ADC

Where does a Citrix ADC appliance fit in the network?

September 14, 2021

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A Citrix ADC appliance resides between the clients and the servers, so that client requests and server responses pass through it. In a typical installation, virtual servers configured on the appliance provide connection points that clients use to access the applications behind the appliance. In this case, the appliance owns public IP addresses that are associated with its virtual servers, while the real servers are isolated in a private network. It is also possible to operate the appliance in a transparent mode as an L2 bridge or L3 router, or even to combine aspects of these and other modes.

Physical deployment modes

A Citrix ADC appliance logically residing between clients and servers can be deployed in either of two physical modes: inline and one-arm. In inline mode, multiple network interfaces are connected to different Ethernet segments, and the appliance is placed between the clients and the servers. The appliance has a separate network interface to each client network and a separate network interface to each server network. The appliance and the servers can exist on different subnets in this configuration. It is possible for the servers to be in a public network and the clients to directly access the servers through the appliance, with the appliance transparently applying the L4-L7 features. Usually, virtual servers (described later) are configured to provide an abstraction of the real servers. The following figure shows a typical inline deployment.

Figure 1. Inline Deployment

In one-arm mode, only one network interface of the appliance is connected to an Ethernet segment. The appliance in this case does not isolate the client and server sides of the network, but provides access to applications through configured virtual servers. One-arm mode can simplify network changes needed for Citrix ADC installation in some environments.

For examples of inline (two-arm) and one-arm deployment, see Understanding Common Network Topologies.

Citrix ADC as an L2 device

A Citrix ADC appliance functioning as an L2 device is said to operate in L2 mode. In L2 mode, the ADC appliance forwards packets between network interfaces when all of the following conditions are met:

The packets are destined to another device’s media access control (MAC) address.
The destination MAC address is on a different network interface.
The network interface is a member of the same virtual LAN (VLAN).

By default, all network interfaces are members of a pre-defined VLAN, VLAN 1. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests and responses are forwarded to all network interfaces that are members of the same VLAN. To avoid bridging loops, L2 mode must be disabled if another L2 device is working in parallel with the Citrix ADC appliance.

For information about how the L2 and L3 modes interact, see Packet forwarding modes.

For information about configuring L2 mode, see the “Enable and disable layer 2 mode” section in Packet forwarding modes.

Citrix ADC as a packet forwarding device

A Citrix ADC appliance can function as a packet forwarding device, and this mode of operation is called L3 mode. With L3 mode enabled, the appliance forwards any received unicast packets that are destined for an IP address that does not belong to the appliance, if there is a route to the destination. The appliance can also route packets between VLANs.

In both modes of operation, L2 and L3, the appliance generally drops packets that are in:

Multicast frames
Unknown protocol frames destined for an appliance’s MAC address (non-IP and non-ARP)
Spanning Tree protocol (unless BridgeBPDUs is ON)

For information about how the L2 and L3 modes interact, see Packet forwarding modes.

For information about configuring the L3 mode, see Packet forwarding modes.

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