by Marius Sandbu, CTP, Norway CUGC

Citrix recently released a new firmware version for NetScaler in Microsoft Azure. This is still a custom build because of the limitations that are in place in Azure. So for those that want to upgrade their existing NetScaler appliances in Azure they can get the updated version from here –> https://www.citrix.com/downloads/netscaler-adc/components/netscaler-for-azure.html

For those that wish to deploy NetScaler in Azure based upon the new build, this is now available from the Microsoft Azure marketplace. There are some things that are important to know, when searching for NetScaler in the marketplace, two options will appear. 

The first option that shows up, is still running the old build which is based upon 10.5 51.1048.e. This can still be deployed either using the older provisioning model ASM  and the new standard ARM (Azure Resource Manager) and it can be updated to the latest version by downloading the firmware update from Citrix. The second option, is based upon the latest firmware running build 11. 65.31 but this option can now only be deployed using ARM, where most resources will be deployed today. 

NOTE: For those using XenDesktop integration with Azure this still uses ASM, so existing resources should be deployed using the same model. 

If you are thinking about deploying NetScaler in Azure, be sure to take note of the limitations which can be found here –> http://docs.citrix.com/en-us/netscaler/11/getting-started-with-vpx/deploy-vpx-on-azure.html