What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a car to flying a plane – a different experience altogether. Additional features could include better integration with community-developed scripts and APIs, making it easier for users to access and utilize these resources. Streamlining the interface and ensuring standardization would enhance usability and provide smoother integration with third-party services.

Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us.

In terms of drawbacks, finding relevant documentation for learning NetScaler can be challenging, especially for beginners who prefer a web interface over command-line interfaces. Overall, while NetScaler is a robust solution, there's room for improvement in documentation accessibility and technical support.

From an improvement perspective, the tool should be made easier in the area of the configuration capabilities that it provides to users. Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product.

In the latest version of Citrix NetScaler, there are specific improvements in the appliances, particularly in the management interfaces, which were not available in previous versions. If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful. There needs some changes in their subscription-based model.

I just hope they don't change the name again. It was challenging explaining to customers that it's no longer NetScaler but ADC, and now it's not just ADC but also the rebranding from NetScaler. When I first started working with NetScaler, it seemed a bit complex. However, with experience, I've come to appreciate its user-friendly nature, especially when you know your way around it.

The stability is good but should be enhanced. Each time a vulnerability is identified or a new release with applicable security fixes is issued, we find ourselves obligated to perform firmware upgrades as part of the remediation process. There is room for improvement in the technical support aspect. Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained.

The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager.

Pricing is one area for improvement. It's on the higher side because NetScaler is a premium product used for over 70% of internet traffic worldwide. However, price is not the only concern. Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers, who may require the assistance of experts like us to deploy and manage the product effectively. Although this is good for us as partners, it can limit the product's appeal to customers who prioritize ease of use. Moreover, having some GUI-based tools for log management and troubleshooting would be helpful and make it easier for customers to manage and troubleshoot their databases. For the future release of Citrix NetScaler, I would like to see better pricing, as well as improved manageability and log management features. Another thing is if a problem occurs, we have to rely on the central support system. We need to collect the log and send it back to support for analysis, and then Citrix support will provide the solution. It would be much easier to troubleshoot if something is handy, such as a web portal or a common platform where customers can upload logs and resolve some of the issues automatically.

I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve. Basically, I want the customer support team to be more customer friendly.

Citrix NetScaler has been recently acquired by another company and the support has been negatively impacted, the solution is at its end of life. The support for the solution could improve. The sales team needs to be improved.

We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution. This solution carries a high price point, which we would like to see some reduction in.

The SLB could be better, and they should improve it. We want to see REST proxy and WAF capabilities in the next release.

We would like the licensing model for this product to be improved, as it isn't currently very transparent. There isn't a standard package available, and each extra feature creates an additional cost.

Citrix can improve their quality assurance by ironing out security vulnerabilities before releasing upgrades. They are quite proactive in identifying vulnerabilities, but it would be helpful if they could identify them prior to release. The support on the ADCs isn't that great and there's a lot of work required with upgrading plant environments because of security vulnerabilities that come to light. I'd also like to see some improvement on the monitoring side. Things are better than they were but the interface can be a little cumbersome sometimes. It's not always easy to get the information that you're looking for.

Overall the price of Citrix ADC could be more competitive.

Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit.

When it comes to all Citrix products, price is an issue, because all their products are complete solutions. They have all the characteristics that our clients require, but it almost falls down when we are competing with less expensive solutions. In Ecuador, people don't just rely on the functionalities of a solution, the price point is very important, even though they know that Citrix is a better product. I'd like to see a different licensing model that would take all that into account.

The stability of Citrix ADC needs to be improved. The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner.

The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though.

An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to. I would also like to see virtualization of the ad systems in the next release.

The solution could be more secure.

It would be ideal if there were more integration capabilities. That's something that could improve. Technical support could be improved. The solution could offer a higher level of security.

Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features.

Citrix ADC is a complex product, and it takes time to understand these things. But the documentation is poor, and the deployment is difficult. Integration could also be better because what I find is that you cannot easily integrate the panel in the second sector. What I have found is that in the last index, there is a limitation when getting validated. Technical support could also be better.

It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus.

We are looking for some in-depth monitoring and analytics and more information that Citrix Director doesn't provide. ControlUp has insights that not only give you an overview but also allow you to do some drill-down troubleshooting for what's going on in your environment. We are looking for some more analytical and monitoring data to be able to monitor the environment better, not only from an application standpoint but also from the standpoint of the infrastructure to everything it sits on. They can provide more data to the administrators about what's going on within the application. They can provide data not only on the application side but also about what the application sits on. They're making strides with Citrix Analytics in regards to that.

Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information.

The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated.

The multi-tenancy isn't ideal. The solution should be able to scale more effectively than it does. Technical support could be improved upon. Recently, we tried to configure AAA authentification and we ran into some issues using the web-based GUI. When you are on the console it works, however, when you're on the web-based version when you log in with your AAA credentials, it's very very slow. That is something that we're beginning to see and something they need to address.

They can improve the scalability and the multi-tenancy feature. We recently tried to configure an authentication, and we ran into some issues while using the web-based GUI. It was very slow when you log in with your credentials in the web-based GUI. Each time we clicked on the menu, it tried to do the authentication. It works properly in the console.

The licensing model that Citrix employs need to be improved. There are specific features that we like but are not available at our licensing level. There are certain features that are very useful and Citrix makes you pay a bit more for them. I think that they should be included as default features. In the next release, I would like to have the ability to inspect the SSL payload. It should be included by default.

The security is okay, but the monitoring and reporting need improvement. The price can be reduced. Our customers have compared the pricing and have indicated that there is a big difference compared to others, so it should be more competitive.

ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use. In terms of the GUI's functionalities, it responds to our needs. I don't see a need for improvement for that.

The solution has too many bugs in the software and it's always difficult when you need to update. If you have bugs in one firmware and you fix them and then update, sometimes it doesn't work in the correct way. Even when there are new feature releases, the problems are not always solved. Instability is an issue. The product also offers a lot of features that are not necessary, you don't need them. Bug fixing is a problem in this solution and they should consider focusing on that in any future release.

The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use. In the next release, I would like to see more firewall policy support.

I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises.

Bugs in the software have had an impact on us. Better quality control or quality assurance would be an improvement. Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good.

I think the documentation should be improved - there should be more documentation. In the next release, I would like to see more analytics, better dashboards, and some management monitoring tools.

We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process is complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement.

The solution is a bit more expensive than some of the available solutions in this region. One solution in particular that I noticed was cheaper was Kemp.

I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security.

There are a lot of features. It has to keep up with the demands of the network for complete file management. Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation.

At the current time, the solution is not missing any features that I would like to have implemented.

They need to implement and integrate security solutions. Specifically, a web application firewall.

From an SDX perspective, having the ability to spin up a VPX, the way we spin up our regular features, quickly and have a 60-day trial while we spin up VPXs will give us the opportunity to do more proof of concept work quickly without having to buy the license and download the VPX. A feature like this would be helpful. I would also like to have video tutorials so that when you click the help link, you have the option to go to the Citrix forum and get information and help from other people and other users. Something that points you out to a tutorial video link that is a general overview. I liked the fact that is NetScaler out-of-the-box is intuitive. You can catch on fairly quickly. Especially when you're doing an advanced alert. You cannot do a re-direct quickly without going through some documentation and if nobody's done it before, they don't know what you're talking about. That is when a help link would be useful that could direct you to the right tutorial video and then it could point you directly after that video to further direction and explanation. Straight to the meat of things. Something like a quick video tip tutorial would be great. Whereas if you're an F5 customer, you don't get something like this and you do have DevCentral that you can go to get information, but it requires you to read through many documents and comb through trying to configure something that is complex. They should deliver the information quickly to end users to make it even faster and more efficient to deliver our own applications and services to customers. Video files can be large, they don't necessarily have to be on the box itself, but even through a link that quickly goes to their website or YouTube, whatever platform, could work. I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement.

The technical support has room for improvement.

Occasionally, our admin has to use the command line. If they could only use the Web GUI it would be better.

It is difficult to customize. It is more difficult to customize than F5, for example. They have custom iRules that you can write for customized situations. I would like to see more integration for single sign-on on the Citrix side. F5 has done a lot of work on single sign-on capabilities, and it seems that NetScaler might be lacking a bit compared to F5.

It should offer more flexible cost-effective licensing for small to medium sized organizations i.e. a pooled licensing option on entry level MPXs like 5901s.

The customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified. There is one other thing that I would like to address. In every release - and it doesn't matter if it's a minor release or a major release - they keep moving things around and they keep changing the mechanism. So certain things can work in one version one way, and everything works really well, then when you upgrade it to the next version, it breaks everything because they have a new way of doing it. I don't know what can be done in that regard. I have seen it many times: A solution is working fine and then, all of a sudden, you upgrade and bam, now you have to redo everything a different way. In addition, if they could make the following improvement they would push out more NetScaler. The industry needs to know, or people need to know that NetScaler is not designed just for Citrix products like XenApp and XenDesktop, it can be utilized for everything. Other than that, the core of the product, or the engine, fits really well. It works well, it's doing really well so I don't see any improvements that are required there.

The policies on the NetScaler can be a bit tricky at times.

Development team's response time could be better.

Some configuration processes like disabling LB VIPs, automatically disabling the IPs used.

We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers.