CNS-203-3 Citrix NetScaler 9.2 - Basic Admin

This course is intended for system administrators or network operations personnel who configure and administer Citrix NetScaler products.

Delegates will learn how to
* Identify NetScaler hardware components and deployment scenarios.
* Deploy a NetScaler system as a network gateway device.
* Create a high-availability pair and perform synchronization and forced failover.
* Secure NetScaler communications through access control lists, authentication, authorization, and auditing.
* Create and configure system entities, service monitors, and load-balancing virtual servers.
* Optimize traffic and maintain the security of private data with the SSL offload feature.
* Describe Global Server Load Balancing architecture and concepts.
* Use classic policy expressions for content filtering and compression.
* Configure policies and actions to transform header and other elements of web traffic.
* Describe content switching and the configuration process.
* Use application templates to optimize web traffic from specific applications.
* Monitor the NetScaler system with the Dashboard, Monitoring tool, and NetScaler logs.
* Describe the NetScaler 9.3 features.

Course Outline

Introducing and deploying Citrix NetScaler

• Introduction to the NetScaler system
• Planning a NetScaler deployment
• Deployment scenarios
• NetScaler platform and product editions
• Product features
• Hardware platforms and components
• NetScaler architecture overview
• Initial NetScaler access

Networking

• NetScaler-owned IP addresses
• NetScaler modes
• Network address translation
• Virtual local area networks
• Link Aggregation
• Internet Control Message Protocol
• Path MTU discovery
• Dynamic routing support and route health injection

Configuring high availability

• Introduction to high availability
• High availability node configuration
• Propagation and synchronization
• High availability management

Securing the NetScaler system

• NetScaler system communication
• Access control lists

Configuring load balancing

• Load-balancing process
• Entity management
• Load-balancing traffic types
• Service monitoring
• Load-balancing topology, methods, and additional options
• Advanced load balancing methods
• Link load balancing
• Custom load
• Load monitor process
• Service and virtual server management
• Load Balancing Visualizer

Configuring SSL offload

• SSL and digital certificates
• SSL concepts
• SSL offload overview
• Offload performance
• SSL administration and deployment decisions
• Deployment scenarios
• Configuring SSL offload
• Creating an SSL virtual server
• Advanced SSL settings

Configuring Global Server Load Balancing

• GSLB concepts
• Metric exchange protocol
• GSLB DNS methods
• GSLB persistence
• Configuring DNS virtual servers
• GSLB configuration
• Implementing traditional GSLB, proximity-based GSLB, and GSLB failover for disaster recovery
• GSLB entity relationship
• GSLB site communication example

Using AppExpert Classic to optimize traffic

• Policy overview and basics
• Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• Expression structures
• Content filtering
• Introduction to compression

Using AppExpert for responder, rewrite, and URL transform

• Understanding the packet processing flow
• Actions
• Understanding bind points
• Using pattern sets
• Typecasting
• Rewrite, responder, and URL transformation overview
• Identifying packet processing flow
• Basic configurations: policies and actions
• Configuring rewrite actions
• Rewrite policies
• Responder actions and policies
• Configuring URL transformation

Using AppExpert for content switching

• Introduction to content switching
• Configuring content-switching virtual servers
• Rule-based policy example

Using AppExpert Advanced to optimize traffic

• Compression with advanced policy expressions
• Integrated caching
• Cache policies and cache expressions
• Graceful cache configuration changes
• Cache content groups and aging
• Content group settings
• FlashCache
• Global cache attributes
• Caching management
• AppExpert templates
• Policy-based routing

Management

• Simple Network Management Protocol
• SNMPv3
• Dashboard
• Reporting and monitoring tools
• Auditing and logging
• Configuring an auditing server
• Global auditing parameters
• Configuring auditing policies
• NetScaler log management
• Replacing a high availability node
• Upgrading as a standalone NetScaler system
• Upgrading a high availability pair
• Password recovery
• Network traffic capture using NSTCPDUMP
• TCPDUMP options and filter expressions
• Network traffic capture using NSTRACE.SH
• NSTRACE options and filter expressions

The CNS-203-2W course has an additional NetScaler 9.3 Features module with the following topics:

Citrix NetScaler 9.3 Features

• New NetScaler 9.3 Features
• AppFlow
• Branch Repeater load balancing
• Remote Desktop Protocol load balancing
• Database load balancing
• OpenCloud Bridge
• Citrix Application Firewall enhancements
• DNS Security Extensions