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VirtuallyTangle's avatar
VirtuallyTangle
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Jul 17, 2008

XenAPP With Netscaler 9000 series vs BigIP f5 V9

 

The Company I am currently working with is looking at purchasing a newer traffic management system/Load Balancer, I as the citrix lead brought up the netscaler and Networking brought up Big Ip F5, Currently we are looking at them both from the F5 And Citrix Community, for issues that either one has had from either Netscaler or Big ip. We will NOT be just using this for citrix alone and all other Traffic on the lan will have to be compatible. So I ask the Techies what Issues have you had with BigIP F5 or Netscalers working in citrix environment?

 

 

Our back end citrix environment is global, we are in 35 countries and have three main citrix farms, with most of the network traffic ending at our datacenter in the USA.

 

 

The project that has requested the change happened when we started looking at deploy thin clients to smaller sites along with rebuilding the main citrix farm to 4.5. All smaller sites will be connecting to almost strictly to published desktop so we need to meet all citrix recommenced practices to make the farm as redundant as possible.

 

 

Current load balancer for the citrix environment. Cisco Local Director, This had to be disabled because it was not able to be session persistent. so NONE

 

Current Traffic management. NIL

 

 

Questions to be asked?

 

 

Does the F5 still have issues with the infamous Citrix Black Hole?

 

 

Will the Netscaler perform just the same or better then a F5 for all other network traffic management? I have read articles from 2005-2006 range stating the Netscaler will not but I don't consider them valuable information as it is now 2008.

 

 

Does the f5 know how to compress and speed up any citrix protocols? We currently use web and PNA in our environment over port 9090. External traffic is regulated thru a juniper ssl vpn.

 

 

A Similar Post is also at Citrix's WebSite I implore anyone that has the knowledge to face off and bring up issues on their site.

 

 

http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=109&threadID=104801&tstart=0

 

 

config
design

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  • Annie_Beringer_'s avatar
    Annie_Beringer_
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 18, 2008
    Below are links to documents that should answer some of your questions and help with understanding the ins and outs of an F5/Citrix deployment. One of our field SEs will be in touch shortly to go into more detail.

     

     

    Citrix MetrFrame/Presentation Server--Application Ready Network Guide

     

     

    Located at: http://www.f5.com/solution-center/application-guides/application-ready-network-guides/

     

     

    Citrix Presentation Server (BIG-IP LTM v9.x)--Deployment Guide

     

    Citrix Presentation Server - formerly MetaFrame (FirePass v6.x)--Deployment Guide

     

     

    Both are located at: http://www.f5.com/solution-center/deployment-guides/

     

     

     

  • Annie_Beringer_'s avatar
    Annie_Beringer_
    Historic F5 Account
    Jul 18, 2008
    Right after my last post, I got a message saying that the Deployment Guide should answer your questions. It's in-depth, so I suggest reading through it, then letting us know if you have additional questions.

     

     

    Also, I moved this from the WebAccelerator Forum into the Advanced Design & Config Forum, which is more appropriate for the topic.
  • VirtuallyTangle's avatar
    VirtuallyTangle
    Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
    Jul 18, 2008
    Maybe I have read the Known Issues wrong about the Firepass and citrix but one of PDF's i found from your above post mentioned the firepass 15 times in the Application ready network guide. From reading those known issues our environment and where I need to take it in the future, the firepass would kill our citrix environment. Along with that, I know the Firepass has been tested in our environment prior and it will not work as designed. At this time I really can only say the Big-IP LTM v9x is a possible solution but without the Firepass. I have also read the deployment guide for the LTM and think this might be a solution but I am still wanting to talk to a citrix guy that has used this solution. I think i would find this talk very informative