Hello Everyone
It’s Andrew again over at Cloud Software Group. This NetScaler Times update aims to provide you with valuable pointers to keep you up-to-date! 🚀
I would greatly appreciate your continued engagement and feedback, my contact details are at the bottom of this newsletter. I say this as I sometimes make assumptions about what people know and that can lead to gaps in the notes below. :-)
High level agenda for this week:
This NetScaler Times newsletter from Andrew at Cloud Software Group provides updates on firmware builds, certifications, and end-of-sale/life appliances.
It highlights automation resources, recent security bulletins, and selected support articles.
Upcoming events include webinars on StyleBooks, Zero Touch Certificate Management, and Citrix Community Webinars covering various NetScaler topics.
Hands-on labs and feedback opportunities are also mentioned.
1. The latest firmware builds.
The details for the various builds have been listed below, as this helps plan for new releases in your environment. This support document has a lot more details on the various release cycles.
The NetScaler has multiple form factors to support different environments. NetScaler is built on a single operating system with a software-based architecture, so the behaviour will be the same no matter which is used — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container.
Latest Build Versions:
13.1 NDcPP build
There is a new 13.1 build currently going through the evaluation process.
NetScaler Certifications
There is now have a dedicated page on the NetScaler website with information on our product certifications, including FIPS for our public sector customers: Click me
What features are included with Standard, Advanced or Premium bundles?
Check this out..
Which release should I use?
The release families are designed such that 14.1 has more elements changing with each update, hence the feature phase designation. There will be less changing in 13.1, so unless you need a capability only available in the 14.1 release, the advice is to choose 13.1 for most production deployments.
End Of Sale Appliances
These appliances are End of Sale (unavailable to buy new now), they will live and run for 5 more years from 2023, so four more from this year. The 26k-50s and 15k-50G FIPS will be EOS soon..:-(
EOL Appliances
Here is a table showing the significant EOL appliance events for the next 12 months. A common question about EOL is ‘Can I offer you some $ to extend this?’ Unfortunately, EOL is an absolute, there are no extensions.
Questions about End of Life?
Read this:
2. Automation resource(s)
NetScaler Terraform Provider - The provider allows administrators to configure NetScaler's for various use-cases such as global server load balancing, SSL offloading, web application firewall policies, and more. With Terraform, you can share and reuse your NetScaler configurations across your environments — a key time saver when migrating applications from your data center to any public cloud.
NetScaler APIs - Through the use of NetScaler APIs, administrators can save time by automating their NetScaler configuration. NetScaler uses a proprietary protocol called NITRO that allows you to programmatically configure and monitor your NetScaler ADCs using a REST interface.
3. Recent security bulletins
There are no changes on the security bulletins this week, here are the last two support articles.
NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-4966 and CVE-2023-4967
July 15
Exploits of CVE-2023-4966 on unmitigated appliances have been observed. ... Cloud Software Group strongly urges customers of NetScaler ADC and NetS...
ProductNetScaler; NetScaler Gateway
Citrix Secure Access client for Ubuntu Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-24492
July 13
This issue has been addressed in the following versions of Citrix Secure Access client for Ubuntu: ... Citrix recommends that customers who are aff...
ProductNetScaler; NetScaler Gateway
4. Support Docs
These are some selected Support articles on the support portal Knowledge Center
Appendix: Top Knowledge Content
Troubleshooting Common Launch Problems
CTX217728 - How to Verify Active Users or ICA Users on Citrix Gateway
CTX138155 - How to Collect Client VPN Logs for ADC Gateway
CTX101997 - FAQ: Citrix Secure Gateway/ NetScaler Gateway Secure Ticket Authority
CTX132334 - Secure Ticket Authority (STA) Status Is Marked As DOWN on Citrix Gateway Virtual Server
CTX495310 - How to Customize Gateway Login Page Labels for Custom Theme when nFactor Login Schema is enabled
CTX335902 - VPN Plugin replacing destination IP with 0.0.0.0 for the 172.16.0.0/16 subnet - Spoofed IP to original IP.
5. Events
It looks like there are three webinars for October at the moment, there are four tiles with the Community session repeating for the respective time zones.
NetScaler Live Demo : The Power of NetScaler StyleBooks: Automate Your Application Delivery and Security
16 October 2024, 4:00 PM Â Â Â Â 4:30 PM
Agenda:
Application delivery and security solutions can be time consuming to efficiently set up and manage, especially for full stack engineers and DevOps teams who typically don’t have deep expertise in networking or security. That’s why NetScaler comes with declarative templates called StyleBooks that automate the creation and management of NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC) configurations.
Join us for a live demo of StyleBooks where we'll show you how to:
Automate ADC configurations
Improve deployment speed
Elevate your networking game
Event site
NetScaler Live Demo: Eliminate SSL Certificate Headaches with NetScaler Zero Touch Management
23 October 2024, 4:00 PM Â Â Â Â 4:30 PM
Agenda:
Manage all your SSL certificates effortlessly by leveraging the Zero Touch Certificate Management feature on the NetScaler Console. This tool automates processes such as fetching, chaining, and identifying certificates, making the certificate management process seamless and error-free. It takes care of crucial tasks like certificate renewal, ensuring the right certificates are deployed at the right time, significantly reducing the administrative burden on network admins. Thus, alleviating the pains and challenges of an admin regarding cert management via automated workflows.
In this NetScaler Live Demo, the experts will delve into:
Understanding the complexity and pain points of manual certificate management.
Introduction to the Zero Touch Certificate Management feature and its key capabilities.
How automation simplifies SSL certificate management and enhances operational efficiency.
A live demonstration of how to upload, automate, and manage SSL certificates via the NetScaler Console.
Event site
Citrix Community Webinar | NetScaler-APJ/EMEA | Oct 24
Citrix Community Webinar | NetScaler-Americas | Oct 24
24 October 2024, 9:30 AM Â Â Â Â 10:30 AM
24 October 2024, 4:00 PM Â Â Â Â 5:00 PM
Agenda:
In this monthly webinar, the NetScaler experts will cover:
Support Assist: Introduction for rate limiting in NetScaler
Configure ACL on Console on-premÂ
NetScaler Console observability updates:Microsoft Sentinel integration
Bulk Analytics support in NetScaler Console
NetScaler Next-Gen API new features
Event link Emea/APJ
Event link Americas
Labs
Go here for the hands-on labs. Link
6. Feedback for this newsletter
Naturally, if something you feel should be added/removed or called out, drop me a note; Andrew.Scott@cloud.com. All mistakes are mine.
I would happily get feedback on what you could do with seeing more of or what you find hard to set up. You can get all the previous newsletters plus other articles here:
Have a great week!