30 Days of ADM: Day 13 October 08, 2022
Service graph on Citrix ADM
I am back, it is day 13!
Houston, we have a problem.
When looking at service issues it is sometimes difficult to really get an overview of the problem, you sometimes need to stand back a bit to take it all in.
How far back?
A great question! Obviously, far enough to see the problem clearly but not too far.
You have been selected for a training course in Citrix ADM, the goal is to provide you with enough information to be actually dangerous when talking to a customer or client. 30 days is a bit of an arbitrary number, but I am prepared to give you 2minutes of material, can I get 2 minutes of your time? I have talked about Fleet management, general analytics, security analytics, AI / ML, Stylebooks, Pooled Capacity, instance advisory upgrade, security advisory, autoscaling, onboarding, RESTful API, and CADS self-managed
Today is all about Service Graph.
Honestly, what are you talking about?
Citrix ADM is a management platform for NetScaler, one of ADM’s many skills, is the option to have an overview of live services. Service Graph offers a view that shows live status updates with drill-down capabilities.
It does this for applications that are configured across all NetScalers instances &for all three-tier applications. It also does this for any Kubernetes applications.
So what? What problem does it solve?
It is like having Gene Kranz (wiki link )running mission control for your apps.
Who would be interested in this?
Almost any customer that uses NetScaler to improve application delivery and is looking forreal-time status.
Let me have an example of its use.
Here is a sample view with Service Graph, this is the Global view. You can see that we have users coming into the DC in India from three countries. Straight away we know that the United States and Brazil users are hitting some issues.
The network latency is high, this will give them a subpar user experience due to the performance of something. What is the problem?
Looking at the NetScaler behind the service, there are some issues too. The instance score is poor and needs a review. The big-ticket item is the memory usage is high, plus it looks like there are other problems with SSL.
Ok, that looks ‘busy’, can I get an application-specific view?
Of course. Navigate to Applications- App Dashboard -Petstore – Service Graph and ADM will show it for that application only. There are two options, Application View and Network Functions view
They are shown here.
This is the applications view. This displays the overview of the application configuration. In this view, you can visualize the communication between clients, NetScaler, and web applications. You can then troubleshoot issues with that app.
Displays the virtual servers associated with the application. In this view, you can visualize if the ADC is communicating with:
· Content Switching virtual server to access the application
· Load Balancing virtual server to access the application
· Both Content Switching and Load Balancing virtual servers to access the application
Ok, what about K8?
It covers microservices also.
Summary.
Having a Service Graph is amazing! You get the ability to view your infrastructure serving your clients in a really useful way. With tools like this, you can save time and ensure that you get back to high-value tasks.
Ultimately, it is another killer feature that is enabled with ADM service.
What’s not to like?