Citrix NetScaler with SSD (first impression)

The Citrix NetScaler MPX 5500-7500 and 9500 appliance models now ship with Solid State Drives and says (good?)bye to the platter disk for these particulair models. This was anounced by Citrix back in februari this year: http://blogs.citrix.com/2012/02/09/citrix-netscaler-moves-to-solid-state-drives-for-future-mpx-5500-7500-and-9500-shipments/

Citrix has been using Solid State Drives in the MPX 17500/19500/21500 platforms for a longer time but they are only used for mounting the /flash volume. In the MPX 5500/7500/9500 the /flash volume is mounted on a CompactFlash Card. The (platter) Hard Disk Drive which is now being replaced by an SSD is used for the /var volume, this is where all the data and logs files are kept.

I now have a set of Citrix NetScaler MPX 5500 series which has been delivered with such Solid State Drives. The SSD in question is a Samsung 2.5” 128GB SSD (SATA3.0Gbps) which is known as a Samsung 470 series. This particulair SSD can perform sequential reads up to 250 MB/sec and sequential writes at 220 MB/sec. In comparison to the latest releases of Solid State Drives those numbers are not amazing. More information of the SSD : http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-5PA128/US-specs

Web Interface on NetScaler nCore–first impression

I have been waiting anxiously on this feature for a while since it has been delayed by Citrix a number of times, this feature was already announced at Citrix Synergy (SF 2010) back in May. And now I had the chance to install it at a customer which was also very interested in decommisioning his (Microsoft Windows) Citrix Web Interface servers and replacing it with Web Interface on Citrix NetScaler. For me it is the chance to find out what the pros and cons are about this feature.

Installation

Installation was ok, if it was up to me the Citrix Web Interface was just like other components such as Access Gateway just to be enabled within a build. Maybe can expect this in future releases. I installed the Web Interface on a more recent build of the nCore version (Build 98.6) so I had to downgrade to get this working. Good to know is that the Access Gateway customizations were retained which I was very happy about. Because you are downgrading Citrix NetScaler asks you if you would like to import a different nsconfig file.

Creating

There are very few settings possible when working within the NetScaler GUI. There is a wizard which let’s you create the websites.