Creating user customizable announcements for NetScaler Access Gateway

A customer would like to designate a number of people for customizing announcements on the Access Gateway Enterprise page.  This way the organization can announce important changes, planned downtime or other announcements. The advantage of this is that a network engineer does not need to be bothered for displaying all sorts of messages on the Access Gateway by fiddling with the files on the appliances.

Retain Customization after applying White Theme on Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise

There is a Citrix knowledge base article on how to apply the White Theme on a Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise Edition, right here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX123607

There is a Citrix knowledge base article on how to retain Custom Settings on a Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise webpage, right here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX123780

But the problem is when you do both (Apply White Theme and wish to retain your customization) there is none.

Problem is that both actions copy the content to /netscaler/ns_gui/vpn directory where the White Theme is copied last.

What you basically can do is edit the file /nsconfig/rc.netscaler to add the following rule: cp -r /var/vpn/vpn/* /netscaler/ns_gui/vpn. Make sure your customized content is copied to the /var/vpn/vpn directory.

So if you apply the White Theme and wish to retain the white settings the content of your /nsconfig/rc.netscaler should look like this:

tar -zxvf /var/white.gz -C /netscaler/ns_gui/vpn/images
cp -r /var/vpn/vpn/* /netscaler/ns_gui/vpn

Citrix Access Gateway 5.0 beta program

I’ve signed up for the “Citrix Access Gateway 5.0 beta program” because I’m very curious about the new version. This is the Standard and Advanced line of Access Gateway solutions from Citrix. I’ve had a small peak on the new features within the beta product line and have to say that it will be hard for customers making a right decision on which Access Gateway solution to choose with all the flavors that will be out there.

It is about time that the old 4.x version got an update, however I thought it was a good decision from Citrix the integrate the new Web Interface in the 4.x product. This made the product last a little longer. It seems that Citrix Access Gateway are a bit out of focus with Citrix development and that Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise, Citrix NetScaler (VPX) get all the attention. Unfortunately there are still a lot of Citrix Access Gateway Standard and Advanced customers out there, at least here in Holland.

So, if you are interested in testing the beta product, here you go: Link!