Likelihood to Recommend Barracuda is an inexpensive solution for load balancing web traffic of all kinds and works as a reverse proxy if you need one. It is efficient and has been a very stable solution. If you need extremely granular configuration for your load balancing traffic, then you may need to go with one of the bigger brands. Barracuda will more than handle regular small and medium business use and do so at a greatly reduced price point.
Read full review Citrix Netscaler can be a powerful network appliance for environments that are fully committed and open to utilizing a network appliance that isn't made by a traditional network vendor. Administrator user experience has improved over the years and will continue to improve with the flexibility of virtual and physical appliances available for medium and large enterprises.
Read full review Pros Excellent Load Balancing. Flexible configuration - It's very simple to configure and powerful enough to handle many more websites than just our exchange site. Continuously updated - Barracuda makes fairly frequent updates to address issues and improve features. Read full review Flexibility. NetScaler assumes its admins know a bit about networking and in-depth details surrounding the applications they are configuring access for/to. This being so, the range of configuration options is very broad allowing various versions' combinations of protocol patterns, expressions, rules etc., all to the benefit of the admin. Granularity. Having such a broad range of configuration options available, while still allowing simple options to be configured simply. The GUI is well-stylized and navigation has a good flow. Ease of control. For load-balancing of simple services right out of the box, NetScaler makes it pretty easy, compared to the range of options available in the surrounding GUI and under the hood. Read full review Cons Overall, there are no issues. It just runs. Read full review The documentation could use an overhaul with specific examples related to the command line as well as GUI. Explanations in the documentation would also be helpful. Being able to have more than just one routing table would allow the ability to leverage security. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is a product we plan on continuing to use.
Read full review Usability It is fairly easy to learn after support helps you set it up and shows you how things work. Which they will do.
Read full review Improve on the specifics I mentioned previously and could be a 10/10 product. It is also a confusingly branded product that I have supported in two large enterprises where IT departments are unsure if the product belongs to the Citrix remote access support team or the Network infrastructure support team (it should be the later) and typically under utilized.
Read full review Support Rating It did well for basic needs but would not deliver for all our services.
Read full review Overall, our organization's experience with Citrix support is that support can be hit or miss. Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts and much longer than desirable to obtain a viable solution for issues experienced with their products. It would be great to see Citrix invest time, effort, and almighty dollars into improving their support and bug fix process across the board.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We also had looked at Kemp and F5. The Kemp and F5 had a lot of horsepower and advanced configuration and functionality. When we looked at our workload and how we were planning on using the load balancers, we really didn't need all those extra bells and whistles. Barracuda provided all the standard functionality we needed and were looking for and did so at a greatly reduced price point.
Read full review We chose Citrix ADC over Kemp and F5 due to additional integrations with various products such as Citrix/Horizon/Monitoring tools. We additionally chose ADC due to better ease of use and ability to have the appliances be virtual or physical, with the configuration being a simple migration of code which provided flexibility to be able to do a hybrid environment with ease.
Read full review Return on Investment It has allowed us to maintain a very high level of uptime. It has allowed us to perform server updates without the downtime of services. It has provided a consistent user experience by properly balancing service loads across servers. Read full review It has saved a tremendous amount of money and manpower by allowing for broad support without the need for a VPN. The security functions within Netscaler enabled our business to pass additional IT-based audits. Having a full Citrix stack from front to back makes our business look more professional both to our users and outsiders. Read full review ScreenShots