes.

Routing Enhancements

NetScaler 9 includes enhancements to NetScaler route-health injection (RHI) and adds support for monitored static routes and weighted static routes.

New Configuration Wizards

NetScaler 9 adds wizards for the following functions or actions:

• NetScaler version upgrades
• HTML injection configuration
• GSLB configuration
• Enhancements to the wizards used to configure NetScaler for use with Citrix XenApp™

New Monitors

NetScaler 9 includes pre-built application monitors for Citrix Access Gateway™ including an Access Gateway Monitor, an AAC login page monitor and an AAC Logon Agent Service monitor.

Streamlined Management

The following items have been added to streamline NetScaler administration:

• Security Wipe provides the ability to completely erase the NetScaler configuration.
• Configuration diffing enables administrators to identify differences between the running and saved NetScaler configurations.
• The performance of the NetScaler GUI is improved by four to five times.
• The AppExpert Visual Policy Builder (the GUI interface used to create NetScaler policies) has been simplified, streamlining the creation of most NetScaler policies.
• Integration of the NetScaler configuration GUI and the real-time performance statistics minimizes the need for NetScaler administrators to switch back and forth between the configuration and dashboard tabs within the NetScaler GUI.
• AppExpert Expression Evaluator allows administrators to test how expressions will evaluate HTTP content prior to binding expressions to policies.

Datasheets:

• Citrix NetScaler 9

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