Troubleshoot NetScaler Licensing

Over the last five years, Citrix NetScaler licensing has changed a bit. For the most part, these changes have been for the better. However, even with the new simplified licensing you may still run into issues. Let's talk about what happens when you do.  


How do I know if I have a licensing issue?

The last thing that will happen will be a nice error message somewhere saying your NetScaler is not licensed. That would be too easy. You are more likely to get an error from a website or service behind your NetScaler that relates to SSL or a problem with a certificate. To rule out licensing, you can easily logon to the management interface of your NetScaler. Before you even go to the licensing screen look on the top left and look for something similar to this:

Depending on the version of firmware you are running it may look slightly different. This example is from NetScaler v11.0. From this graphic we can deduce this is a NetScaler virtual appliance (aka VPX) model 1000 which means it is licensed for 1 Gbps of throughput. You may find you have a different model number that is smaller or larger. The specific model we do NOT want to see is (1). A NetScaler VPX (1) is how it comes out of the box (err, well, after you import it) but before you have uploaded a license file.

If you see a (1) on a NetScaler that has previously been working it maybe one of the following issues:

• The license file has been deleted or has become corrupt.
• The NetScaler hostname has changed.  Depending on the version of firmware this is set in one or two places.
• The MAC address of the appliance has changed.

Prior to version 11, no license means SSL will not work for certificates higher than 512 bit which basically means everything.


Troubleshooting

Let us assume that you have allocated a license file using the right MAC address or hostname and uploaded it but you still only have a NetScaler VPX (1). You can find out more info by viewing the license.log file. Connect to your NetScaler IP (aka NSIP, aka NetScaler management IP) via an SSH tool like Putty.




After logon. Type:

shell [Enter]
cat /var/log/license.log 

You will get quite a bit of output and it may look like this:

  

Notice the line that says "Invalid hostid on SERVER line".  That is the problem.  The hostname of our NetScaler is different then what is specified in the license file.  While your actual problem may be different, the license.log is the way to find out the real problem and get your NetScaler licensed.

After changing the hostname and rebooting, here is the licenses screen indicating the NetScaler Gateway is licensed correctly:

FYI, you'll need a platinum license before you see all green check marks.

Here is another example of two license issues.  It is two because the NetScaler has two licenses loaded and neither work.  The top section shows an expired license and the bottom example has the wrong hostid.




Drop me a line in the comments if this works for you or if you have any questions,

Brian Olsen @sagelikebrian


Related post: Citrix NetScaler Troubleshoot Authentication

For more Citrix NetScaler posts check out:
 http://www.sagelike.com/search/label/netscaler


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Citrix NetScaler

Lewan Achieves Citrix Specialist in Virtualization

Lewan Technology is proud to announce that in August it achieved the Citrix Specialist in Virtualization distinction.  The Virtualization Specialist requires a proven track record of delivering and managing Windows apps and workloads via Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop.  This achievement furthers Lewan Technology's commitment to Citrix in-depth technical expertise.  Lewan Technology has been a Citrix Solution Advisor (CSA) and Services Provider since 1996 and continues to expand its partnership with Citrix.


What does it take to become a Citrix Solution Advisor?

There are three Citrix Solution Advisor program levels.  Citrix defines them as:

• Platinum Solution Advisor - Partners who demonstrate the highest level of expertise and commitment to the entire Citrix portfolio of products as a core part of their business, have a well-established Citrix practice, and work closely with Citrix on sales, implementation and consulting engagements. 
• Gold Solution Advisor - Partners who have built a core business offering on virtualization, networking, and/or cloud and have demonstrated expertise on Citrix products to deliver a set of solutions to customers. 
• Silver Solution Advisor - Partners who supplement their business offerings by adding Citrix products to their portfolio of solutions.

Lewan Technology currently holds a Solution Advisor Gold level.


Annoucing the Citrix Specialist

In January 2015 at Citrix Summit, the annual partner conference held in Las Vegas, NV, Citrix announced the Specialist program.  They explained that, "partners who achieve a Specialist distinction have been rigorously vetted to join an elite group of best-of-breed partners with demonstrated success in real-world customer projects. While other Partners often participate in only part of an engagement, Specialists will be experts at providing end-to-end planning, designing, implementing, managing and supporting of your project needs."

Specialist designations are available for:

• Virtualization
• Mobility Management 
• Networking for Datacenter 
• Networking for Apps & Mobile Security

What is required to become a Citrix Specialist?

Lewan Technology already held all of the required certifications at the time of the Specialist announcement.  Among the dozens of Citrix certifications held, many employees have achieved the highest levels across several disciplines:

• Citrix Certified Expert - Virtualization (5)
• Citrix Certified Professional - Mobility (3)
• Citrix Certified Professional - Networking (4) 

The Lewan Technology Citrix professionals spent several months acquiring customer validations and passing the practicum on top of a typical project load.  Unlike other exams, the practicum involves building out a tailored solution then having the solution graded by Citrix. The designation of Citrix Specialist in Virtualization shows that Lewan Technology has been recognized by Citrix as operating at the highest level with regard to end-to-end services.

Feel free to reach out to Lewan Technology for your next Citrix project.


Brian @sagelikebrian

Kenneth is Speaking at BriForum Denver

I sat down with one of my coworkers, Kenneth Fingerlos, to discuss his upcoming speaking engagement at the BriForum conference in Denver, Colorado on July 20th.  Our brief conversation covered the details of his session, "vSGA, vDGA, vGPU, and Software - When and Why", his background in the industry, and what gets him excited in the technology space right now.

"BriForum excites me because it is everybody" - Kenneth

Me: Kenneth, can you tell me a little bit about your industry experience?

Kenneth: So, after college I took a left turn in my career path and went into corporate IT for ten years.  Various positions: desktop management, server management, data center.  Various kinds of things.  After ten years of that I decided I didn't care for IT management and tried to correct the course change and landed in consulting.  I've been doing IT consulting for about the last ten years around storage, data management, virtualization of various types, and building up my skill sets trying to help customers solve problems.

Me: Great, great.  So have you been to BriForum before? 

Kenneth: I have not been to BriForum.  This will be my first year.

Me: What attracted you to BriForum? 

Kenneth: I'm excited.  The whole idea of a conference that has some size to it and is established that is not tied to a specific vendor is just exciting, right?  You go to a Cisco conference and it is all about what is the latest widget from Cisco.  Cisco can do no wrong.  You find the same thing if you go to, you know, Dell World.  Dell is perfect.  Whatever Dell has got going is awesome and whatever everyone else has is garbage.  BriForum excites me because it is everybody. It is a marketing company--a media company that puts on the conference as opposed to a product manufacturer. insert kennth photo here

Me: So what will you be discussing at BriForum? 

Kenneth: I'm discussing a topic that is near and dear to my heart which is the idea of virtualized graphics.  Taking things we do everyday in the physical world with physical PCs and trying to bring this into this virtualized environment.  Things like disaster recovery, security, flexibility.  You know, the physical world is pretty restricted.  Graphics have always been one of these things that is hard and is difficult.  Technology is evolving and has advanced dramatically over the last couple of years in terms of what we can do.  But there is also a lot of complexity and a lot of information and I find my customers have a lot of confusion about what they can and can't do.  What works, what doesn't work.  My session is all about trying to bring some clarity to that area.

Me: Ok, so I am going to open this up a little bit and say maybe don't limit this to just the enterprise world but what is the technology you are most excited about right now? 

Kenneth: The technology I am most excited about right now....I think the stuff that is most exciting is really this idea of graphics virtualization.  I mean, so many things go into a user experience, right?  And all of the traditional things that you think about: servers, storage, memory, CPUs--graphics is part of that.  Remoting protocols, right?  What's going on with actually getting that content delivered to a user.  Networking, right? 3G, 4G networks and starting to think about what's next, what's beyond 4G.  These are huge enablers to let people consume and develop content in ways that have never been envisioned before.  Letting you take that stuff to the cloud, to the remote data center, and access it from anywhere.  I've been sitting on top of a mountain in my 4x4 holding a virtual desktop, just because I'm a geek and into this stuff, but yes--I can access that app, whatever it is, from a mountain top in the middle of nowhere.  That's cool stuff. And it's all about enabling people to work and function in ways they've never been able to before.  That excites me.

Me: Very cool.  Well, looking forward to seeing your session at BriForum!  Until next time.

As I wrote about earlier, BriForum Comes to Denver, and I am excited to have such a great event in my backyard.  If you are going to be at BriForum or just have general questions about Denver, reach out to either @kfingerlos or myself (@sagelikebrian) and let's catch up.


Brian @sagelikebrian