NetScaler Times newsletter for Week 23 - 2024

There are no build changes, but a whole load of new webinars to get added to your calendar.

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.

Agenda for this week:

1. Build status and updates

2. Question of the week?

3. Support and Security Bulletins.

4. NetScaler Community & Labs site

5. Feedback on this newsletter

1. Build status and updates

The details for the various builds have been listed below, as this helps plan for new releases in your environment. Starting from 2023 for 14.1 there will be the following:

1. Firmware will have a 3-year upgrade cycle, where new features are added, called the ‘Feature Phase’.

2. The ‘Maintenance Phase’ then starts, and it is then supported for another 3 years with bug fixes and security updates.

3. There will then be 1 year of extended support with security fixes only. The expectation is to use this time to move off before the EOL for the firmware.

As shown below, 13.1 and 13.0 are now in the Maintenance phase.

Typically, the guidance for NetScaler & NetScaler Console(ADM) build releases is that the Management platform needs to be the same or newer than the NetScaler(s) that it manages. I typically, go with the latest for NetScaler Console.

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.

Current Build Versions:

There are no changes and/or updates this week.

2. Question of the week?

This question was raised with me last week:

My customer is moving to a Universal Hybrid Multi-cloud offering. This is a new one that came out in March, which includes 1000Gbps of NetScaler capacity. The question concerned the number of VPX1000 (meg) instances this entitlement could run?

Response: In this case, the questioner was confused between the 1000Gbps and 1000meg. To help explain what is included with Universal Hybrid Multi-cloud, I suggested this:

The entitlement includes Quantity 1000 x 1000Meg(1Gbps) VPX Premium or 125 x 8Gbps VPX. It includes a whole load of capacity. I think sometimes it isn’t clear exactly how much capacity is in UHMC. Quite a bit!

3. Support and Security bulletins

These are the latest articles on the support portal knowledgebase, sorted by modified date. Here are the 3 most recent security articles plus 4 recent support docs. The site is located here.

Security updates:

• NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-6548 and CVE-2023-6549

  NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-6548 and CVE-2023-6549

  Modified: 19 Jan 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

  Anil Shetty added a Blog with some extra details: That follow-up is here

• Citrix Secure Access client for Windows Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-24491

  Citrix Secure Access client for Windows Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-24491

  Modified: 09 Feb 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

• Citrix Secure Access client for Ubuntu Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-24492

  Citrix Secure Access client for Ubuntu Security Bulletin for CVE-2023-24492

  Modified: 09 Feb 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

Support Docs

• How to Configure NetScaler in a HA Setup to Communicate in Two-Arm Config with Different VLAN Tags

  This article describes how to configure the appliances in a high availability setup to communicate in a two-arm configuration with different 802.1q VLAN tags on each arm.

  Modified: 31 May 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

• [NetScaler-SDX] SVM Management UI displays "Halted" about VPX "VM State"

  [NetScaler-SDX] SVM Management UI displays "Halted" about VPX "VM State". The SVM can be rebooted without effecting live service, it’s just a Linux vm after all.

  Modified: 29 May 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

• How to Manage RAID Disk Allocation on NetScaler SDX 14000/15000/16000/25000/26000 Series Platforms

  How to Manage the RAID Disk Allocation on NetScaler SDX 14000, 15000, 16000, 25000 and 26000 Series of platforms. Quite a bit of details on the RAID setup!

  Modified: 28 May 2024 | NetScaler

• [NetScaler] HA Full Sync may cause Heartbeats missing

  Full HA sync and node DOWN issue. Looking at the notes, Configuring SyncVLAN is highly suggested!

  Modified: 28 May 2024 | NetScaler,NetScaler Gateway

4. Events & Labs

Events

5 Webinars for June

5 June: NetScaler Live Demo | Session hijack protection for NetScaler Gateway/AAA deployments

4:00 PM - 4:30 PM BST

Session hijacking involves an attacker using captured, brute-forced or reverse-engineered session IDs to seize control of a legitimate user’s session while that session is still in progress. Once session ID/Cookie is compromised, an attacker can bypass even multi-factor authentication to impersonate a victim thereby getting elevated or unauthorised access to internal resources. Protecting against session hijacking within NetScaler Gateway/AAA deployments becomes crucial in today's digital era to protect high-value targets and sensitive resources hosted on Citrix infrastructure.

In this live demo, the NetScaler experts will demonstrate how to prevent Bad Actors from hijacking Sessions for NetScaler Gateway/AAA deployments through simple Regular Expressions

• How to configure NetScaler policies and apply regular expressions to identify suspicious session activity.

• Showcase of how to create custom regex patterns tailored to specific session hijacking threats.

The event page is here.

20th June: Automating your network for operational excellence

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM BST

Harnessing the potential of cloud technology can drive innovation and agility within organisations. Getting in the way are cumbersome workflows, manual tasks and human errors. 

Automation emerges as a solution, working to eliminate repetition, reduce errors, streamline workflows, and bolster security measures. From testing to production, enterprise IT teams are embracing automation technologies. NetScaler and Red Hat® Ansible® stand out as key enablers, offering supported solutions that pave the way for future-ready automation, empowering businesses to thrive in the digital landscape.

Join us in this webinar where we will talk to you about:

1. Importance of Network Automation for DevOps & Platform Engineering.

2. Why use NetScaler with Ansible Automation Platform?

3. Benefits of NetScaler and RedHat integrations

The event page is here

26 June 2024:NetScaler Live Demo : Advanced traffic management using Citrix NetScaler policies

4:00 PM - 4:30 PM BST

This session will provide a comprehensive understanding of how to leverage Citrix NetScaler policies for advanced traffic management. Participants will learn about the policy engine, how to create, test and deploy policies, and the specific features that benefit from policy-based management. 

In this session, the NetScaler experts will cover:

1. Introduction to Policies and Policy Engine

2. Creating and Managing Policies using the Expression Evaluator

3. Features Leveraging Policies (such as Load Balancing, Content Switching, SSL Offloading, etc.)

4. Demonstrate setting up and applying policies for specific use cases

The event page is here

June 27: NetScaler Virtual Connect Monthly Webinar-APJ/EMEA

APJ/EMEA 9:30 AM      10:30 AM BST

Americas 4:00 PM      5:00 PM BST (11.00-12:00 EST)

In this webinar, the NetScaler experts will cover:

1. Tech preview announcements: Nutanix VPX on Nutanix AHV (Acropolis hypervisor) tech preview

2. Public cloud marketplace update

3. NetScaler flexed licensing overview

4. Get the most out of your NetScaler policies: Migrate from Classic to Advanced (13.0 to 13.1)

APJ/EMEA page is here

Americas page is here

Labs

Go here for the hands-on labs. Link

5. 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!