Item: Citrix Gateway
Rating: 10
Author: Ben Tusa

Overall Satisfaction with Citrix NetScaler Access Gateway

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Citrix NetScaler extensively through our company for deploying and securing our various Citrix environments. We use it to front end our XenApp environments to provide reliable and secure connections to our internal and external customers. We also use it to front our Global XenDesktop environment between several data centers. Using load balancing and fail-over features helps ensure a redundant environment and [that we are] using the latest SSL/TLS protocols to keep it secure.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Citrix NetScaler as you might expect integrates extremely well with other Citrix products. Each new version enhances that.
Again, Citrix NetScaler has many features that help ensure redundancy in the environment for itself and also downstream components.
Because Citrix NetScaler is a software platform updates are frequent and so are enhancements. Citrix is also good to respond to community requests.

Cons

Citrix has been working to improve the initial learning curve involved in getting started using Citrix NetScaler. It does still require a modest background in networking if you have a complex DMZ to architect it for.
Occasionally new builds can introduce bugs. It's usually advisable to either install the latest builds in your test environment or wait for the community response before adopting it.

Return on Investment

Coming from using F5 previously to front end our Citrix environments we've found that once the NetScaler environment is stood up we have significantly less user issues.
Citrix NetScaler features have allowed us to do much more than we could previously. We've been able to globally load balance our environments using a common dns name.

Alternatives Considered

F5 BIG-IP

We faced many challenges trying to integrate F5 into newer versions of Citrix Web Interface with Secure Gateway to front end our XenApp environments. After migrating to Citrix NetScaler we had a much less complex configuration to manage, performance and user satisfaction was higher and we were also able to deploy new features for our XenDesktop environments.

Other Software Used

Citrix User Profile Management, JIRA Software, Atlassian Confluence

Likelihood to Recommend

There is no doubt Citrix NetScaler is a must for any company that wants to deploy other Citrix products. The integration is compelling. The feature set also extends well beyond those use cases. I honestly can't think of a scenario where you would not want to use it. They even offer lower cost or free versions that work great for small environments.

Comments

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Citrix NetScaler, there is no doubt