NetScaler ADC and Amazon Web Services Validated Reference Design Part 8

September 21, 2022

Author:  Luis Ugarte, Beth Pollack, Dave Potter

Continued from Part 7

Configure NetScaler ADC front end Auto Scaling in AWS

1. To create the Auto Scaling group, sign in to Citrix ADM.

    

2. Navigate to Networks > AutoScale Groups, and click Add to create the group name.

    

   

    

3. In the Site setting, click Add.

    

   

    

Create a cloud access profile

1. When creating a Site, in the Cloud Access Profile, add AWS.

    

   

    

2. Name the profile and sign in to your AWS portal. Search for the Identity and Access Management (IAM) service to manage user access and encryption keys.

    

   

    

3. In the IAM dashboard, select Roles on the left panel and search for your corresponding Citrix ADM role.

    

   

    

4. Copy the Role ARN to the clipboard.

    

   

    

5. After copying the name, go back to the Citrix ADM console and paste the name into the Role ARN text field.

    

6. To get the external ID, return to the AWS Roles dashboard, navigate to the Trust relationships tab, and copy the value from the Conditions.

    

   

    

7. In the Citrix ADM console, paste the value into the External ID field and click Create.

    

   

    

8. Select the region, and then choose the appropriate VPC network.

    

   

    

9. Move the agent from Available to Configured.

    

   

    

10. Select the corresponding Cloud Access Profile.

     

    

     

    

     

11. When loaded, move the availability zones from Available to Configured and add the corresponding tags to the AutoScale Group. Select Next to begin setting the AutoScale parameters.

     

    

     

Set the AutoScale parameters

1. When setting the AutoScale parameters, adjust the Thresholds and Parameters to the desired settings. Then click Next to begin configuring the Provision Parameters settings.

    

   

    

2. In the Provision Parameters section, select the role from the IAM Role field.

    

   

    

3. Select the appropriate NetScaler ADC product and edition.

    

   

    

4. Gather the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID from the particular instances in AWS. Input that ID in the AWS AMI ID field.

    

   

    

   

    

5. After adding the AMI ID, update the Security Groups with the appropriate groups.

    

   

    

6. To start configurations of zones 1, 2, and 3, assign the corresponding management, client, and server subnets.

    

   

    

7. Click Finish to create the configuration of this Auto Scaling group. The creation process can take up to 10-20 minutes.

    

   

    

   

    

Initialize instances in AWS

1. While the Auto Scaling group is being created, open your AWS console and navigate to the Services tab. Select the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service.

    

   

    

2. On the EC2 dashboard, select the Instances tab, and filter using the tags set within the AutoScale Group section.

    

   

    

3. When filtered, you can see the pending instance that is still being initialized.

    

   

    

4. The instances should finish initializing after they are created.

    

   

    

Monitor the Auto Scaling group events

1. After creating the Auto Scaling group, select your group and proceed to the AutoScale Group dashboard.

    

   

    

2. Filter out specific periods of time to monitor the Auto Scaling group. To gain real-time insight, change the monitoring period to Live.

    

   

    

3. Click the following datapoint presented in the graph to see any group events.

    

   

    

4. When viewing the specific live events, you can monitor the specific events of the corresponding Auto Scaling group.

    

   

    

Continued on Part 9