NetScaler Times newsletter for Week 44 - 2024
Eliminate SSL Certificate Headaches with NetScaler Zero Touch Management!!! WooHoo
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 newsletter from Andrew Scott at Cloud Software Group provides updates on NetScaler products and features.
It includes information on the latest firmware builds for NetScaler 14.1 and NetScaler Console, as well as a recent 13.1 build in evaluation.
The newsletter highlights the benefits of zero-touch certificate management and provides links to relevant documentation.
It also mentions recent security bulletins and support articles for troubleshooting common problems.
Upcoming events, including webinars and hands-on labs, are listed.
Andrew invites feedback on the newsletter and encourages readers to share their experiences and challenges with NetScaler.
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:
NetScaler 14.1-34.42 Build
Update areas: Load Balancing, NetScaler Application Delivery and Security Analytics, NetScaler Gateway, NetScaler SDX Appliance, NetScaler Web App Firewall, Networking, Platform, Policies, System, SSL
Zero Touch Certificate Management!
The release notes.
NetScaler Console 14.1-34.43 Build
Update areas: Analytics, miscellaneous, stylebooks, Infrastructure(more on that cert management stuff).
The release notes
13.1 NDcPP build
There is a new 13.1 build is still 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. Docs - Certificates!
Zero-touch certificate management automates the installation and management of SSL certificates, eliminating the need for manual configuration. By uploading certificates to NetScaler Console, administrators can centralize certificate management. NetScaler then periodically polls both NetScaler Console and packet engine, intelligently identifies the changes to the zero-touch certificate store. This ensures that the packet engine remains synchronized with the zero-touch certificate store on NetScaler Console. Through this process, the packet engine automatically handles the otherwise tedious tasks of adding, binding, and linking certificates, streamlining the certificate management process.
Benefits of zero-touch certificate management
By enabling the zero-touch certificate management feature, you can ensure that the underlying processes are done without any manual intervention:
Adding, binding, and linking the certificates
Providing certificates and keys in a specific order or together
Installing and using the best suitable certificate during TLS handshake.
Deleting the expired certificates from the packet engine.
Pushing certificates with a future issue date to the packet engine from NetScaler Console once the date is valid.
With the zero-touch certificate management feature, you can prevent the following errors commonly associated with manual processes:
Overwriting certificates or keys. If you upload another certificate or key with the same name that exists on NetScaler, it overwrites the existing one. This might cause applications to go down after a reboot.
Accidental certificate deletion can lead to application downtime after a reboot.
Link for more reading
3. Recent security bulletin(s)
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
4. Support Docs
These are some selected Support articles on the support portal Knowledge Center
Troubleshooting Common Problems
WAF Functionalities
CTX568725 - Web Application Firewall is blocking a valid image upload
CTX235668 - WAF Rules blocks traffic even though relaxation Rules are added
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 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 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 10:30 AM
24 October 2024, 4:00 PM 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-prem
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!