Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] Reviews

As the top manager and core engineer in my company working to secure job sites, I used a demonstration version of Citrix SD-WAN to enhance the communication between our branches and data centers. Specifically, it has been used to connect single branches with multiple data centers, where communication can flow quickly across them all. So, with Citrix SD-WAN, the primary use case is the provision of wide internet access from the data centers into our branches, as well as letting us manage the IT services through the cloud. 

Previously, we had simply been using direct internet access in each branch, but we realized that our internet usage would be more normalized with Citrix SD-WAN. Our hardware devices are on-premises, of course, but the SD-WAN management is now done on the cloud.

The reason why we went with Citrix SD-WAN came about when we were looking to integrate one of our branches with the rest of the company in a simpler, more centralized manner. We wanted an easy integration solution that would let us deploy connectivity to a branch with only a few clicks, and so we tried Citrix SD-WAN. When deploying Citrix SD-WAN, we found that we could deploy very easily with a simple installation template, and it helped us clear up the configuration to get everything up and running.

The main advantage of Citrix SD-WAN is that it enables fast communication between our branches and data centers. And, with its cloud management features, it also makes the process of adding new branches into our company network much easier.

Another reason why I like this solution is because it ensures the smooth and effective operation of the company's POS software. 

Given that Citrix SD-WAN solved all our problems by providing us with everything we needed to unify communications with our branches and data centers, I cannot suggest anything further in terms of improvements.

I have used Citrix SD-WAN for three months.

It is stable.

It's a scalable solution. Once you've deployed it in the cloud, it's very flexible and can be adapted to your needs.

I think their support system works very well, and we were also working with a local reseller which was a good experience.

We were trying some other vendors at the same time that seemed to fit the job, but we had to help those vendors too much in trying to come up with a solution for us.

The setup was incredibly easy. The hardest part of the job was having to deploy during the day. However, with the configuration template we used, the deployment was a breeze.

Our communication with the vendor support was highly interactive and, in total, it took us only a day or two to deploy.

As a team of five members, we deployed Citrix SD-WAN in-house without the help of a third-party reseller team.

As for maintenance, we promoted one staff member to handle physical intervention and another for configuration.

I believe that Citrix SD-WAN is a good investment, but I do not have the information to be more specific.

I am not aware of the details of the licensing cost in this case because I was only trying it out.

The functionality of Citrix SD-WAN is awesome and I fell in love with it on this deployment because it's so easy to use. It has everything that I need, I know what what works and what doesn't, and it has great flexibility in terms of management.

I would rate Citrix SD-WAN a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is for stability and redundancy on connectivity from the branch offices to the company head office data centre. We have a head office and six remote branches. Most of the applications we deliver to the branches are through terminal services. This includes the EPR system, Microsoft Dynamics-AX. Everything is hosted on-prem. When a line between the branch office and the head office was down the branch could not operate. For most sales orders we have a 4 business hour turnaround time from order to delivery. So when a line is down we were losing sales. SD-WAN has prevented this almost completely. 

Downtime for branch offices is now almost zero. We have 100% real-time visibility into all of our lines. MPLS links have been replaced with lower-cost links, saving a larger percentage of line costs. Overall, I see SD-WAN as a must. And the Citrix SD-WAN product has delivered on expectations and exceeded them. (With later firmware updates we now have good firewall capabilities in the product too.). In one specific notable case that was an outage at an upstream provider that would have taken our Cape Town office offline. And this was on the first of the month when we process bulk orders. The branch did not even know the line was down thanks to SD-WAN. 

Lines run Active-Active. So we get better bandwidth usage i.e.we don't have backup lines sitting idle. We see the state of all lines all the time i.e. we don't have backup lines that are broken, that we only discover when a primary line fails. (This has happened even when we had an MPLS network). Downtimes on lines result in a loss of business. This is inevitable given that we run all applications through terminal applications from the head office data centers.  In the 4 years running SD-WAN, we have only had 1 branch offline due to line failures where the backup line could not cope with the additional load. 

The firewall reporting could be easier to use and filter. (It works well enough, but if I need to give an area for improvement, I think this would be it.). The built-in reporting on the product in this regard is not great. You can get a much more detailed reporting analysis using the SD-WAN center that is configurable with the product. If the additional reporting capabilities were bundled into the Master Controller Node, it would make the solution more appealing, and add better value from day one.

I have been using Citrix SD-WAN for four years. 

We have used an external consultant, (Troye) to complete the set-up. Between Troye and Citrix South Africa we were in excellent hands from beginning to end. The requirements were drafted between KOLOK, Troye the partner and Citrix South Africa.  We had very qualified consultants on site for the cut-over.  It was a smooth migration.  There were a few complex issues that came from how the ISP had configured routing in the MPLS.  These issues were resolved by Citrix.  We have subsequently removed all MPLS links. 

Easy under 18 months.

If I was going to look at this project again now, I would investigate the option of using virtual appliances rather then physical appliances. I don't know enough about this option, but I think it would have some cost and give better DR options.  

We looked at the Cisco product at the time. (Briefly). But we found the Citrix product to be better because it uses a packet by packet switching, where as the Cisco apparently switched session by session to the best line. This was some time back, and I have not looked at the Cisco product since.

I used to stress about line failures. MPLS was not working for me. MPLS gave me no visibility into the line redundancy. And MPLS is very expensive. SD-WAN was an easy choice for me.  Citrix has delivered. 

For the load balancing of the application is for load balancing and as a VPN gateway. 

We have a requirement where only the users who have a company laptop are connected to the system only using a VPN. We hand out the authority based on whether or not users have the company laptop or they can be converted by a company using the EPA, we can check if the laptop is in the domain or not. 

The VPN and the load balancing are the most valuable features. 

The reports need to be improved. We need to have them customized but they don't have that right now. I would like for them to have better system predictions. My system may be working fine right now but after making some changes, that can change and I would like to know about it. 

I would like to see better reports. 

It's been three years we have deployed this product and I have not had any downtime or any issues with the product. The product is stable.

We can upgrade easily using the license. 

There are 20,000 users that are connecting to my boxes because my websites, and other applications are posted on the NetScaler box only. We only require two people for maintenance. One is the administrator of the network and the other person is monitoring it. One is the administrator and the other is the engineer. 

Support-wise, they're good. 

We were using another solution but it had limitations and a lot of downtimes. That's when we changed the product.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Licensing is good. I don't have any issues with the rationing of it. 

Pricing-wise, it is a little bit high compared to the other products which are the market right now. Because of the stability and availability of the product, I am fine with the price, but it's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products.

We also looked at Cisco Load Balancer and Radware. We did the PoC and we found the scale was good, so that's why we bought NetScaler.

My advice is that if you want to implement NetScaler make sure to get Citrix support for help.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. I took off two points because of the bad deployment. 

Citrix SD-WAN can be implemented either on-premises or in the cloud. You have the option to set it up as a physical appliance within your environment, or as a virtual machine subscription through Citrix or one of its partners. If you have VMware servers or a VxRail in your environment, you can order Citrix SD-WAN from Citrix or one of its partners and deploy it as a VM on your virtual machine.

You have the option to set up multiple sites in different locations within the same environment. This can be achieved by creating secure tunnels between the sites using Citrix SD-WAN's user interface license, which allows you to customize data and prioritize your needs. For example, you can ensure the quality of service for specific applications like team applications, even with multiple connections, through the solution's load-balancing capabilities. This leads to accelerated business operations and enhanced performance.

The most valuable feature of Citrix SD-WAN is customization. You are able to customize the solution to your needs.

Citrix SD-WAN does not have the SD-WAN with one optimization in a single license. Other competitors have this option and it should be added to this solution.

In the next release of the solution, it could be more user-friend and easier to use for IT managers to do troubleshooting.

I have used Citrix SD-WAN within the last 12 months.

We have deployed this solution for 16 sites and we have not had any issues with the stability.

Bandwidth utilization can be optimized using Citrix SD-WAN. For customers who have limited speed on their main connection, this can lead to issues. However, Citrix SD-WAN can solve this problem by load balancing the main connection and bandwidth. Additionally, for customers with limited bandwidth, optimization can also be achieved through Citrix SD-WAN.

The initial setup of the solution is simple.

We have a team that does the implementation of the solution.

It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not.

There is a variety of licensing options from the vendor.

I rate Citrix SD-WAN a seven out of ten.

It is used to get connectivity between our branches. In terms of the version, we are using version 10.1, and we have different SD-WAN devices.

The reliability of connectivity is most valuable.

I am happy with this product. If anything, its price can be reduced. It is a bit expensive.

I have been using this solution for about six years.

It is very stable. 

It is scalable. We've got about 250 users in the company. We don't have any plans to increase its usage.

They have been okay to work with. I am satisfied with their support.

We didn't use any other solution previously.

I don't know about the setup. I had a consultant set it up for me. For its deployment and maintenance, we just have one person.

It is a bit expensive. A cheaper product would be good, but everybody likes things to be cheaper.

We bought the devices up front, and then we pay for the annual support.

It is not a cheap product but it serves. I would rate it a nine out of 10.

Our use case was for a distributed network. We have customers around Russia, and a customer in the Far East had infrastructure with about 5,000 kilometers between each branch. We needed to create some kind of network that was distributed through data and media or big files. The Far East isn't very stable territory, so we had to use a low-level network and create a good result in data transmission.

It was a retail company, so there were branches, and the branches needed to connect to HQ. We provided HQ and each branch with Citrix SD-WAN. We tried to use it, and it worked well. The transmission was good, and they were losing less data.

The solution is deployed on our customers' hardware.

The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission.

The price is the only thing that could be improved. Citrix is not a cheap solution.

I have been using this solution for one year.

The solution was stable.

We haven't used the Citrix tech support because we have our own support.

I think the ROI is okay. You have to spend a large amount of money at first, but you could see ROI in 3-5 years. It's a good proposal.

The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive.

I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

One of the use cases was as an optimizer in a low-bandwidth area where I wanted to replace the MPLS connection.

The most valuable feature is security, as it gives me the port bindings that cannot be accomplished using other solutions.

This solution gives me IPv6 layering over IPv4, which is helpful for some environments.

The documentation is very good.

I would like to either see the price reduced or have it packaged with other products to give better value for the money. For example, other solutions have multiple services embedded in their appliance, which gives better value.

I have worked with NetScaler SD-WAN in several projects over the past three years.

This is a stable and mature product. We have few admin support cases and the maintenance is very limited.

This solution scales out well. We generally work with large business and enterprise-level organizations.

The technical support from Citrix is very good. If I am stuck while performing a setup, I can get immediate support while I am on the call.

I have also work with similar solutions from Riverbed. I found that the documentation and support from Citrix were better.

Setting up is a little bit complex. It is definitely not done with the click of a button.

For us, it normally takes about a week to understand the requirements and deploy it.

As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey.

My advice to anybody who is considering this product is to first understand the business and the requirements. No solution should be purchased in haste. I have seen businesses with proper tools but they don't know what to do with them.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to provide interconnectivity between branches and optimize the connection.

The most valuable feature is load balancing. This feature allows for multiple links on one device which is a lifesaver when dealing with load shedding.

I would like to see more customization to adjust for the WAN lock-out due to our unexpected power outages.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable. We only require two people for maintenance. 

The solution is extremely scalable.

The support is excellent with quick response times and resolution.

The initial setup is straightforward as long as you are familiar with the solution.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Before choosing the solution I evaluated Juniper Networks and Cisco Meraki.

I rate the solution ten out of ten.

The solution is brilliant, the way it calculates its paths and trails is great.

The hands-on customer support and load balancing that come with this solution are above all others on the market. 

I recommend the solution, especially for organizations based in areas that suffer from load shedding.