Application Delivery Management

How to create tags and assign to instances

NetScaler Application Delivery Management (ADM) now allows you to associate your Citrix Application Delivery Controller (ADC) instances with tags. A tag is a keyword or a one-word term that you can assign to an instance. The tags add some additional information about the instance. The tags can be thought of as metadata that helps describe an instance. Tags allow you to classify and search for instances based on these specific keywords. You can also assign multiple tags to a single instance.

The following use cases help you to understand how tagging of instances helps you to better monitor them.

  • Use case 1: You can create a tag to identify all instances in the United Kingdom. Here, you can create a tag with the key as “Country” and the value as “UK.” This tag helps you to search and monitor all those instances in the UK.
  • Use case 2: You want to search for instances that are in the staging environment. Here, you can create a tag with the key as “Purpose” and the value as “Staging_NS.” This tag helps you to segregate all instances that are being used in the staging environment from the instances that have client requests running through them.
  • Use case 3: Consider a situation where you want to find out the list of NetScaler instances that are in “Swindon” area in the UK and owned by you, David T. You can create tags for all these requirements and assign that to all the instances that satisfy these conditions.

To assign tags to NetScaler VPX instance:

  1. In NetScaler ADM, navigate to Infrastructure > Instances > NetScaler.

  2. Select the NetScaler VPX tab.

  3. Select the required NetScaler VPX.

  4. Click Tags.

  5. Create tags and click OK.

The Tags window that appears allows you to create your own “key-value” pairs by assigning values to every keyword that you create.

For example, the following images show a few keywords created and their values. You can add your own keywords and type a value for each keyword. Create tags

Add keywords and value

You can also add multiple tags by clicking “+.” Adding multiple and meaningful tags allows you to efficiently search for the instances.

Add multiple tags

You can add multiple values to a keyword by separating them with commas.

For example, you are assigning admin role to another coworker, Greg T. You can add his name separated by a comma. Adding multiple names helps you to search by either of the names or by both names. NetScaler ADM recognizes the comma separated values into two different values.

Add multiple values

To know more about how to search for instances based on tags, see How to search instances using values of tags and properties.

Note

You can later add new tags or delete existing tags. There is no restriction on the number of tags that you create.

How to create tags and assign to instances