ADC

Deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance on Google Cloud Platform

August 20, 2024

Contributed by:

C C S

You can deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). A VPX instance in GCP enables you to take advantage of GCP cloud computing capabilities and use Citrix load balancing and traffic management features for your business needs. You can deploy VPX instances in GCP as standalone instances. Both single NIC and multi NIC configurations are supported.

Note: VPX high availability deployment is not yet supported on GCP.

Supported features

A VPX instance running in GCP supports the following features:

Load Balancing
ICA Proxy
Content Switching
AAA
Rewrite
Responder
RDP Proxy
nFactor
LDAP
VPN (CVPN/Full)
GSLB

Limitation

IPv6 is not supported

Hardware requirements

VPX instance in GCP must have minimum of 2 vCPUs and 4 GB RAM.

Prerequisites

Install the “gcloud” utility on your device. You can find the utility at this link: https://cloud.google.com/sdk/install
Download the NSVPX-GCP image from the Citrix download site.
Upload the file(for example, NSVPX-GCP-12.1-50.9_nc_64.tar.gz) to a storage bucket on Google by following the steps given at https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/uploading-objects.
Run the following command on the gcloud utility to create an image.

gcloud compute images create <IMAGE_NAME> --source-uri=gs://<STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME>/<FILE_NAME>.tar.gz --guest-os-features=MULTI_IP_SUBNET
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It might take a moment for the image to be created. After the image is created, it appears under Compute > Compute Engine in the GCP console.

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Points to note

Consider the following GCP-specific points before you begin your deployment.

After creating the instance, you cannot add or remove any network interfaces.
For a multi-NIC deployment, create separate VPC networks for each NIC. One NIC can be associated with only one network.
For a single-NIC instance the GCP console creates a network by default.
Minimum 4 VPCUs are required for an instance with more than two network interfaces.
If IP forwarding is required, you must enable IP forwarding while creating the instance and configuring the NIC.

Scenario: deploy a multi-NIC, multi-IP standalone VPX instance

This scenario illustrates how to deploy a Citrix VPX standalone instance in GCP. In this scenario, you create a standalone VPX instance with multiple NICs. The instance communicates with back-end servers (the server farm).

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Create three NICs to serve the following purposes.

NIC	Purpose	Associated with VPC network
NIC 0	Serves management traffic (Citrix ADC IP)	Management network
NIC 1	Serves client-side traffic (VIP)	Client network
NIC 2	Communicates with back-end servers (SNIP)	Back-end server network

Also, set up the required communication routes between the instance and the back-end servers, and between the instance and the external hosts on the public internet.

Summary of deployment steps

Create three VPC networks for three different NICs.
Create firewall rules for ports 22, 80, and 443
Create an instance with three NICs

Note: Create instance in the same region where you’ve created the VPC networks.

Create VPC Networks

Create three VPC networks that will be associated with management NIC, client NIC, and server NIC. To create a VPC network, log on the Google console > Networking > VPC network > Create VPC Network. Complete the required fields, as shown in the screen capture, and click Create.

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Similarly, create VPC networks for client and server-side NICs.

Note: All three VPC networks should be in the same region, which is asia-east1 in this scenario.

Create firewall rules for ports 22, 80, and 443

Create rules for SSH (port 22), HTTP (port 80), and HTTPS (port 443) for each VPC networks. For more information about firewall rules, see Firewall Rules Overview.

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Create the VPX instance

Log on to the GCP console.
Under Compute, hover over Compute Engine, and select Images.
Select the image, and click Create Instance.
Select an instance with 4 VPCUs, to support multiple NICs.
Click the networking option from Management, security, disks, networking, sole tenancy to add the additional NICs.

Note: Container image is not supported on VPX instances on GCP.
Under Networking interfaces, click the edit icon to edit the default NIC. This NIC is the management NIC.
In the Network interfaces window, under Network, select the VPC network you created for management NIC.
For the management NIC, create a static external IP address. Under the External IP list, click Create IP address.
In the Reserve a new static IP address window, add a name and description and click Reserve.
Click Add network interface to create NICs for client and server-side traffic.

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After you’ve created all the NICs, click Create to create the VPX instance.

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The instance appears under VM instances.

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Use the GCP SSH or the serial console to configure and manage the VPX instance.

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Points to note after you’ve deployed the VPX instance on GCP.

Log on to the VPX with user name nsroot and instance ID as password.
After first logon, change the default password.
For collecting tech support bundle, run the command shell /netscaler/showtech_cloud.pl instead of the customary show techsupport.

GDM templates to deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance

You can use a Citrix ADC VPX Google Deployment Manager (GDM) template to deploy a VPX instance on GCP. For details, see Citrix ADC GDM Templates.

Resources

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Deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance on Google Cloud Platform

August 20, 2024

Contributed by:

C C S

August 20, 2024

Contributed by:

C C S

Deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance on Google Cloud Platform

Supported features

Limitation

Hardware requirements

Prerequisites

Points to note

Scenario: deploy a multi-NIC, multi-IP standalone VPX instance

Summary of deployment steps

Create VPC Networks

Create firewall rules for ports 22, 80, and 443

Create the VPX instance

GDM templates to deploy a Citrix ADC VPX instance

Resources

In this article