Book Image

Mastering NetScaler VPX

By : Marius Sandbu, Andy Paul
Book Image

Mastering NetScaler VPX

By: Marius Sandbu, Andy Paul

Overview of this book

Citrix NetScaler is one of the best Application Delivery Controller products in the world. The Application Delivery Controllers are commonly used for load balancing purposes, to optimize traffic, and to perform extra security settings. This book will give you an insight into all the available features that the Citrix NetScaler appliance has to offer. The book will start with the commonly used NetScaler VPX features, such as load balancing and NetScaler Gateway functionality. Next, we cover features such as Responder, Rewrite, and the AppExpert templates, and how to configure these features. After that, you will learn more about the other available Citrix technologies that can interact with Citrix NetScaler. We also cover troubleshooting, optimizing traffic, caching, performing protection using Application Firewall, and denying HTTP DDoS attacks for web services. Finally, we will demonstrate the different configuration principles real-world Citrix NetScaler deployment scenarios.

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Mastering NetScaler VPX
Marius Sandbu | Andy Paul
Nov, 2015 | 218 pages
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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Mastering NetScaler VPX™
Mastering NetScaler VPX™
Notice
Notice
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Configuring the Standard Features of NetScaler
Configuring the Standard Features of NetScaler
The basic features
Load balancing
Configuring authentication
Configuring NetScaler AAA
Citrix Receiver™ authentication
NetScaler Gateway™
Summary
2
Using the Features of NetScaler AppExpert
Using the Features of NetScaler AppExpert
AppExpert applications and templates
HTTP Callouts
Rate limiting
Policies and expressions
Rewrite
Responder
Rewrite versus responder
Summary
3
Integration with Citrix Components
Integration with Citrix Components
NetScaler Insight Center
Authentication
Troubleshooting
CloudBridge™
Installation
The Citrix Command Center
Summary
4
Traffic Management
Traffic Management
Content switching
DNS
Global Server Load Balancing
DataStream
AppQoE
Summary
5
Tuning and Monitoring NetScaler Performances
Tuning and Monitoring NetScaler Performances
Tuning the network and virtual environment
TCP and SSL profiles
HTTP/2 and SPDY
Monitoring network traffic
Analyzing network trace files using Wireshark
Analyzing network traffic using Citrix NetScaler Insight
Summary
6
Security Features and Troubleshooting
Security Features and Troubleshooting
Management best practices for security
Security features in NetScaler
HTTP DoS protection
Access-lists
SSL settings
Admin partitions
Analyzing issues using Citrix Insight Services
Setting up AAA – authentication and authorization
Summary
7
Real-World Deployment Scenarios
Real-World Deployment Scenarios
A small PoC VDI environment
An enterprise VDI multisite environment
An enterprise VDI active-passive environment
A global web services environment
An active-active data center for application hosting
An active-passive data center for disaster recovery
Reverse proxy
Summary
Index
Index

SSL settings

In order to ensure a high level of security we need to properly configure the SSL settings on NetScaler. Over the last couple of years there have been many known vulnerabilities in the SSL protocol that could allow for man-in-the-middle attacks. These included for instance Heartbleed, Beast, and so on.

But with the growing list of known vulnerabilities, it might be difficult to get an overview in order to ensure that our services are properly configured for the highest level of security.

Ssllabs.com (https://www.ssllabs.com/) offers a free service that allows us to test our external web services for SSL configuration. It tests all of the known vulnerabilities in the SSL/TLS protocol, and also tests different ciphers and the certificate.

So a good best practice is to configure our SSL settings to get an A+ score on the ssllabs test. In order to get A+ we need to do some changes to the default SSL settings:

  • Disable SSL 3

  • Enable TLS 1.2

  • RC4 ciphers must be disabled

  • Prefer EC DH ciphers...

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