NetScaler Reviews

I work as a senior sales engineer and business developer manager and we distribute the Citrix NetScaler AppFirewall. My job is in presales and I'm also a distributor, assisting the company partners.

Our customers are generally enterprise and public companies and our primary use of the product is for security and work balancing applications. Implementation of the product assists with all the applications and the customer's communication requirements. NetScaler can do a lot of things. We make a point of always using the latest version of the product.

I think that the work balancing applications are the most valuable feature. The licensing model that Citrix has implemented is very good. It's a pay-by-use system. 

The product could be improved by making it easier to use and easier to implement. We've had some difficult problems with that. 

An additional feature they could include more of a firewall, as you would find with Checkpoint, Fortinet or Palo Alto firewalls, which all have specific features for security. It would be good if they could include some kind of technical analysis in the next version but I don't know that is part of the Citrix strategy. 

The Citrix technical support is very good and the support from the company sales engineer is very good too. 

The initial setup can be problematic. The length of time it takes to implement really depends on the project. It normally takes around two weeks.

Our company carries out the implementation, the integration of the solution on the customer's infrastructure. In Portugal, we have a lot of enterprise and public sector implementations and a lot of different products available for mounting infrastructure. Sometimes the older implementations and on-prem implementations haven't been done properly and we need to manage this for the customer and for the implementers. You need to know very well what the customer has in order to implement the solution. 

The deployment model depends on the customer and normally it's carried out by the customer, because NetScaler in Portugal, where I am, isn't well known so we do a proof of concept first for a couple of months and then after the installation, configuration and the customer approves the product, then the department delivers it. 

There are some security problems, there's are DOS problems, different kinds of attacks. Another one is for load balancing the charge of the application because NetScaler is a very good solution to load balance the load off the application itself, from Citrix or from another solution. These are the best cases, security and load balancing.

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution as a device for connections from our mobile corporate devices to our infrastructure.

provided a secure connection to critical information

Authorization from mobile diverse for end-users to our infrastructure is a valuable feature. 

We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process is complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

No

The solution was very easy to deploy.

The implementation was handled internally by our team.

For enterprise-level pricing, the cost isn't too high.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's pretty good, but the issues surrounding the certificates make it a difficult system for us.

In terms of advice, I would give to others, I'd say that they should read the manual before implementing the solution. Also, be sure to have someone on your team who knows Citrix very well. If you do not understand all processes when you deploy this solution, you will have issues.

We primarily use the solution for network load balancing on the edge of the network. 

The solution's most valuable feature is the content.

The solution is a bit more expensive than some of the available solutions in this region. One solution in particular that I noticed was cheaper was Kemp. 

The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature.

The solution is pretty scalable. Right now, we are only using about 40-50% of the solution's capacity. We have about 4,000 users connecting through the system. Currently, we don't plan to increase usage.

Support has been okay so far. We only ever call about two times a year, but each time we get the right help. Once we called about custom features and they supported us quite well.

We previously used Kemp Load Balancer. We still have it as part of our infrastructure. The main difference between the two is the Citrix solution is part of a physical appliance, whereas the Kemp solution is a virtual appliance.

The initial setup was straightforward. We had a very good engineer that handled the implementation.

There are costs in addition to the licensing fees, so the overall price can begin to add up.

I would recommend the solution to people who need the services and features provided by Citrix. It's a wonderful product. We've never had any downtime on our NetScaler solution. I'm pretty happy with it.

I'd rate it nine out of ten.

The primary use of this solution is application delivery. It provides access.

This solution is a gateway to the public cloud.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is very light. Once you log in, you have your applications delivered. It is not heavy over the internet or the web.

My customers have told me that the performance of this solution is good.

I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security.

In terms of stability, this solution is quite good.

There are some things that I am not fully clear about when it comes to the physical appliance because I have not used it before. Currently, I am using the virtual appliance and it is scalable.

We have approximately one hundred users. We have no plans to increase usage at this time.

My consultant handles the first level of technical support for me.

I have not tried other solutions.

The initial setup of this solution is not complex. I think that it's quite simple.

The deployment takes approximately one or two days.

I have a consultant who handles the deployment of this solution for me.

We have the option of configuring the workspace or the receiver for clients to connect, or they can use the URL option and then login. I prefer using the URL that is on the web.

This is a solution that I have used for years and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is to provide security and ensure the viability of our services.

The services are almost 100% available to everybody. The solution is invisible for our clients, so by using it, nobody knows that anything is broken because we're hiding the service behind it. It works behind the scenes, in the background, and it keeps everything running smoothly.

The web application firewall which protects our services on the internet, and then of course services like our ability to provide high availability for the services we are offering are the most valuable features. 

The user interface could be more friendly. Some wizards and other documentation for administrators, as well as some use cases, helps us to understand the solution.

The solution is very stable. On the client side, we have several thousand users. In the company itself, I would say there are more than one hundred users.

The solution is very scalable.

Technical support is good.

No, we haven't been using any other solution.

For deployment, it depends on the maturity of the client. If it's the services that are going to be supported by the solution or if it's just a new one, but the number of services is very low, then the implementation would take a week. If you are implementing a major infrastructure project that will support lots of services, then it becomes complicated, so there's no idea really how long it would take.

For our company's size and complexity, I would say it's straightforward.

Most clients, rather rarely, have a dedicated person to maintain just that solution but almost anybody from the operational team can watch it, so I don't know how many people you would need for deployment and maintenance. I haven't done a headcount.

We provide the consultancy ourselves.

This is a type of product that, in terms of security, the moment you implement it, it has an ROI because it secures the home system in the sense that no data is lost. No secrets get out.

There are some add ons to the standard licensing that you can buy for the basic version. You can extend with some add ons, or you can buy the premium version, so it depends on what your clients need. They get the packet and then they can do the add ons.

We were looking at different options according to price. We looked at the F5. The Citrix pricing was good for what it offers.

It's always a really good idea to do a POC. There are companies that are not convinced as to why should they should use something, but a POC is a good way to show why. 

The quality of the service is higher, simply, and that's what you need. So that's why we are using the solution. Also, there are lots of securities that integrate with the solution, so it's good. You can very easily find a way for almost every customer to use it.

I would rate this solution as a 9 out of 10. The performance is very good. The price is also good. You get performance, and lots of features which are very flexible which give the opportunity to provide really advanced support and the quality of the services we are serving from the platform is high.

Our primary use case is the hosting and delivering of web applications.

The product has helped us a lot with load balancing because we had limited experience with it.

The most valuable feature is the management and application delivery for Layer 7 traffic.

At the current time, the solution is not missing any features that I would like to have implemented.

This is a stable product that we have used since 2014.

This solution is scalable, and the sizing is defined by the amount of traffic. Our first box supports up to five hundred megabits of traffic, whereas our second box supports traffic of five gigabits. We will consider making use of this solution in any project going forward.

We have a contract with the re-seller, who has good expertise. If they cannot fix the issue then they escalate it to Citrix, where the tickets are usually solved. Sometimes this takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority. Ideally, it should be possible for the re-seller to assign it directly to level three.

Prior to this, we used the Cisco ACE solution until the product was discontinued.

The initial setup was a little complex. We needed to choose the right partner to assist us with setup and implementation.

We contracted our re-seller to help with installation and setup. The deployment took approximately one month.

We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs.

We used Cisco ACE, and they were the ones who recommended that we switch to this solution. We took their advice and we are pleased with it.

Customers need to look to the future and purchase the right model for their necessities. A new license can be purchased, rather than additional boxes.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use case for the product is server load balancing, specifically the application level.

We are able to offer more support to our customers.

The most valuable feature is the capability of performing load balancing in a virtual environment.

They need to implement and integrate security solutions. Specifically, a web application firewall.

I would give this solution nine out of ten for stability. It is not perfect because at times I was faced with an issue where the application was getting a lot more traffic than is desirable, and I can see Citrix having issues with this.

We have close to fourteen hundred clients using this solution. We expect this to increase, but it is dependent on clients' needs in terms of load balancing.

Some of our clients use the F5 load balancing solution, but that is only ten to fifteen of approximately fourteen hundred clients.

It is a pretty easy setup. You don't need to change anything related to your IT configuration, MAC addresses, or switching tables.

We implement this solution for our clients. We use a template based approach, so normally it can be deployed in a fraction of minutes. One person is sufficient for the deployment and maintenance of this product.

I recommend this product to customers because they have a ninety day free-trial period. This is a good solution for people who also have a budget constraint.

We have a five year platinum licensing agreement, which does not incur additional costs of any kind.

I would rate this product eight out of ten.

We are a Citrix solution adviser and one of the main Citrix partners in Bangkok, Thailand. We use Citrix NetScaler ADC to get user access to business applications on desktop devices. 

With Citrix NetScaler ADC we can centralize desktop application management for everything.

For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end. 

It mobilizes everything in and out, leading over bandwidth and manages all of the applications. We use it for front-end crafting.

There are a lot of features. It has to keep up with the demands of the network for complete file management. Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation. 

More than five years.

Rules configuration is the key issue for stability. We can get a lot of rule-based configuration and risk management tools with the platform.

Scalability is really cool because NetScaler isn't tied to any complexity or hard time model. It creates a delivery unit and every platform uses it.

Citrix NetScaler ADC is really flexible. We have lots of customers using it. We have banking, financial, software, themes, energy companies, etc. using it. We have from ten to 100+ clients deployed with Citrix NetScaler ADC. 

Technical support from Citrix is pretty good and they respond pretty fast, but the issue is that when we have some configurations that are problematic, they don't always know how to fix them.

When we integrate Citrix NetScaler with an app or desktop, the technical support from Citrix doesn't know how to configure NetScaler. They don't collaborate well. Their communication is sometimes lacking. They speak too fast. Overall, though, Citrix provides good support.

We started as a Citrix client at first. We used NetScaler in the very beginning. For a long time, we have only used this one product.

The installation and deployment of Citrix NetScaler ADC are easier than the competitors. It is not complex. It can be complex, but you can decide to make it not complex. 

The deployments for each project depends on customer requirements. Some take one month, others resolve in two to four months.

For the deployment of Citrix NetScaler ADC, about two or three people is enough. Wiring is simple but the hard part is the orchestration. 

We completed the integration by ourselves.

Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much. 

If NetScaler is broken, we can open tickets very quickly and request shipment for the new unit or a spare part replacement.

Citrix NetScaler already has tons of features, already too many. We want any new advanced features that they release. One thing that scares me is that with existing products, Citrix does not have detailed documentation ready before they release. Otherwise, it would be better. From my experience, when Citrix launches something new there are a lot of bugs, a lot of errors, required patches, and no documentation. You have to get help. 

Citrix needs to create better documentation. Sometimes when I enable NetScaler, it makes the box crash randomly. I have to wait for three or four release cycles to fix it. The introduction of new features from Citrix for NetScaler always has a lot of problems. 

I would rate Citrix NetScaler eight or nine out of 10. To make the product better, Citrix needs to provide full documentation for each user with video tutorials. Configuration scenarios and demos would also be helpful. We have a lot of customer demand for this better documentation and setting up Citrix NetScaler is really complicated.

From a NetScaler perspective, in terms of LTM, not GSLB, NetScasler has performed very well. In comparison to F5, it holds its own.

For some of my deployments, NetScaler has been strictly a replacement to get something new in. It was cheaper than F5. We took a chance on it. The return on investment is the fact that we spent less money on it. It does do its job and it holds well against F5.

I can turn on features without actually owning a license. I can test them out, I can use them for a while, and then I can be licensed up. That's awesome. I don't have to have a license immediately before I can start to deploy things rapidly, rapid deployment is a plus.

When I compare it to F5 from a hardware or software perspective, they both have their glitches. From a software perspective, either one is not without code bugs.

From an SDX perspective, having the ability to spin up a VPX, the way we spin up our regular features, quickly and have a 60-day trial while we spin up VPXs will give us the opportunity to do more proof of concept work quickly without having to buy the license and download the VPX. A feature like this would be helpful. 

I would also like to have video tutorials so that when you click the help link, you have the option to go to the Citrix forum and get information and help from other people and other users. Something that points you out to a tutorial video link that is a general overview. 

I liked the fact that is NetScaler out-of-the-box is intuitive. You can catch on fairly quickly. Especially when you're doing an advanced alert. You cannot do a re-direct quickly without going through some documentation and if nobody's done it before, they don't know what you're talking about. That is when a help link would be useful that could direct you to the right tutorial video and then it could point you directly after that video to further direction and explanation. Straight to the meat of things. Something like a quick video tip tutorial would be great. Whereas if you're an F5 customer, you don't get something like this and you do have DevCentral that you can go to get information, but it requires you to read through many documents and comb through trying to configure something that is complex. They should deliver the information quickly to end users to make it even faster and more efficient to deliver our own applications and services to customers.

Video files can be large, they don't necessarily have to be on the box itself, but even through a link that quickly goes to their website or YouTube, whatever platform, could work. 

I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement. 

It has high stability. I deployed these in hospitals where lives matter. The contention was whether or not to go with F5 because it's the leader in the marketplace and they have 70% of the market shares. Even though NetScaler is big, it still doesn't hold the fair market share. NetScaler is the underdog but it is very stable. I've seen it in hospital environments where lives matter, it's held its own, it does what it says it's going to do and it does it well. It's certainly a top contender, if not an equal contender with its counterpart, F5. 

Scalability is very impressive. The way it works is that you can collapse everything on to a couple of platforms, small, medium, and large. The small one is obviously an initial buy-in. The mid one is fairly powerful and is bigger than an 8920. You are limited on the hardware. You get 64 and you get 32 out of the box, which is what you paid for but you can license up the 64. On the other platform, you can start off at 32 with the initial buy-in and then license up from there for a max of around 256 gig. The way they have it is that you are locked in from a hardware perspective.

Their technical support is decent. It could use some improvement. Help desks and technical support are good but you can tell that there's been turnover. We'll have complex issues that we're trying to work through and we would like somebody who's more experienced and not somebody who had just gone through training. Employee retention on the help desk would go a long way. 

NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper.

There was some trepidation regarding the initial setup because it's new equipment and nobody has had training for it. We were able to figure it out and stand it up. It took some reading and some calls to tech support, but they were helpful when we were first setting it up.

There are the regular license costs and you also have to pay for licenses if you want more DPXs or whatever. A standard DPX is fairly cheap. It's around $7,000. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten because nobody is a ten. I would give it a nine if it was a little easier to pick up. Out of the box it's easy. Anybody who's an engineer can usually pick it up or if they've had previous load balancing experience, it's easy. Obviously, not everybody has that kind of experience. 

Our primary use case is for proxy firewalling. 

In South Africa, we're going through load-shedding. When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working.

We incorporated all three because of the fact that we have one central proxy server and everything's on an SDN, so we can get any device anywhere anytime.

Security could be improved because then I can get rid of my Cisco firewalls. If they improve the security then I could run my security, my proxy, my firewalling and my SDN solution on one device instead of having to have multiple devices.

We have 55,000 people around the country and we have plans to roll the solution out worldwide.

The initial setup was complex because we've got different applications so the firewalling needs to be done properly and then we actually do IP subnet changes at certain times. We decided to go to all sites. We did a subnet change on all sites and then we deployed NetScaler. We did the head office first and then we went site by site.

Deployment between nine sites around the country took about four weeks. 

We only require one person for maintenance. Deployment took three people. 

The standard licensing fees work in the way that you get one license with it for whatever you're going to be utilizing it for. We integrated the firewall, the proxy services, and the SDN.

We also looked at FortiGate and Palo Alto. 

The advice I would give somebody researching this solution is to do your research properly and see what's the best solution for the company and the company's needs before you make a decision. You can't just randomly pick a device. You have to do your investigations first. Put in proof of concepts, speak to your seniors. You must tell them what exactly is your company requirements and which device is going to suit those requirements the best.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.