Why no Snaphot feat. on NetScaler like on AG? – #Citrix, #NetScaler
Ok, I had the “pleasure” to be working with an Access Gateway setup a little while ago… and I don’t know if I should actually say that it was a pleasure when I all did was missing the NetScaler.
But there is one feature that Access Gateway has that NetScaler doesn’t that I like and see a need for; Snapshots!
Why hasn’t Citrix build the same EASY way to make a snapshot of a config on NetScaler??? This would simplify things a lot from a change management point of view. You could of course make this happen yourself but need to be savvy and it’s hazzle… It would also ensure that admins that aren’t hardcore NetScaler nerds actually could get some confidence to change stuff and have a back out plan to revert to a previous snapshot if something goes wrong.
And the great thing about a snapshot is that it represents all the Access Gateway settings, licenses, and certificates at a specific time. If you have multiple software versions installed on Access Gateway, you can have snapshots that span the different software versions. Imagine if there was a button you could press to do that done on the NetScaler!
Video of how it works: How To: Take and Restore Snapshots on Citrix Access Gateway 5.0
Creating Snapshots to Manage Access Gateway Configuration Settings
I think that this will be a good thing to add now when more shops will setup Access Gateway Enterprise on NetScaler and only use it for just that…especially now when it’s also going End of Life (EOL).
Citrix: Please make this happen! 😉
//Richard
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The IT Melting Pot! 
Glad to hear that you like the NetScaler Access Gateway better Richard. The system automatically saves the last 5 configurations (Should be avaialble under “System –> Diagnostics” You will see a whole bunch of configuration actions, to diff with earlier versions, check for post-upgrade variations etc. Hope this helps.
Hi Raghu!
Thx for your comment! Sure, those are great! But what really got me writing this post was that I was talking to and assisting a person that had no experience with NetScaler what so ever. And he was used to working with Secure Gateway on Windows and some AG, and there everything is pretty “simple”, you can do everything from the GUI. He was confused with the networking part of NS (NSIP, SNIP etc.), and he also thought that setting up the AG parts with all Session and Authentication Policies and Profiles was messy. And that got me thinking that it will be kind of a big step if you’re used to working with AG and come from a Windows/XenApp world with Secure Gateway/AG…. and especially when I told him to WinSCP to upload my modified HTML files, and that he could SSH into the NS to perform and asked him about his routes and if he had SNIP’s configured etc…. and then I asked him if he had moved all certs etc. from another “Test” VPX to the Prod one.. and he then asked about if this Snapshot feature that takes backup of all “necessary” parts… and then I realised that he was not comfortable, and there will probably be many that feel the same when moving from SG/AG to NS. And that I can agree with, I for most parts tend to end up modifying your HTML files on NS and uploads certs of course, and it would be good to be able to just “backup/snapshot” all config and be able to reload it onto another box in a simple way or revert all that config to a previous state…
Cheers!
//Richard