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