Citrix NetScaler

Citrix® NetScaler® web application delivery solutions are purpose built appliances that accelerate application performance up to five times, while simultaneously reducing datacenter costs. They provide visibility into the end-user application experience and comprehensive web application security in concert with advanced traffic management. NetScaler, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, is an ideal solution for any enterprise seeking accelerated Web application performance, improved web application security and increased application availability.

NetScaler combines the features and functions of traditional data center point products – load balancing, caching, compression, SSL acceleration, attack defence, SSL VPN - into a single network appliance, built from the ground up to maximise the performance of applications.

Citrix Virtual NetScaler – Welcome to VPX

Small and medium-size businesses can now cost effectively deploy full NetScaler functionality in front of Web-based applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Office Communication Server. NetScaler VPX makes it easy to deploy the same advanced load balancing, application security and application acceleration functionality enterprises rely on, but sized specifically for the needs of smaller organisations. The net result is faster response times and less application downtime.

Smaller XenApp and XenDesktop deployments can now benefit from the same integrated secure remote access, global server load balancing and load balancing for Web Interface and XML broker that NetScaler appliances provide, and run it using the same server infrastructure used to run XenApp itself.

NetScaler VPX can be easily incorporated into development and lab environments, making it easy to integrate NetScaler load balancing, application acceleration and application security functionality into application development and test cycles. Development teams can easily tap all of NetScaler’s advanced functionality, and by making it easy to include NetScaler in test cycles there is less likelihood of application and network conflicts when new applications are rolled out.

Service providers, cloud providers or any organisation that host web applications can provision and de-provision NetScaler VPX instances on demand, using general datacenter capacity and automation processes already in place. Infrastructure reuse is increased, datacenter footprints are reduced, and new hosting needs are met faster.

Converging virtualisation and web application delivery

In addition to supporting datacenters relying upon virtualised server and application resources, NetScaler VPX enables Web application load balancing, acceleration, security and offload to become virtualised services that can be easily deployed on-demand anywhere in the datacenter. Web applications and their associated Web application delivery services are brought closer together, and established datacenter processes for tasks such as provisioning, automation and charge-back can be used for the Web application delivery infrastructure.

NetScaler VPX can be incorporated within larger automation/orchestration solutions using Citrix Workflow Studio or orchestration solutions from Citrix partners, enabling organisations to provision load balancing and advanced web application delivery services on-the-fly as application instances themselves are spun up.

Citrix NetScaler MPX

High-performance Web application delivery solutions

Citrix NetScaler appliances are Web application delivery solutions that dramatically enhance datacenter efficiencies to reduce the cost of delivering applications, while ensuring server availability, accelerating application performance and protecting resources from application-layer attacks. MPX series appliances are built on the most advanced NetScaler platform architecture ever. With a sophisticated multi-processing system architecture offering up to eight CPU cores, 32 GB of memory, state-of-the-art high-speed serial interconnect, and a highly optimised packet processing engine, MPX delivers industry-leading performance and scalability.

The MPX-series includes two models: MPX-15000 and MPX-17000 models. Both appliance models support all three NetScaler software editions, including Standard, Enterprise, and Platinum Editions and provides for the maximum simultaneous use of all functional modules included in each edition.

With multiple 10GE fiber ports, MPX is perfect for large-scale datacenters using the most advanced infrastructure architectures.

As with all NetScaler platforms MPX is fully compatible with NetScaler Command Center for centralised configuration and control of multiple MPX appliance installations. MPX also leverages NetScaler’s AppExpert Visual Policy Builder for simplified policy generation without the need for coding.

Industry-leading 15 GE performance

NetScaler MPX appliances deliver the performance and scalability demanded by the next generation of web applications. The MPX architecture has the capacity to manage more than 15 Gbps of traffic - at both layer 4 and layer 7. And it’s not just throughput. Fast application performance also demands an infrastructure supporting very high connection rates, as well as having the ability to handle massive amounts of compressed and encrypted traffic. Whatever the performance metric, NetScaler MPX appliances meet the needs of the world’s largest, most demanding applications.

Application acceleration

The MPX-series supports numerous fully standardised techniques including compression, TCP optimisation, and in-memory caching to speed the delivery of content to users worldwide over potentially high-latency and congested networks. Such metrics as response times and page download rates can be accelerated more than five times.

Key Benefits Leading L4 and L7 performance of 15+ Gbps throughput at both Layer 4 and Layer 7 Maximum feature concurrency — Supports complex polices using compression, content switching, application firewall and more — at very high performance levels Accelerates application response — Provides advanced compression, TCP optimisation, static and dynamic caching to speed application performance by up to 5x or more Integrates application security — Proven application firewall blocks attacks against web applications Improves datacenter efficiency — Accelerates compute-intensive TCP connection set-up and teardown operations, as well as SSL key generation and bulk encryption to increase server efficiency

NetScaler nCore Technology

Taking Performance to the Next Level

Citrix NetScaler nCore™ technology dramatically increases the performance and scalability of NetScaler MPX platforms at no additional cost. nCore™ technology breaks the single CPU performance barrier that limits the performance, scalability and extensibility of most Web application delivery solutions. It is a true 64-bit architecture that is built from the ground up to intelligently distribute packet flows across multiple CPU cores for high-performance parallel processing.

As Web applications become increasingly complex and demanding due to Web 2.0 trends and the proliferation of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Web application delivery solutions  will be required to provide greater levels of application availability, acceleration, security and infrastructure offload. Web application delivery solutions will need to provide L4-7 load balancing, caching, compression, application security, SSL offload and more at multi-gigabit speeds. NetScaler nCore technology delivers a 7X increase in performance and scalability and provides new levels of advanced web application delivery performance for even the most challenging web applications.

Test drive NetScaler today to see how your web infrastructure can be accelerated to the

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end user.