Site Local GSLB with Citrix ADC

If you know anything about GSLB, you likely know that it is nothing more than a DNS trick that allows you to programatically return an IP (or CNAME) for a name based on service health or proximity to a location. But you may not know that you can also use GSLB in conjunction with Link Load Balancing to ensure that internal resources are highly available. What is Link Load Balancing (LLB)? Link load balancing is … Read more…

Duo Prompt and NetScaler nFactor Auth

Update Sept 10 2019: After some updates to both sides of the code, this now works natively! For details, see the updated blog post here: https://blogs.serioustek.net/post/2019/09/10/duo-mfa-with-netscaler-nfactor-part-2 —– Duo Security provides a rich identity management and authentication platform and it is commonly used to enable multi-factor authentication in enterprise networks. Duo is very flexible and has examples for integrating with NetScaler here – you will see that there are two different configuration examples: one for using the … Read more…

‘Thank you’ to Citrix and the Community

I started my professional technology career as a help desk administrator supporting a small healthcare organization that was still using something that was called Citrix Metaframe XP – it was the first time I had dealt with a real IT infrastructure, and also the first time I interacted with a Citrix product. That was nearly 13 years ago. After that, I interacted with Metaframe and XenApp (among other products) on and off until I started … Read more…

Getting Started with NetScaler SD-WAN

I’ve been talking and working a LOT with NetScaler SD-WAN lately – and I noticed that my first post (here) still has the name of Cloudbridge VWAN. If you don’t know what it is, the best way to explain it is with a short video. It’s cutting edge technology for your WAN!! So to make things right, and add to the previous post – I’ll be covering how to build a simple, initial SD-WAN configuration for … Read more…

Getting Started with NetScaler IP Reputation

Ever wish that you could just block all network traffic from known bad IP addresses? When you start to think about the logistics of this, it would be nice if you didn’t have to manage it either. If you have NetScaler Platinum, you’ve got both of your wishes – and as an added bonus, it’s free! That’s right, if you have a NetScaler Platinum appliance and you are running build 11.0 or later, you have an … Read more…

Adding an e1000 NIC in XenServer 7

*Note: This is not officially supported – do this at your own risk.* Sometimes, virtual appliances or other random VMs in your lab need a simple, widely supported NIC and just wont boot (or install) without one. XenServer uses a Realtek RTL8139 10/100 card when you don’t have integration services installed. This is usually not an issue…but it certainly can be. In older versions of XenServer, there was a patch available as mentioned in this … Read more…

NetScaler Authentication Error – /cgi/selfauth

While I was rebuilding my lab, I ran into an issue when building out my demo Exchange OWA front-ended by NetScaler – the error was pretty generic, I would attempt to access the OWA page, was then prompted for authentication by the NetScaler AAA engine running as a part of Unified Gateway, then I was dumped to the following error page: Http/1.1 Service Unavailable – /cgi/selfauth/xxxxx This error page is being presented by the NetScaler, … Read more…

Citrix Secure Gateway is EOL…Now What?

Is Citrix Secure Gateway really End of Life? Not really…it’s tied to the lifecycle of the latest product that it was released with which would be XenApp 6.5 – which is incidentally the last product that it works with. Secure Gateway also does not work with any version of StoreFront, so you’re stuck with Web Interface. What does secure gateway do? It allows for an SSL connection to XenApp and XenDesktop resources to be proxied from … Read more…

Demo NetScaler Datastream with SQL AlwaysOn

Is your database application not performing as well as it should? Is your SQL Server running low on resources? Is your application not written to take advantage of SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups or database sharding? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then NetScaler Datastream to the rescue! Or, maybe you are looking to demo NetScaler Datastream to get a better idea of what capabilities it has in your SQL environment. If that is … Read more…

Homelab: A few weeks with XenServer and Nutanix

Earlier this month I completely re-worked my homelab – with both storage and hardware upgrades as well as the underlying hypervisors. If you’re interested in the changes made, see this post here. So how has the experience with the new gear been? In no particular order, here’s my notes: Miscellaneous Not having to burn 8+GB for a vCenter VM is nice – especially for a lab XenCenter console is far simpler and less of a resource … Read more…