Auto-scale NetScaler on Google cloud

Auto-scale NetScaler on Google cloud based on application traffic demand

The demand for web applications, services can vary significantly. Many organizations follow the sun model with varying number of servers during day and night times.

Maintaining the correct number of NetScaler instances for the different traffic needs is key.

With autoscaling capability, you can increase or decrease NetScaler instances on a public cloud depending on the actual demand. Thus, it provides cost optimization without compromising the overall performance.

For Autoscaling, Citrix ADM collects the statistics (CPU, Memory, and throughput) from the Autoscale cluster for every minute. The statistics are evaluated against the configuration thresholds. Depending on the statistics, scale out or scale in is triggered.

This article shows a quick way to deploy NetScaler autoscaling group on Google Cloud and will automatically create the following infrastructure in Google Cloud:

• A Google Cloud Deployment Manager to create the required infrastructure that includes VPC networks, subnets, Cloud NAT, Cloud Router gateways, and firewall rules.
• An ADM Agent in the VPC to manage NetScaler instances.
• An NetScaler Autoscale group.

Prerequisites:

Citrix ADM service account Signing Up for Citrix Cloud, ADM Express

Google Cloud account Google Cloud Documentation

Steps to Deploy Autoscale on Google Cloud:

Step 1: When you log in to ADM service, Click Get Started to begin setting up the service for the first time or traverse to Infrastructure --> Instances --> Agent

click on Setup Agent.

Step 2: Choose “Smart deployment” under Select deployment type and press continue

Step 3: Choose “Google Cloud” under Select deployment Environment and press continue

Step 4: In the next screen, follow the below 6 steps to create cloud access profile.

The ADM service uses this Cloud Access Profile to access the Google Cloud account.

Click on create.

Step 5: Provide application environment and preferred data centre details.

Step 6: In Netscaler Autoscale Group Details, specify the following to Autoscale Netscaler instances in Google Cloud.

VPC Network’s Subnet CIDR - Specify a VPC network created for management, client, and server traffic. You also have option to select the existing network for server.

Deployment Type - Select either Evaluation or Production option.

VPX Express is available free to try on Google marketplace. vpx-express

Citrix NetScaler VPX product - Select licences to provision NetScaler instances.

Machine type - Select the required instance type from list.

That’s All!! Now click Create and this will deploy autoscale group on Google cloud.

Once Autoscale group is up and running, you can proceed with deploying applications via stylebooks or using NetScaler CLI commands.

Step 7:

You can access the newly created autoscale group by navigating to Networks  Autoscale on ADM dashboard, you can also modify configurations, threshold or delete an Autoscale group after they are created. When an Autoscale group is deleted, all the domains and IP addresses are deregistered from DNS and the cluster nodes are de-provisioned automatically.

Conclusion

Agility and elasticity are among the biggest drivers for enterprises to move to cloud, and Autoscaling is the preferred solution in cloud computing today.

With NetScaler autoscaling, customers in Google cloud, AWS and Azure get near unlimited NetScaler capacity on-demand, maximizing the resource utilization, and only have to pay for the actual usage, which makes it a true cost-effective cloud solution.

It’s easy and quick to deploy!!!

To know more about NetScaler autoscaling on public cloud, see the following resources:

Autoscaling NetScaler in public Cloud

Autoscale architecture for Google Cloud

Autoscale architecture for Azure

Autoscale architecture for AWS

Configuring NetScaler Autoscale