30days of Citrix ADM. Day 1, Fleet management

Why? What have I been smoking? Where can I get some? What's with the service dog?

Hold on…. It is not like that. Honest. The dog analogy, service dogs help you see.

You have been selected for a training course in Citrix ADM, the goal is to provide you with enough information to be actually dangerous when talking to a customer or client. 30 days is a bit of an arbitrary number, but I am prepared to give you 2 minutes of material, can I get 2 minutes of your time?

Today is all about Fleet management.

What is ADM? Woof woof!

Citrix has a management platform that works in conjunction with its NetScaler ADC, it offers many insights into what the NetScaler sees. This is a good thing as knowledge is power after all.

Architecturally it looks like this.

Looking at the detailed diagram above, I have one NetScaler, so the term ‘Fleet Management’ does look like a bit of a stretch. That is true, however, the idea is that once you have the tool to manage one appliance it scales up to manage many. The users have their connections handled by the NetScaler, which then ensures that they are directed to the best web server for their session/service etc.

In simple terms.

it's good to know what the status of your infrastructure is before your phone starts to ring.

What does it look like when there is more than one NetScaler to look at?

A view across your estate...

You can have a table or the view above. There is then an option to drill into anything that jumps out and see more details on why it got flagged. For example, here is one:

Show me.

Here is a walk-through from Sanyukta.

Summary.

Fleet management is a really handy superpower, you want the user connections to work without issue and allow you to sell widgets by the boatload. ADM can tell when your NetScaler is having issues and then offers some pointers on what you can do to fix it.

BTW, this capability is free.

What’s not to like?