NetScaler vs. VMware NSX

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.

Incentivized

With proper design, VMware NSX can and should be deployed to virtually any VMware virtualization environment, but the deployment should be tailored to the needs of that environment. There isn't really a one size fits all deployment design for all environments. That versatility is what provides its greatest strength to a business.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• End to end encryption on the wire.
• Micro-segmentation.
• Integrates well with existing VMWare environment.
• Integrates well with our existing network.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Interoperability in multi-vendor environments
• Advanced networking and packet acceleration options can be improved

Incentivized

I gave the NetScaler a 7 here because the system once configured and deployed is very easy to use. However, if you did not deploy the system and do not have the fundamental background knowledge then you will have trouble using the product in general. Overall it is a great product and service but does typically require professional services to be deployed.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

easy to use and setup and reliable. Once the configuration was setup and running this has been really useful and easy to maintain. The other solutions seemed overly complicated and difficult to configure and get up and running with the security that we required

Incentivized

We use both Cisco ACI and VMware NSX, and while they have different strengths and capabilities, I would recommend VMware NSX, as it can be used in all VMware environments, without costly physical infrastructure changes. Cisco ACI provides some of the same capabilities, but not all. It's focus relies on physical networking changes.

Incentivized

• We had this set up before COVID and it saved us. We just added user licenses and scaled out our citrix farm and IT sat back and just monitored users from home.
• Scales up and out with ease
• Challenging to find NetScaler experts for advanced features you want to enable and use

Incentivized

• Ability to move workloads more easily with the ability to stretch/move networks across multiple physical locations.
• The added flexibility allows you to expedite tech refreshes since you're no longer constrained by the hardware.

Incentivized