The document discusses integrations between Citrix Netscaler and Microsoft System Center 2012 R2. It provides an overview of System Center 2012 R2 components like Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager, and Orchestrator. It then describes specific integrations between Netscaler and these System Center components, including using Netscaler with Virtual Machine Manager for load balancing, monitoring Netscaler with the Operations Manager management pack, and automating Netscaler setup and deployment with Orchestrator runbooks.

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Netscaler & System Center
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Intro
• Marius Sandbu
marius@commaxx.no
Twitter: @msandbu
Blog: msandbu.wordpress.com
• Solution advisor / Consultant / Trainer
• Primary focus on Microsoft & Citrix technology
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Agenda
• Citrix and Microsoft better together
• What is System Center 2012 R2
• Integrations with Netscaler
• Virtual Machine Manager
• Operations Manager
• Orchestrator
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4. powered by
Citrix and Microsoft better together
• Citrix and Microsoft strategic partners for 22 years
• Primarily on application delivery market delivering XenDesktop/XenApp with
Windows Server
• A lot of integrations between XenApp and System Center/App-V
• Recently with XenDesktop and System Center & Azure Pack
• More coming with Citrix Workspace Services and Microsoft Azure
• Also with Citrix Netscaler and System Center
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What is System Center 2012 R2?
• A collection of different products to manage and monitor
infrastructure and devices (short version)
• What’s included?
• Virtual Machine Manager (managing virtual infrastructure)
• Configuration Manager (managing clients, endpoint and MDM)
• Orchestrator (automation)
• Data Protection Manager (backup and disaster recovery)
• Service Manager (service desk based on ITIL)
• Operations Manager (monitoring)
• AppController (self-service portal for hybrid cloud)
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Virtual Machine Manager and Netscaler
• Netscaler add-on to Virtual Machine Manager
• Service templates
• Allow us to automatically create load balanced services.
• Uses the NITRO SDK to perform actions
• Load balancing rules are defined within a VIP Profile
• VIP Profiles can be “attached” to a cloud
• VIP addresses are defined from within an IP-pool
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Operations Manager and Netscaler
• Netscaler management pack for Operations Manager
• Two options either by using ComTrade (third-party) or using Citrix own
management pack
• ComTrade uses NITRO based and Citrix uses SNMP
• Consists of two-parts – Management pack and PRO pack
• Management Pack used for monitoring
• PRO (Performance and resource optimization) used for integration with Virtual
Machine manager.
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Orchestrator and Netscaler
• Automation tool which uses concept called “Runbooks”
• Runbooks consists of a set of different activities.
• Can be used to automate setup and deployment on a Netscaler appliance
• Either user initiated runbooks or monitoring runbooks
• Can either use the SSH-based activity or using the C# SDK library
• Some prerequisites
• C# library must be in the global assembly cache
• Running the same SDK version as the NS is using
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9. Demo
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