Citrix NetScaler Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

JacquesBodenstein

Senior Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Nov 28, 2019

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Good gateway and SQL load-balancing features and has good stability

Pros and Cons

"The program is easy to install and to set up."

"I think the documentation should be improved."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is to serve as gateway.

What is most valuable?

The features I find most valuable are the gateway feature and the SQL load-balancing that you can do as well.

What needs improvement?

I think the documentation should be improved - there should be more documentation. In the next release, I would like to see more analytics, better dashboards, and some management monitoring tools.

For how long have I used the solution?

Our client has been using this solution for many years now.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a very stable program.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe this solution is very scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I am satisfied with the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The program is easy to install and to set up.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for. There are also additional costs to the standard licensing fee.

What other advice do I have?

This solution gets a ten out of ten rating from me. My advice to others is that they need to be clear of what they want to actually achieve and plan before they deploy. They should make sure that it actually meets the business requirements or the use case that they are trying to fix or sell.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.

OMKaewsaenchai

Total Solution System Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Apr 10, 2019

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Enables us to centralize desktop application management

Pros and Cons

"For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end."

"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."

What is our primary use case?

We are a Citrix solution adviser and one of the main Citrix partners in Bangkok, Thailand. We use Citrix NetScaler ADC to get user access to business applications on desktop devices.

With Citrix NetScaler ADC we can centralize desktop application management for everything.

How has it helped my organization?

For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end.

What is most valuable?

It mobilizes everything in and out, leading over bandwidth and manages all of the applications. We use it for front-end crafting.

What needs improvement?

There are a lot of features. It has to keep up with the demands of the network for complete file management. Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Rules configuration is the key issue for stability. We can get a lot of rule-based configuration and risk management tools with the platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is really cool because NetScaler isn't tied to any complexity or hard time model. It creates a delivery unit and every platform uses it.

Citrix NetScaler ADC is really flexible. We have lots of customers using it. We have banking, financial, software, themes, energy companies, etc. using it. We have from ten to 100+ clients deployed with Citrix NetScaler ADC.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support from Citrix is pretty good and they respond pretty fast, but the issue is that when we have some configurations that are problematic, they don't always know how to fix them.

When we integrate Citrix NetScaler with an app or desktop, the technical support from Citrix doesn't know how to configure NetScaler. They don't collaborate well. Their communication is sometimes lacking. They speak too fast. Overall, though, Citrix provides good support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We started as a Citrix client at first. We used NetScaler in the very beginning. For a long time, we have only used this one product.

How was the initial setup?

The installation and deployment of Citrix NetScaler ADC are easier than the competitors. It is not complex. It can be complex, but you can decide to make it not complex.

The deployments for each project depends on customer requirements. Some take one month, others resolve in two to four months.

For the deployment of Citrix NetScaler ADC, about two or three people is enough. Wiring is simple but the hard part is the orchestration.

What about the implementation team?

We completed the integration by ourselves.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much.

If NetScaler is broken, we can open tickets very quickly and request shipment for the new unit or a spare part replacement.

What other advice do I have?

Citrix NetScaler already has tons of features, already too many. We want any new advanced features that they release. One thing that scares me is that with existing products, Citrix does not have detailed documentation ready before they release. Otherwise, it would be better. From my experience, when Citrix launches something new there are a lot of bugs, a lot of errors, required patches, and no documentation. You have to get help.

Citrix needs to create better documentation. Sometimes when I enable NetScaler, it makes the box crash randomly. I have to wait for three or four release cycles to fix it. The introduction of new features from Citrix for NetScaler always has a lot of problems.

I would rate Citrix NetScaler eight or nine out of 10. To make the product better, Citrix needs to provide full documentation for each user with video tutorials. Configuration scenarios and demos would also be helpful. We have a lot of customer demand for this better documentation and setting up Citrix NetScaler is really complicated.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user197484

System Administrator with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 23, 2017

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Easily integrates with other Citrix products

Pros and Cons

"Global load balancing between data centers."

"I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand."

What is most valuable?

There are a lot of them:

Load balancing in communications
Global load balancing between data centers
The management
Easy integration with other Citrix products.

In the management topic, there are three levels:

1st Level, most user-friendly, the GUI, in this level we can configures all the features and inclusive test the implementations.
2nd Level Console, very helpful for easy access to all settings and troubleshooting problems, deep level in settings.
3rd Level Shell, essential to troubleshooting. Direct access to all logging in the components.

Easy integration with Citrix Solution, NetScaler has wizards to help implementation of Citrix solutions, like XenApp/XenDesktop and Xenmobile.

How has it helped my organization?

In the organization, we have three systems based in Citrix technology, so there was logic to add a solution which give us security and a focal point of access. With Netscaler, we have a solution divided in two data centers, a secure and unique point of access, and balanced traffic between all the critical components in the Citrix solutions. For the last, we have a mature, solid, and secure component to complete the Citrix environment.

What needs improvement?

I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this version about one year, but Netscaler for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No, this is a Citrix product. This means there are gobs of documentation, and the support given by CItrix, it's very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No. We have four virtual appliances working. If we need to increase, it's a simple process.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, the whole solution is based in Citrix technology.

How was the initial setup?

The system was easy, but the GSLB function was more difficult to configure and test.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No.

What other advice do I have?

It is important, almost crucial, to have some network knowledge. Have the technical design made, it is very simple to overcomplicate when using this product.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer786540

System Administrator at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

May 23, 2018

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Content Switching enables us to use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers

Pros and Cons

"HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the content switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers."

"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."

What is our primary use case?

SSL offloading, load balancing, HTTP analysis and manipulation (HTTP rewrites, inserts, redirects) for web applications. Load balancing other ERP applications and Exchange.

How has it helped my organization?

We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these apps are externally accessible. In our current network design, we were using a routable address for every external resource that we presented. Via the Content Switching, we are using one routable IP for various systems, preserving our number of allocated public addresses.

What is most valuable?

HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the Content Switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers.

What needs improvement?

For the most part, I don’t have complaints about the system and its solution. One of my prior gripes was that documentation and knowledge base articles were disjointed and/or were not complete. Citrix has done a great job over the last two and a half years of enhancing their support material.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What other advice do I have?

I would give the product a nine out of 10. The product is solid and truly is a Swiss army knife. However, getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user69078

IT Architect with 11-50 employees

Apr 18, 2014

Choose your NetScaler … wisely

I spend a lot of my time breaking down the different models of Citrix NetScaler appliances and different Software Editions within the Citrix NetScaler portfolio.

I decided to set up a blog about this since the path is usually pretty much (lengthy but) the same. This does not mean the answer is always easy because there are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

The first thing I would like to get off my chest is the following: Stop seeing/selling the Citrix NetScaler as a replacement for Secure Gateway. It is so much more than that. I often have discussions with various engineers and consultants telling me that Citrix NetScaler is so expensive for a Remote Access solution because Secure Gateway always used to be free. No offense but a Citrix NetScaler solution belongs to the networking department, not the Citrix XenApp sys admin department. Or maybe limited.

That leads me to the first difficult thing of a Citrix NetScaler project. The adoption of the Citrix NetScaler appliances to the networking guys of an organization. They need to embrace the solution to make this a success. For some reason they too see it as a ‘’Citrix’’ solution. For that reason one of the most important meetings to setup is usually with the networking guys to try to explain the L3-L7 functionality of the Citrix NetScaler solution. When they realize it competes with F5, Juniper, Cisco, etc then we are on the right track.

NetScaler Gateway or NetScaler Standard Edition

Usually the first question of a customer is regarding something simple like replacing the Remote Access solution. Since the NetScaler is going to be the main platform for publishing Citrix publications a NetScaler Gateway can be considered as a valid option. This is when I tell a customer it would be wise to spend a little extra on the NetScaler Standard Edition since this would leverage the solution be having full load balancing capabilities (among others). When you compare prices between the NetScaler Gateway and NetScaler Standard Edition you will see that the Standard Edition will be somewhat more expensive but I for one think that it is worth the difference given the feature set that come with the Standard Edition. Of course the NetScaler Gateway can always be upgraded to a NetScaler Standard Edition (or higher) if you will.

Another feature of Citrix NetScaler Standard Edition is the ability to run Citrix Web Interface on the appliance. Honestly, I do think is not really that important anymore since Citrix Web interface is going to be replaced by Citrix StoreFront and as of yet there are no plans of putting StoreFront on the NetScaler (that I know of). Of course for some situations it can still be a feasible solution. There is still the ability to dismiss multiple Microsoft IIS Servers by using Web Interface on Citrix NetScaler.

Virtual, Physical or Logical

I am aware this needs some explanation. Let’s start of with the Virtual.

Virtual (or VPX)

I hardly ever, ever, ever, sell the Citrix NetScaler VPX appliance. Only for use of Lab or Testing environment or really small, small, small businesses where the use case is to implement a remote access solution for a small number of users.

It happens that customers come to me and tell me they are thinking of purchasing a Citrix NetScaler VPX solution and would like my advise on which we will have this breakdown which changes their mindset about going for the VPX solution. I have by no means of interest of selling MPX over VPX, I just give a breakdown of the pro’s and cons for various solutions.

1. The first common mistake is the idea that VPX is cheaper because it is virtual (yes assumptions, the foundation of every well thought out IT project :-) ), well, there goes the first bubble. Ask your Citrix Solution Advisor for an estimate of a Citrix NetScaler VPX 1000 and a Citrix NetScaler MPX 5550/5560 and you will be amazed.

2. No hypervisor resources guaranteed. The VPX platform runs on an organization’s hypervisor. Whenever I ask a hypervisor support engineer if they are not overcommitting resources, the answer is hardly ever no. It would not even be of first that I would even have to explain overcommitting in an hypervisor environment. But in an overcommitting environment it means that important hardware resources are shared among multiple virtual instances. Meaning that hardware resources can only be limited or even not guaranteed since it’s shared over multiple virtual instances.

3. No hardware acceleration. This one is pretty much inline with the above statement, the MPX has hardware accelerator card for encrypting/decrypting SSL connections. Within a VPX you would be dependent of hardware resources of the hypervisor. Of course this one becomes more important when the number of connections are significant.

4. No need for a HA solution. This one may seem a little strange but it pops up once and awhile. Customers choosing a single Citrix NetScaler VPX appliance because they have VMware HA and DRS and rely on snapshotting of the VM’s making the solution highly available. Agreed, in some cases it might work but it depends on what the accepted downtime is for the given solution. If this is a couple of hours or a day that would be fine. You would have to keep in mind that a single appliance solution could require a full restore of the VM dependent on the issue. This means restore from snapshot/backup but could also be a new installation of the VM and restore of the configuration. This would require the relevant knowledge of how to which is not always present in my opinion. Also keep in mind that Citrix NetScaler VPX does not vMotion well, I’ve seen hanging Citrix NetScaler vMotion VM’s.

5. Bandwidth. A Citrix NetScaler VPX comes in different (bandwidth) flavors (5, 10, 200, 1000 and 3000). I have done a number of PoC’s with the Citrix NetScaler VPX and see them miserably fail with at least the 5 and 10 by the solution consuming bandwidth (I try to disregard the Express version which is 5 as much as I can). It could be a solution though if you are using DSR (Direct Server Return) Load Balancing solutions (meaning that the traffic is not actually flowing through the NetScaler). The thing to remember is that the Bandwidth of the VPX is end-to-end on all interfaces it has, so if you have a Citrix NetScaler VPX 1000 with 2 virtual interfaces the 1000Mbit is being counted over all interfaces (so no 2 x 1000 Mbit).

Physical (or MPX)

Usually when I have given a customer some of the somewhat ‘’drawbacks’’ listed above and convinced the networking guys of the networking features of the appliance they are tending towards the MPX platform.

1. Bandwidth. The Bandwidth of an MPX is somewhat listed differently then that of it’s VPX variant. Citrix calls this ‘’Kernel Bandwidth” or “L7 Bandwidth”, this last one can be a little bit confusing because it implies that L3 (or Dirty Load Balancing) would not be intermitted to the Bandwidth limit. This is not the case.
Here a list of the most commonly deployed appliances and there Kernel Bandwidth:
- MPX 5550 (0.5Gbps) (Upgradeable to an MPX 5560 (1Gbps) by software license);
- MPX 8200 (2.0Gbps) (Upgradeable to an MPX 8400(4Gbps) by software license);
- MPX 8400 (4.0Gbps) (Upgradeable to an MPX 8600(6Gbps) by software license).
More information on the different MPX platform models:
http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products/netscaler-data-sheet.pdf

2. Rackspace. Yes, as you might expect an MPX appliance is physical which means it requires Rackspace. Although for the entire 55xx and 8xxx it is 1U per appliance, but still Rackspace.

Logical (or SDX)

An Citrix NetScaler SDX is a so-called hypervisor appliance. It runs on Citrix XenServer, but a special server of XenServer (SR-OIV). In a nutshell it means that the Citrix NetScaler VPX that run on this hypervisor has direct access to hardware resources. That’s why the number of virtual appliances on the different models is limited.

I think the SDX will be the more common appliance for customers to acquire. There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. A lot of security compliances by companies do not allow machines to have a connection to a perimeter network (like DMZ) and a internal network at the same time. Over time I see that customers are allowing more logical segregation of the network by machines that touch multiple networks. For instance hypervisors that have VM’s in a perimeter network and internal network. This is where a Citrix NetScaler SDX could be really beneficial. On the SDX you could have a Citrix NetScaler VPX for remote access on the perimeter network and a Citrix NetScaler VPX on the internal network for Load Balancing purposes.

2. Platinum Edition. On Citrix NetScaler SDX you can run multiple instance of Citrix NetScaler and they are licensed with the Platinum Edition of Citrix NetScaler software. This means that L7 App Firewall could/would/should be deployed on all of the Citrix NetScaler VPX appliances.

3. Upgrade MPX. Citrix has recently announced that even the Citrix NetScaler MPX 8400 can be upgraded to an SDX platform. This used to be from the MPX 11500 which made it far fetched for almost any company that I know. Since the MPX 8200 and 8400 are the same hardware this means that there are upgrade paths from even the MPX 8200. The thing to keep in mind is that on Citrix NetScaler SDX 8400 only 5 virtual appliances can be deployed.

4. Third party appliances. Citrix has opened up the SDX platform for 3rd party to create appliances for the SDX platform.

Other decisions that can be of influence

Copper/Fiber

If your organization requires fiber connections that you will have to purchase at least the Citrix NetScaler MPX 8200 series or higher. The 8200 comes with options for connecting SFP or SFP+ fiber connections.

Out of Band Management

If your organizations requires Out-of-Band Management you will have to purchase at least the Citrix NetScaler MPX 8200 series or higher.

Replacing Microsoft Forefront TMG

We do a lot of implementation where we replace Microsoft TMG with Citrix NetScaler as for Reverse Proxy solutions. Since Microsoft has announced the Microsoft TMG to be En-of-Life with no replacement products Citrix NetScaler can come in to place. Microsoft Exchange is such an example of solutions we publish through Citrix NetScaler. A big advantage of Citrix NetScaler is that it can integrate 3rd party token authentication to add that extra layer of security for publishing your mail to users. (Keep in mind, Citrix NetScaler Enterprise Edition minimum requirement for AAA functionality).

Security, Business and Technical

One of the first conversation I will have regarding a Citrix NetScaler project is with Security and Business. The reason for this is that they often have conflicting wishes and desires. Often the Business has many progressive plans for making possibilities work to make their users work more productively. Yet, when the Security finds out about these plans they can contradict with Security Compliancy. So, one of the first tasks is to make sure these departments align. If you do not give this the attention it needs it will come back to you. Technical seems to be irrelevant and it sort of is. Technically almost anything is possible with Citrix NetScaler, that’s the reason why they are last in line.

Network and High Availability

The last item I would like to point out is network (and High Availability) and the options there are using Citrix NetScaler. The Software Edition of a Citrix NetScaler is very much dependent of the type of network that exist at the customer. If a customer is running a single ISP, single datacenter (or server location) a Citrix NetScaler Standard Edition with HA (High Availability will suffice. It becomes more interesting when a customer has two datacenter locations which uses different ISP’s. Then a Citrix NetScaler Enterprise Edition in a GSLB configuration becomes often/usually) the favor of choice.

1. Single appliance. This I would never recommend.

2. HA (High Availability). This is the most common one used. You buy two appliance and they run in an Active/Passive Cluster. They can be in the same subnet, they can be in different subnet (INC mode). Drawback is that you buy 2 appliances and only use one. Available from Standard Edition and up.

3. GSLB. All appliances run standalone in a GSLB cluster. Very scalable solution. Often used when multiple datacenters are approached active/actively and/or multi-homed (multiple ISP’s). Based on High Level Authorative DNS, for that requires its DNS name (space). All appliance actively participate within the configuration. A drawback could be that all appliances run stand alone, so configuration has to be identical on all appliances. Available from Enterprise Edition and up.

4. Cluster. Available since version 10. For me I think this kind of implementation uses a rather large footprint because of the demand of a dedicated network for cluster traffic and basically need for master node. This means that minimum recommend appliances is three whereas you actively use two. Requires separate license, not present in any edition.

5. VRRP. This solution is used a lot in active/passive (core) switch configurations. Since some time available on the Citrix NetScaler. Within this solution all appliances run standalone. The same IP’s are configured on multiple appliances but have a vrID assigned, the highest priority vrID is alive, should that one fail the second priority vrID comes alive. Advantage is that you can use all appliances that you buy, however you cannot load balance a resource over two active Citrix NetScaler appliances.

Be very aware of the VRRP type of implementations for two reasons:
- When using VRRP on a VPX you will have to configure the virtual switch in ‘’Promiscuous Mode’’ which makes it a hub. Network Admins will not be happy with you :-) ;
- When using VRRP and you have to load balance a solution like Microsoft Lync which requires a SSL pass-through configuration (SSL_Bridge), this will lead to asynchronous traffic. A solution would be to have the Lync server use the NetScaler as Gateway but this will not be feasible when the resource fails over to the other NetScaler appliance.

In my (humble) opinion I would rather see VRRP disappear as an option all together. I have not seen a workable solution based on VRRP yet.

Conclusion

As I stated earlier, I have no gain in customers buying one or the other. The outline above is purely based on my experience of advising Citrix NetScaler for years now. The choice of a Citrix NetScaler solutions may look complex but often is logical. Based on security compliance, business needs, datacenter locations, number of ISP’s etc.

So, this is it. I hope this has some value for you to make some decisions regarding which NetScaler hardware or virtual appliance and software editions to acquire.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1331604

Infrastructure Project Manager and Architect at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 6, 2020

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Has good content switching ability and good GUI functionality

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature is the content switching."

"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the content switching.

What needs improvement?

ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use.

In terms of the GUI's functionalities, it responds to our needs. I don't see a need for improvement for that.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for ten years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have more users than before so we had to migrate from a VPX to an NPX to improve the bandwidth. We are a medium-sized company with around 5,000 users. Most of them work through ADC appliances. It responds to our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have contacted their technical support. They're good. We have a meeting with them once a month. Their support is good.

What other advice do I have?

My recommendation would depend on the company's needs. In my former job, we used to have f5 for load balancing and we used to have NetScaler for ICA reverse proxy for access gateway and we used the two of them in conjunction. In my current job, we have Fortinet for firewalling and we have ADC for reverse proxy for access gateway. My opinion is that you have to choose the best solution for every functionality you need.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because of the user interface.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Berk Sadik

Solution consultant at Demsistem Bilgi ve Teknolojileri Ltd. Sti.

Sep 11, 2018

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Rewriting and redirection are key features for us

Pros and Cons

"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"
"If you need PCI-compliance and have high security requirements, WAF is the most valuable feature. If you need to monitor your load-balancing services with complex types of monitoring, make sure everything is alright, and load balancing is important, Content Switching and Monitoring features are the keys to your needs. If you want to provide a lot of static images or data, the Caching feature works best for you."
"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."

"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."

What is our primary use case?

Internal Load Balancing and Content switching features are the main reasons for selecting this product.

How has it helped my organization?

Imagine providing a brand new Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), cache for CSS or JS files and requires security features to be enabled. And do not forget that this service runs on a custom port, but you must publish it using the standard HTTP port, and you only have a public IP address and it's already in use on the NetScaler. You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)

What is most valuable?

It depends on your needs.

If you need PCI-compliance and have high security requirements, WAF is the most valuable feature.
If you need to monitor your load-balancing services with complex types of monitoring, make sure everything is alright, and load balancing is important, Content Switching and Monitoring features are the keys to your needs.
If you want to provide a lot of static images or data, the Caching feature works best for you.

We have used all the functions. I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us.

What needs improvement?

We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We deployed NSX on our infrastructure last year. It was great, except for the standard load balancer. We were already using Netscaler MPX on our physical level and expected almost the same features from NSX load balancer. But it was really hard to even monitor the services on it, and we did not have time to wait for it to be improved. So we downloaded and tested the trial version of Netscaler VPX. We've already gotten to know the product, have made comparisons with products from other brands, but it did not take long to select it. For now, it is the best solution for us.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user848784

Solution Architect with 10,001+ employees

Aug 5, 2018

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Scalability is great. One of the best features is that it can scale out.

Pros and Cons

"Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out."

"I would like to see more integration for single sign-on."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is a low balancing geo failover. However, there are a lot of use cases that we use it for.

How has it helped my organization?

We use it for Citrix NetScaler MPX deployments. It is being used for publishing Citrix XenApp, mostly for load balancing, but we have been evaluating solutions for deploying it in multi-data centers.

What is most valuable?

Global servers
Load balancing

We need multi-site and DNS failover.

What needs improvement?

It is difficult to customize. It is more difficult to customize than F5, for example. They have custom iRules that you can write for customized situations.

I would like to see more integration for single sign-on on the Citrix side. F5 has done a lot of work on single sign-on capabilities, and it seems that NetScaler might be lacking a bit compared to F5.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had very good luck with stability. However, we have always deployed in an HA configuration.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support seems very knowledgeable if we have any problems. Support had been good when we needed it. We have not needed it that much, but they are good to work with.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Windows Network Low Balancing.

What about the implementation team?

We had a consulting service help us with the setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them.

What other advice do I have?

You need to have somebody who understands application delivery controllers and all their features. If you don't have someone, I would highly recommend training in professional services to help out with it.

We are sort of in the evaluation process of replacing everything with one solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.