Citrix Netscaler ADC on prem licensing.
Posted by skankboy@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 12 comments
Citrix is changing how they do licensing.
Our current on prem Citrix Netscaler ADC are suposedly permanent, but we pay yearly maintenace.
If I upgrade to any version past Sept 2025, the license switches to Freemium, and we are supposed to download a license blob off the instance, and upload it to their licensing portal to get the key.
When I do this, it says no valid entitlements.
Does anyone have any expertise on this? Been waiting on support to respond for 5 days now.
thebigshoe247@reddit
I'm in the middle of fighting with them currently over this.
I am very likely going to keep it running until.the end of my license and just migrate to RDS.
skankboy@reddit (OP)
The told me to install another (latest version) ADM server. That turned out to be not exactly what I needed. While that made it look like I was going in the right direction, it didn’t actually make the instances licensed.
What actually worked was installing the Netscaler Agent VM. After install, configure the network settings and enter the URL and Cloud Key provided from their Cloud.
Then upgrade to a version past (in my case) 13.1.59.22 and go into licensing on the Netscaler and point it at the Netscaler Agent VM that you just created. Then you can allocated your entitlement.
YMMV, what that’s eventually what worked for me. Support was useless, so I spent 3-4 trying anything and everything. Good luck.
thebigshoe247@reddit
In my case I need to upgrade my DC and XA servers, up to CU7 (last Server 2016 supported version which apparently supports LAS).
I can't call in, I can't submit tickets directly, and I my entitlements for LAS are broken. I've spent a good 3 weeks going back and forth with them and they are beyond useless. I've made up my mind -- as soon as this is resolved, I'm going to buy some 2025 RDS licenses, and learn it instead. For what I use Citrix for, it will probably be fine.
skankboy@reddit (OP)
Good luck. I’d bail too. Ridiculous
MrReed_06@reddit
They are phasing out file based licensing in two weeks.
On your last renewal they may have switched you to Citrix Universal for Hybrid Multi Cloud licenses (check your account at https://www.citrix.com/account/#/manage-licenses-tool/overview ), in this case you'll have to create a tenant to manage these licences, a netscaler cloud console linked to that tenant as well as deploy a Netscaler Agent VM in your LAN to manage licenses and instance monitoring.
Check this regarding the transition depending on your license type : https://docs.netscaler.com/en-us/citrix-adc/las-for-netscaler.html
skankboy@reddit (OP)
It appears that did switch me to the Universal license.
Thanks for the response!
MrReed_06@reddit
Be aware that while the new licenses are registered to the cloud.com tenant, you do not allocate them through that portal to your ADCs, you have to allocate them through the Netscaler Console.
This comes after you have set up the Tenant, the Netscaler Console, the NS agent VM (do not use the one included in the NS ADC, it's a lite version), and you have registered your ADCs to the console.
skankboy@reddit (OP)
Citrix; Enjoy our new, easy 42 step process for licensing.
uggh
MrReed_06@reddit
you're "lucky", there's documentation now, until 3 weeks ago it was quite barebones
skankboy@reddit (OP)
Oh jeez. No wonder support isn't responding. They have to be slammed.
MrReed_06@reddit
There's an upside to all this though, the Netscaler Console / NS Agent combo enables tons of monitoring, automation, best practices collection and remediation actions that weren't included before
skankboy@reddit (OP)
We are on 13.1. I am going to get an outside vendor to assist. I guess we may as well move up to 14.1 at this point.