Netscaler is available in either a hardware or software based appliance.

• Hardware options, MPX and SDX include single and multi-tenant devices, in addition to FIPS compliant and high SSL throughput appliances.
• Software-based options, VPX and CPX include virtual hypervisor-based and containerized microservice offerings.

MPX: Available in burst packs and pay-as-you go grow options. Supports more than 4.5 gbps of ssl throughput. It is federal information processing standard compliant. Hardware-based application delivery appliances with a performance upto 500 Mbps–200 Gbps.

BEST FOR

• Managing web applications with multiple gigabits of traffic
• Load balancing for small enterprises
• Ultra-high performance web application security
• Flex tenancy

SDX: high-density consolidated platform that combines xen based virtualization and netscaler mpx architecture. Run as as many as 115 netscaler instances simultaneously. Delivers multiple virtual ADCs. Enables isolated and independent netscaler instances to run on single appliance. Hardware-based appliances with virtualization to consolidate up to 115 independently-managed NetScaler instances with a performance upto 200 Gbps.

Each netscaler sdx instance has separate kernel, memory and cpu, routing stack, firmware version, lifecycle independence and isolated networks and isolation for each netscaler instance on sdx. This isolation is provided by virtualization using citrix xenserver and management service called sdx service virtual machine. Each sdx instance can get upto 5 deidcated cpu cores.

BEST FOR

• Consolidating multiple physical load balancers
• Providing flexible multi-tenancy
• Service providers requiring fully isolated tenants
• Simplifying application rollouts from staging and dev environments

VPX: These run as VMs in hypervisor (xenserver, esx/esxi, linux-kvm, hyper-v) on-prem or cloud environment. Allows netscaler instances to be provisioned on demand. Software-based virtual appliances that run on widely deployed hypervisors with a performance upto 10 Mbps–100 Gbps.

Supports all mpx features except virtual mac addresses, link aggregation control protocol and vlan tagging. You can enable them on the hypervisor level if needed.

BEST FOR

• Architecting hybrid cloud infrastructures
• Cloud native application load balancing for public cloud environements
• Replace hardware based load balancers
• Utilizing NetScaler in any use case, anywhere (from development to testing to production environments).
• Architecting scalable multi-tenant infrastructures
• Attractive application delivery options for telco, enterprises and small businesses

CPX: Netscaler in a container. Built from same code base as netscaler ADC. Packaged as docker container. Provides cloud-ready ADC with consistent set of services. Allows netscaler instances to be provisioned on-demand.

NetScaler CPX is a container based NetScaler provisioned on a Linux Docker host. On the same Docker host, one or more NetScaler CPX appliance can be deployed as standalone instances running along with other containers. NetScaler CPX enables customers to leverage Docker engine capabilities and use NetScaler load balancing and traffic management features for container based applications.

When provisioning a NetScaler CPX instance on a Docker host, a virtual instance Eth0 is created by the Docker engine on the CPX instance. This Eth0 interface is directly connected to a virtual interface veth on the Docker0 bridge network. Now the Docker engine also assigns an IP address to the CPX instance in the 172.17 network. The default gateway for a CPX instance is the IP address of the Docker0 bridge, which means that any communication with the CPX instance is done through the Docker network. In other words, all incoming traffic received from the Docker0 bridge is received by the Ethernet0 interface on the NetScaler CPX instance and then processed by the NetScaler CPX packet engine.

CPX is a trimmed down version of VPX. A lot of the overhead is eliminated and fewer resources are required. For example, instead of having at least the three IP addresses that are commonly associated with the NetScaler, the NSIP, the SNIP and the VIP, CPX operates with one single IP address. Another consideration is that the administration is done only through the CLI, so no GUI is available.

BEST FOR

• Supporting containerized applications
• Migrating to a microservices architecture
• Providing developers and DevOps teams with load balancing early in the app development cycle

CPX can be hosted on any linux host and deployed in public, private or hybrid cloud.

BLX: The netscaler Blx appliance runs as a user space application in the Linux system. NetScaler BLX is provided with the following three editions, standard advanced and premium edition. The network mode of a net scalar BLX defines whether the NIC ports of the Linux host are shared or not shared with other Linux applications running on the host.

A netscalar BLX can be configured to run one of the following network modes: shared mode or dedicated mode.

When a net scale or BLX appliance is configured to run on a shared network mode. It operates with a single IP address that is used for the management and the data traffic.

When a netsclar BLX is configured to run on a dedicated network mode, the ADC owned IP addresses such as the NSIP, the SNIP and the VIP can have different IP addresses. There are no natting operations required for the BLX on the dedicated mode. The Netscaler BLX appliance will receive and respond to packets directly to the external networking device through the configured dedicated Linux nic ports.

As BLX is installed a software on linux machine, other softwares can also be installed along with BLX software.

Standard, enterprise and platinum license

Once you have come to a decision about which Netscaler edition you want, you need to decide which license you need. The license controls which features you get access to. Citrix can sometimes change the features in a license and new features also are also developed. Because of that I will recommend to take a look at the feature matrix right here. One other thing that the license also controls is the throughput. If you are in doubt how much throughput you need, you can always start low. Citrix offers a very flexible license model, that enables you to scale out when it’s needed.

See the feature matrix here and Netscaler Data sheet here

You may purchase a burst pack, which would bump your netscaler throughput for 30 days and reduce it after 30 days back to whatever your license is. Also, when you need more throughput, you just have to purchase the license and apply. Netscaler Tri-Scale clustering is a feature of platinum and enterprise editions only. Burst packs are available for MPX and SDX hardware platform models and vpx 1000 platform model only. When you install licenses with command line, you won’t be prompted to reboot. License file is stored in /nsconfig/license. You can also warm reboot your netscaler device. This will only reboot netscaler software on your netscaler device, not the whole netscaler device.