Application Delivery Management

Upgrade a perpetual license in a NetScaler SDX to NetScaler pooled capacity

September 8, 2025

Contributed by:

C S

Important:

File based licensing system (also referred to as manually managed entitlements), traditionally used for activating various on-premises components, will be End of Life (EOL) on April 15, 2026. License Activation Service (LAS) is the next generation technology for product activations across the suite of Citrix products. LAS will be the only way to activate and license NetScaler instances after April 15, 2026, supporting NetScaler Flexed licenses (CPL/UHMC), legacy NetScaler Pooled licenses, and NetScaler Fixed term Bandwidth licenses. To remain supported, your NetScaler and NetScaler Console deployments must be on a LAS compatible version.

The minimum required NetScaler versions that are LAS compatible are:

NetScaler ADCs: 14.1 51.x, 13.1 60.x, 13.1 37.x (FIPS)

NetScaler SVM: 14.1 51.x, 13.1 60.x

NetScaler Console Service: will support LAS from early September.

All the other forms of legacy NetScaler licenses such as Pooled vCPU, CICO, perpetual will not be supported with LAS. NetScaler instances leveraging perpetual licenses without an active maintenance will become unlicensed upon upgrade to the above mentioned software versions.

LAS based licenses may not be available to customers where prohibited by law or regulations.

If you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care. Citrix may limit or suspend your Citrix Maintenance for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements don’t apply where prohibited by law or regulation.

A NetScaler SDX appliance with perpetual license can be upgraded to NetScaler Pooled Capacity license. Upgrading to NetScaler Pooled Capacity license enables you to allocate licenses from the license pool to NetScaler appliances on demand. You can also configure the ADC Pooled Capacity license for NetScaler instances configured in high availability mode.

Important

Conversion from a perpetual license to a pooled capacity license is a one-way license entitlement process. You cannot revert the pooled capacity license back to perpetual.

For upgrading the SDX appliance to NetScaler Pooled Capacity license, you must upload the SDX-Z license to the appliance.

Ensure you have the permission to add ADC instances in ADM.

To ensure that there is no impact on the current licenses, customer has to allocate the same number of instances and bandwidth that is available as part of the perpetual license.

To upgrade to NetScaler Pooled Capacity:

In a Web browser, type the IP address of the SDX appliance, such as http://192.168.100.1.
In User Name and Password fields, type the administrator credentials.
On the Welcome page, click Continue.
Upload the zero-capacity license. On the Configuration tab, navigate to System > Licenses.
On the Manage Licenses page, click Add License File.
In Licenses page, select Upload license files from a local computer and click Browse to select the zero-capacity license from your local machine. Then, click Finish.

Once the zero-capacity license is applied successfully, Pooled Licenses section appears on the Licenses page.

Note

To remove the old license file, you don’t have to reboot your SDX appliance so there is no downtime. For more help, contact NetScaler support Team.
In the Pooled licenses section, do the following:
1. In the Licensing Server Name or IP Address field, enter the license server details.
  - If you want to configure ADM server as a license server, specify ADM server’s IP address.
  - If you are using an agent to communicate with the ADM server, specify ADM agent’s IP address.
2. In the Port Number field, enter the license server port. Default value: 27000.
3. Specify User Name and Password of the licensing server.
  - For the ADM server, enter the administrator credentials.
  - For the ADM agent, enter the agent credentials.
4. Click Get Licenses.
In the Allocate Licenses window, specify the required instances and bandwidth and click Allocate.

On the Manage Licenses page, you can view the details of the license server, license edition, and the allocated instances and bandwidth from the pool.

Note

Upgrading a perpetual license to pooled capacity does not require restarting the SDX appliance.

The official version of this content is in English. Some of the Cloud Software Group documentation content is machine translated for your convenience only. Cloud Software Group has no control over machine-translated content, which may contain errors, inaccuracies or unsuitable language. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, suitability, or correctness of any translations made from the English original into any other language, or that your Cloud Software Group product or service conforms to any machine translated content, and any warranty provided under the applicable end user license agreement or terms of service, or any other agreement with Cloud Software Group, that the product or service conforms with any documentation shall not apply to the extent that such documentation has been machine translated. Cloud Software Group will not be held responsible for any damage or issues that may arise from using machine-translated content.

NetScaler Secure Deployment Guide

Upgrade a perpetual license in a NetScaler SDX to NetScaler pooled capacity

September 8, 2025

Contributed by:

C S

September 8, 2025

Contributed by:

C S

Upgrade a perpetual license in a NetScaler SDX to NetScaler pooled capacity

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