Product Documentation
ADC
14.1 - Current Release 13.1 13.0 12.1
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Before you begin

November 22, 2021
Contributed by: 
S C

Before you start the upgrade or downgrade process, make sure you check the following:

  • Time allocated for upgrading Citrix ADC appliances. Follow your organization’s change control procedure. Allocate twice as much time to perform the upgrades. Allocate enough time to upgrade each of the Citrix ADC appliance.
  • Evaluate your organization’s support agreement. Document appliance serial number, support agreement, and contacts details for support from Citrix Technical Support or the Citrix Authorized Partner.
  • The licensing framework and types of licenses. A software edition upgrade might require new licenses, such as:
    • upgrading from the standard edition to the advanced edition, or
    • the standard edition to the Premium edition, or
    • the advanced edition to the Premium edition.

    Existing Citrix ADC licenses continue to work when you upgrade to version 13.0. For more information, see Licensing

  • Check for New and deprecated commands, parameters, and SNMP OIDs.
  • Check for Citrix ADC MPX Hardware and Software Compatibility Matrix.
  • If the Citrix ADC Gateway logon page is customized, then make sure that the UI theme is set to default.
  • If you are upgrading LOM, review the LOM Firmware Upgrade page.

  • Download the Citrix ADC firmware from the Citrix ADC Downloads. For the detailed steps to download the Citrix ADC firmware, see the Download a Citrix ADC release package.

  • Back up files. Perform a backup of the configuration file, customization file, certificates, monitor scripts, license files, and so on either manually or refer to the following documentation for back-up using Citrix ADC CLI or GUI - Backup and restore.

    • Refer to the following list for additional common customized files for back up.
      • /nsconfig/monitors/*.pl
      • /nsconfig/htmlinjection/*
      • /nsconfig/rc.netscaler
    • Back up the customization folder. This is usually under /var/customizations. An example of customization is a logon page with a logo. After you have copied the customizations folder, you have to delete it from the Citrix ADC appliance, before you upgrade the appliance. Upgrading with customization in place might cause some issues.

    Important: Citrix highly recommends reviewing the above backup procedures. Have an action plan in the event the update does not complete on the Citrix ADC appliance.

  • Verify that there is adequate space in the /var and /flash directory for the Citrix ADC appliance before performing an upgrade. The /var requires 5 GB of free space (1 GB for the upgrade bundle + 4 GB for the upgrade process) The /flash requires enough space to copy over the new kernel, which differs between 140MB to 160MB approximately, ensure that there is atleast 250 MB free space available. For more information on clearing out the disk space in /var see, How to free space on /var directory for logging issues with a Citrix ADC appliance. For more information on clearing out the disk spaces in /flash see, https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX133587.

  • Validate the integrity of the Citrix ADC appliance. If you have a Citrix ADC hardware appliance, Citrix highly recommends running fsck for running a disk check and validating the integrity of the Citrix ADC hard drive. In the event of an error, reset the hard disk drive and repeating the disk check command. If the error message reappears, contact Citrix Support to further investigate the issue.

    • Validate the disk integrity of the hard drive using fsck command. For more information, see CTX122845.

    • Validate the integrity of Citrix ADC appliance using the diagnostic bundles files and uploading the logs to Citrix Insight Service for analysis. For more information, see How to collect a technical support bundle.

  • Check the Citrix ADC VPX Support matrix and usage guidelines.

  • Check the FAQ section.

  • It is a best practice to upgrade to one major release at a time. Do not upgrade directly to the latest version.

    For example, if the Citrix ADC appliance is on release 12.0, and you want to upgrade to release 13.0, you must upgrade the appliance to release 12.1 first, and then to release 13.0.

  • Verify the upgrading procedures with a test environment.

For more information about prerequisites for upgrading or downgrading the Citrix ADC appliance, see these support articles:

Before you begin
November 22, 2021
Contributed by: 
S C
November 22, 2021
Contributed by: 
S C

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