Low-touch onboarding of NetScaler instances using NetScaler ADM service connect
As your hybrid multi-cloud (HMC) infrastructure grows, the challenges to manage, monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot ADC instances become multifold. A centralized controller providing visibility into your complete infrastructure and all the applications running on it becomes the need of the hour.
In today’s world, onboarding your instances to a central controller needs to be done in a fast, easy, and low-touch manner. Keeping this need in mind, NetScaler ADM launches a new onboarding workflow, which provides you a faster way to get complete visibility into your HMC deployment.
Overview: components of NetScaler ADM onboarding workflow
The building blocks of this workflow are two ADC-side components: ADC service connect and Call Home.
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NetScaler ADM connect: it is a new feature in ADC that helps enable seamless onboarding of NetScaler instances onto NetScaler ADM. This feature lets the NetScaler instance automatically connect with NetScaler ADM and send system, usage, and telemetry data to NetScaler ADM. Based on this data, the NetScaler ADM gives you insights and recommendations on your NetScaler infrastructure. Such as quick identification of performance issues, high resource usage, and critical errors.
NetScaler ADM connect is available on the following ADC versions:
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NetScaler MPX and VPX image version 12.1 57.18 and later and 13.0 61.48 and later. For more information, see Introduction to NetScaler ADM connect for NetScaler appliances.
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NetScaler SDX version image 12.1 58.14 and later and 13.0 61.48 and later. For more information, see Introduction to NetScaler ADM connect for NetScaler SDX appliances.
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Call Home: it is an existing feature in ADC, which periodically monitors the instances and automatically uploads data to the Citrix technical support server. For more details, see Call Home. The data collected by Call Home is also routed to NetScaler ADM to enable this new workflow.
All ADC instances with internet connectivity or Call Home, or instances enabled with NetScaler ADM connect are connected to NetScaler ADM. NetScaler ADM starts collecting relevant metrics from these ADC instances through Call Home route, NetScaler ADM connect route, or both. For more information, see Data governance for MPX and VPX instances and Data governance for SDX instances.
Using this data, NetScaler ADM creates an inventory of ADC instances for every customer (unique org ID), which shows you a consolidated list of your ADC instances. NetScaler ADM also uses this data to create insights on your ADC and Gateway instances, which give meaningful insights into your HMC deployments, identifies issues, and recommends actions to mitigate the issues. Before you can mitigate the issues, you must onboard the ADC instances to NetScaler ADM. You can check Select ADC and Gateway instances to onboard and select the ADC instances you want to onboard to NetScaler ADM. After you start, you are guided to the onboarding process.
The auto-onboarding process uses NetScaler ADM connect, which makes the experience automated, seamless, and faster. For ADC instances on versions that do not support NetScaler ADM connect and auto-onboarding, NetScaler ADM provides use script-based onboarding, which is a semi-automated process.
Notes
The auto and script-based onboarding use a built-in agent. However, this workflow also gives you the flexibility to use an external agent for onboarding. You can use the external agent-based onboarding if you want to use pooled licensing or the complete analytics suite in NetScaler ADM. Or if you want both use pooled licensing and the complete analytics suite. The built-in agent supports only management and monitoring.
The metrics collected by ADM Service Connect are directly sent to the ADM Service endpoint. Even if the ADC is a managed/discovered ADC on ADM Service and an external agent has been configured for that ADC, the metrics are sent directly from ADC to the ADM Service endpoint and are not routed through through the external agent.
A quick tour of onboarding
Your first touchpoint in the onboarding journey is a product-initiated email. Here’s a quick tour of the onboarding journey:
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A NetScaler product-initiated email: You receive an email from NetScaler ADM showing some key insights of your ADC infrastructure and inviting you to get started with NetScaler ADM. Click Onboard to ADM Service in the email. The Citrix Cloud page appears.
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In the Citrix Cloud login page:
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If you are an existing Citrix Cloud customer, sign in to Citrix Cloud using your credentials of Citrix.com, My Citrix, or Citrix Cloud.
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If you are not an existing Citrix Cloud customer, sign up to Citrix Cloud. For more information, see Signing Up for Citrix Cloud.
Notes
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If you are part of multiple Org IDs and one of the Org IDs is in Citrix Cloud, sign in using your existing credentials. Then, complete the onboarding workflow for the new Org ID.
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You can enable or disable the email notifications that you receive as part of ADM Service Connect based low-touch onboarding workflow. For more information, see Email Settings.
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NetScaler ADM welcome page: You get an overview of NetScaler ADM and its benefits.
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Insights on your ADC and Gateway instances: You get detailed insights into your overall ADC infrastructure including security advisory (advice on current NetScaler CVEs), upgrade advisory (advice based on EOM/EOL timelines), key metrics, trends, and highlights the issues affecting ADC performance and health and recommends way to mitigate the issues.
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Select ADC and Gateway instances to onboard: You get a consolidated view of your ADC inventory. You can select which ADC instances you want to onboard to NetScaler ADM.
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Onboard ADC instances to NetScaler ADM: Based on the ADC instances selected for onboarding, NetScaler ADM guides you with the onboarding process. By default, the built-in agent is selected for auto-onboarding.
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NetScaler ADM GUI dashboard: After onboarding completes, you are guided to the NetScaler ADM instance dashboard.
For more details on each of these onboarding methods, see Onboard NetScaler instances using NetScaler ADM connect.