Product Documentation
Application Delivery Management
14.1 - Current Release 13.1 13.0
View PDF

Citrix ADC pooled capacity

December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

The Citrix ADC pooled capacity allows you to share bandwidth or instance licenses across different ADC form factors. For virtual CPU subscription based instances, you can share virtual CPU license across instances. Use this pooled capacity for the instances that are in the data center or public clouds. When an instance no longer requires the resources, it checks the allocated capacity back into the common pool. Reuse the released capacity to other ADC instances that need resources.

You can use pooled licensing to maximize the bandwidth utilization by ensuring the necessary bandwidth allocation to an instance and not more than its need. Increase or decrease the bandwidth allocated to an instance at run time without affecting the traffic. With the pooled capacity licenses, you can automate the instance provisioning.

How Citrix ADC pooled capacity licensing works

Citrix ADC pooled capacity has the following components:

  • Citrix ADC instances, which can be categorized into:

    • Zero-capacity hardware

    • Standalone VPX instances or CPX instances or BLX instances

  • Bandwidth pool

  • Instance pool

  • Citrix ADM configured as a license server

License-pools

Zero-capacity hardware

When managed through Citrix ADC pooled capacity, MPX and SDX instances are referred to as “zero-capacity hardware” because these instances cannot function until they check resources out of the bandwidth and instance pools. Thus, these platforms are also referred to as MPX-Z, and SDX-Z appliances.

Zero-capacity hardware requires a platform license to be able to check out bandwidth and an instance license from the common pool.

Note

Instance license subscription is not required for MPX instances. See table 1 in this page, for supported pooled capacity for MPX and SDX instances. See table 5 for license requirement for different MPX and SDX form factors.

Manage and install platform licenses

You must install a platform license manually, by using the hardware serial number or the license access code. After a platform license is installed, it is locked to the hardware and cannot be shared across Citrix ADC hardware instances on demand. However, you can manually move the platform license to another Citrix ADC hardware instance.

ADC MPX instances running the ADC software release 11.1 build 54.14 or later and ADC SDX instances running 11.1 build 58.13 or later support ADC pooled capacity. For more information, see Table 1. Supported pooled capacity for MPX and SDX instances.

Standalone Citrix ADC VPX instances

Citrix ADC VPX instances running Citrix ADC software release 11.1 Build 54.14 and later on the following hypervisors supports pooled-capacity:

  • VMware ESX 6.0

  • Citrix Hypervisor

  • Linux KVM

Citrix ADC VPX instances running Citrix ADC software release 12.0 Build 51.24 and later on the following hypervisors and cloud platforms supports pooled-capacity:

  • Microsoft Hyper-V

  • AWS

  • Microsoft Azure

  • Google Cloud

Note

To enable communication between Citrix ADM and Microsoft Azure or AWS, an IPSEC tunnel has to be configured. For more information, see Add Citrix ADC VPX Instances Deployed in Cloud to Citrix ADM. Unlike zero-capacity hardware, VPX does not require platform license. To process traffic, it must check out bandwidth and an instance license from the pool.

Standalone Citrix ADC CPX instances

Citrix ADC CPX instances deployed on a Docker host support pooled-capacity. Unlike zero-capacity hardware, CPX does not require a platform license. A single CPX instance consuming up to 1 Gbps throughput checks-out only 1 instance and no bandwidth from the license pool. For example, consider that you have 20 CPX instances with 20 Gbps bandwidth pool. If one of the CPX instances consumes 500 Mbps throughput, the bandwidth pool remains 20 Gbps for the remaining 19 CPX instances.

If the same CPX instance starts to consume 1500 Mbps throughput, the bandwidth pool has 19.5 Gbps for the remaining 19 CPX instances.

For pool licensing, you can add more bandwidth only in multiples of 10 Mbps.

Standalone Citrix ADC BLX instances

Citrix ADC BLX instances support pooled-capacity licenses. A Citrix ADC BLX instance does not require a platform license. To process traffic, a Citrix ADC BLX instance must check out bandwidth and an instance license from the pool.

Bandwidth Pool

The bandwidth pool is the total bandwidth that can be shared by Citrix ADC instances, both physical and virtual. The bandwidth pool comprises separate pools for each software edition (Standard, Advanced, and Premium). A given Citrix ADC instance cannot have bandwidth from different pools checked out concurrently. The bandwidth pool from which it can check out bandwidth depends on its software edition for which it is licensed.

Instance pool

The instance pool defines the number of VPX instances or CPX instances or BLX instances that can be managed through Citrix ADC pooled capacity or the number of VPX instances in an SDX-Z instance.

When checked out from the pool, a license unlocks the MPX-Z, SDX-Z, VPX, CPX, and BLX instance’s resources, including CPUs/PEs, SSL cores, packets per second, and bandwidth.

Note

The Management Service of an SDX-Z does not consume an instance.

Citrix ADM license server

Citrix ADC pooled capacity uses the Citrix ADM configured as a license server to manage pooled capacity licenses: bandwidth pool licenses and instance pool licenses. You can use the Citrix ADM software to manage pooled capacity licenses without an ADM license.

When checking out licenses from bandwidth and instance pool, Citrix ADC form factor and hardware model number on a zero-capacity hardware determines

  • The minimum bandwidth and the number of instances that a Citrix ADC instance must check out before being functional.

  • The maximum bandwidth and the number of instances that a Citrix ADC can check out.

  • The minimum bandwidth unit for each bandwidth check-out. The minimum bandwidth unit is the smallest unit of bandwidth that a Citrix ADC has to check out from a pool. Any check-out must be an integer multiple of the minimum bandwidth unit. For example, if the minimum bandwidth unit of a Citrix ADC is 1 Gbps, 100 Gbps can be checked out, but not 200 Mbps or 150.5 Gbps. The minimum bandwidth unit is different from the minimum bandwidth requirement. A Citrix ADC instance can only operate after it is licensed with at least the minimum bandwidth. Once the minimum bandwidth is met, the instance can check out more bandwidth with the minimum bandwidth unit.

Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 summarize the maximum bandwidth/instances, minimum bandwidth/instances, and minimum bandwidth unit for all supported Citrix ADC instances. Table 5 summarizes the license requirement for different form factors for all supported Citrix ADC instances:

Table 1. Supported pooled capacity for MPX and SDX instances

Product line Maximum bandwidth (Gbps) Minimum bandwidth (Gbps) Minimum instances Maximum instances Minimum bandwidth unit
MPX 5900Z 10 1 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 8005Z 15 5 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 8900Z 33 5 NA NA 1 Gbps
MPX 8900Z FIPS 33 5 NA NA 1 Gbps
MPX 14000Z series 100 20 NA NA 1 Gbps
MPX 14000Z 40G series 100 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 14000Z FIPS series 100 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 14000Z 40S series 100 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 15000Z series 120 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 15000Z FIPS series 120 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 15000Z 50G series 120 20 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 115XX series 42 15 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 22000Z series 120 40 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 24000Z series 150 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 25000Z 40G 200 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 25000ZA 200 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 26000Z series 200 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 26000Z 100G series 200 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
MPX 26000Z 50S series 200 100 N/A N/A 1 Gbps
SDX 8015Z 15 7 1 5 1 Gbps
SDX 8900Z 33 10 2 7 1 Gbps
SDX 115XX series 42 8 2 20 1 Gbps
SDX 14000Z series 100 10 2 25 1 Gbps
SDX 14000Z 40G series 100 10 2 25 1 Gbps
SDX 14000Z 40S series 100 20 10 25 1 Gbps
SDX 14000Z FIPS series 100 10 2 25 1 Gbps
SDX 15000Z 50G 120 10 2 (Note: 5 instances for versions lower than 13.0 47.x) 55 1 Gbps
SDX 15000Z 120 10 2 Note: 5 instances for versions lower than 13.0 47.x) 55 1 Gbps
SDX 22000Z series 120 20 20 80 1 Gbps
SDX 25000Z 40G 200 50 10 115 1 Gbps
SDX 25000ZA 200 50 10 115 1 Gbps
SDX 26000Z 100G 200 50 10 115 1 Gbps
SDX 26000Z 200 50 10 115 1 Gbps
SDX 26000Z 50S 200 50 10 115 1 Gbps
SDX 24000Z series 150 50 10 80 1 Gbps

Note

The minimum bandwidth and instances are applicable to SDX instances running the following releases and higher: 11.1 64.x, 12.0 63.x, 12.1 54.x, and 13.0 41.x.

The minimum purchase quantity is different from the minimum system requirement.

Table 2. Supported pooled capacity for CPX instances

Product line Maximum bandwidth (Gbps) Minimum bandwidth (Mbps) Minimum instances Maximum instances Minimum bandwidth unit
CPX 10 10 1 1 10 Mbps

Table 3. Supported pooled capacity for VPX instances on Hypervisors and Cloud services

Hypervisor/Cloud Service Maximum bandwidth (Gbps) Minimum bandwidth (Mbps) Minimum instances Maximum instances Minimum bandwidth unit
Citrix Hypervisor 40 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
VMware ESXI 100 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
Linux KVM 100 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
Microsoft Hyper-V 3 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
AWS 30 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
Azure 10 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps
Google Cloud 10 Gbps 10 Mbps 1 1 10 Mbps

Note

The minimum purchase quantity is different from the minimum system requirement.

Table 4. Supported pooled capacity for BLX instances

Product line Maximum bandwidth (Gbps) Minimum bandwidth (Mbps) Minimum instances Maximum instances Minimum bandwidth unit
BLX 100 10 1 1 10 Mbps

Table 5. License requirement for different form factors

Product line Zero Capacity Hardware Purchase Bandwidth & Edition Subscription Instance Subscription
MPX License required License required -
SDX License required License required License required
VPX - License required License required
CPX - - License required
BLX - License required License required
Citrix ADC pooled capacity
December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C
December 31, 2023
Contributed by: 
C

In this article

Site feedback | Your privacy choices footer linkYour Privacy Choices | Privacy and legal terms | Cookie preferences | Consent settings | docs.cloud.com
© 1999- Cloud Software Group, Inc. All rights reserved.