Wavemaker integrates with Citrix NetScaler seamlessly for web services.

WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio is an easy-to-use visual builder that enables the drag & drop assembly of scalable, web-applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases. WaveMaker Studio will look and feel especially familiar to client/server developers who are used to working with visual tools. Check out the Wavemaker specifications here.

WaveMaker has helped customers reduce development costs by 67% and cut the lines of code written by 98%. Less code makes WaveMaker applications cheaper to maintain and easier to manage. The NetScaler REST API's are going to be released soon. Today, the API provides web services in the form of Java. We, at Citrixlabs, have recently been using the Java Services and the examples in our API Documentation, with Wavemaker, to built a Proof of Concept.

Wavemaker allows you to build a GUI interface, consume web services through a .wsdl definition, save it to a WAR file, and then run that WAR file against a Tomcat web server. All of this is done using Drag & Drop functionality in the Wavemaker interface. Running a WAR file, allows interaction with the NetScaler for several types of services such as configuring load balancing services, or gathering statistics.

Possible uses

Users can create their own interface/GUI to the NetScaler for configuration and monitoring. Multi-tenancy has come up in discussions, as a way to manage multiple configurations through a single interface, perhaps on several NetScaler VPX devices, either in a XenServer deployment or in the cloud.

Current Proof of Concept

Having said that, using Wavemaker, we were able to successfully ...

• Create a GUI user interface to NetScaler
• Consume the NSConfig web services from the examples in the NetScaler API Documentation
• Configure the NetScaler with a new Load Balancing VIP and associated backend servers

If you have a NetScaler, the API's are already there. Connect to your NetScaler, select downloads, and navigate to XML API.

The best part about Wavemaker is it is Open Source.

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A new whitepaper describing the XML firewall features available in NetScaler version 9.x is available here.
It includes a concise summary of the feature capabilities and the types of applications that the Application firewall can secure. Security is a core component of the Application Delivery Controller (ADC) platform. For a broad overview of the security related features available in the NetScaler, get Citrix NetScaler - A Comprehensive Application Security Solution.

ICA Proxy for XenApp using NetScaler AGEE.

Citrix NetScaler, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™, is a purpose-built web application delivery solution that accelerates application performance up to five times while improving security and reducing web infrastructure costs. Access Gateway™, a member of the Citrix Delivery Center, is an only SSL VPN to securely deliver any application with policy-based SmartAccess control. Access Gateway, Enterprise Edition (AGEE) runs on the Citrix NetScaler.

Citrix XenApp™, also a member of the Citrix Delivery Center™ product family, is the industry's de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings.

By centralizing applications and data in secure datacenters, IT can reduce the costs of management and support, increase data security and facilitate business continuity.

We at Citrix are often asked how to deploy a NetScaler AGEE in front of a XenApp server farm, to proxy application delivery over the ICA protocol, securely. The NS SGEE secures XenApp delivered applications by serving as a proxy for those applications. NS AGEE proxies the ICA connections delivered from XenApp, and then wraps those applications with HTTPS or SSL to secure the traffic before it leaves your organization.

This is possible by following the steps in the deployment guide. This guide is specific to the NetScaler Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (AGEE), which is different hardware & software from the Citrix Access Gateway Standard Edition (AGSE).

Download the deployment guide.

Its Powerful Citrix Developer Network!

Don't forget to register for next Thursday's (July 23rd, 1-2pm EDT) TechTalk on XenApp power and capacity management. We will not bore you to death with slide ware. Majority of the presentation will be a live demo with lots of time for Q&A. You will learn

• How to better manage your XenApp capacity (and subsequently save some power as well)
• How to simplify XenApp server maintenance (software patching etc) by understanding how capacity management does load consolidation
• How this feature can simplify migrating users to new XenApp server farms
• And how easy it is to implement this solution in your "existing" XenApp server farms

New Tolly report shows that NetScaler 9.1 with nCore technology significantly outperforms F5's latest software release, BIG-IP v10. The results were astounding. Tolly conducted a battery of standard load balancing and acceleration tests and found that F5 introduces at least 3X more latency than NetScaler across all test scenarios. The report details the impressive performance NetScaler's nCore technology and highlights a significant deficiency with F5's architecture, namely latency. For example, it takes F5 2533.4 milliseconds to deliver an 8KB object versus 1.5 milliseconds for NetScaler. That's a significant negative impact to the end user experience and productivity, which can directly affect a company's bottom line.

To view the full Tolly report, click here

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Netscaler 9.1

Citrix NetScaler 9.1 Classic and nCore are now RTW - Release to Web, and are available to all customers via the Downloads section of the citrix.com support site.

Download it here.

What's New:
NetScaler Licensing Update - Starting May 25, all NetScaler appliances that are shipped from Citrix no longer contain pre-installed licenses. Reference "How To License NetScaler Appliances using the Activation System/Manage Licenses Tool on MyCitrix.com" in the Knowledge Base (CTX121062) or contact Customer Service.

Release 9.1 Classic only:

• Support of New MPX 5500, 7500 platforms (8.1 build 65.5 and later are also supported on these new platforms)
• NetScaler Web 2.0 Push
• GSLB
• AppFW

Release 9.1 nCore only:

• NetScaler nCore software (9.1.nc) is currently intended only for use on the NetScaler MPX 15000 and MPX 17000 appliances. All other NetScaler appliances should use Release 9.1 Classic.

Citrix® NetScaler® nCore™ technology is a high performance, parallel-processing architecture that efficiently leverages multi-core technology to scale to meet the requirements of the most demanding Web applications.

The performance and scalability benefits enabled by nCore technology have significance for both current and future Web application delivery requirements. nCore technology provides:

• Better performance for Web 2.0 and rich Internet applications
• Improved ability to handle large traffic spikes
• Expanded capacity to support more users and more applications
• An all-in-one platform for Web application delivery requirements: L4-7 load balancing, caching, GSLB, compression, SSL VPN, SSL offload, application security, performance monitoring and more.

For complex layer 7 workloads that tend to be more CPU intensive, nCore technology provides up to a sixfold improvement. Applications needing to support many concurrent users will benefit from a sevenfold improvement in concurrent connections.

For more information on the NetScaler 9.1 product release, especially for 9.1 Classic and nCore supported features, visit the Release Notes under General Documentation section at http://support.citrix.com.
If further assistance is required, contact the Customer Service representative in your area.

Download Details:

The FCS build is available for download from the following locations:

Via MyCitrix: www.MyCitrix.com > Home > Support > Downloads > NetScaler

Employees and customers with valid ANG maintenance contracts who have requested/received MyCitrix login credentials will be able to view and retrieve files from this location.

Via FTP: ftp.netscaler.com

If you do not have access to this folder, login credentials for this site are available through Technical Support.

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Netscaler nCore

Already announced at iForum, but worthy of buzz, is the new multi-core, parallel processing architecture for the Citrix NetScaler released in version 9.1 - nCore Technology. Applications are becoming more dynamic and demanding as we have seen in recent community, social networking and Web 2.0 advancements. Browser request and server response is the old model. Rich interactive applications that provide real-time information require real-time connections between browser and server. Enterprise software vendors such as SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and others understand the need to push toward highly interactive applications that enrich the functionality and user experience.

The richness of experience manifests in several ways:

• Protocols: New protocols such as Ajax, Comet, Ruby, etc.
• Connections: Web 2.0 protocols generate more connections between client and server.
• Chattiness: Web 2.0 protocols initiate more requests between the client and server.
• Applications: Rich Internet applications such as Flash, Flex and Silverlight make applications engaging and interactive.
• Clients: Clients are always connected and content needs to be optimized for them (iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari).
  

ADC's need to deliver greater performance and scalability by supporting higher levels of throughput, HTTP requests, concurrent connections and SSL Transactions. ADC's need to handle the increase in connections and requests to offload the demands placed on back-end web servers. The demands for caching, compression and application firewalls will increase as well.

In order to meet the increasing demand in application delivery environments, you need the Citrix NetScaler nCore technology.

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Secure Selected Pages

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

In situations where you want to make sure that for some selected pages only the secure server is used, the following can be used.
Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$ 
RewriteRule ^/?(page1|page2|page3|page4|page5)$  https://www.example.com/%1 [R,L]

AppExpert rewrite example 1:

Add responder action res_redirect redirect  '"https://www.example.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol_redirect '!CLIENT.TCP.DSTPORT.EQ(443)&&HTTP.REQ.URL.REGEX_MATCH(re/page[1-5]/)'  res_redirect
Bind responder global pol_redirect 100 END

AppExpert rewrite example 2:

Add patset pat1
Bind patset pat1 page1
Bind patset pat1 page2
Bind patset pat1 page3
Bind patset pat1 page4
Bind patset pat1 page5
Add responder action res_redirect redirect  '"https://www.example.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol_redirect '!CLIENT.TCP.DSTPORT.EQ(443)&&HTTP.REQ.URL.CONTAINS_ANY("pat1")'  res_redirect
Bind responder global pol_redirect 100 END

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Redirecting a URI to a new format

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Let's say, for example, that you've got a set of working URLs that look like this: /index.php?id=nnnn. However, you'd really like to change them to /nnnn and make sure search engines update their indexes to the new URI format. First, you'd have to redirect the old URIs to the new ones so that search engines update their indexes, but you still have to rewrite the new URI back to the old one so that the index.php script would run.

Example: The trick here is to place into the query string a marker code that will not be seen by visitors. We redirect from the old link to the new format only if the "marker" is not present in the query string. Then we rewrite the new format link back to the old format, and add a marker to the query string.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !marker 
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([-a-zA-Z0-9_+]+) 
RewriteRule ^/?index\.php$ %1? [R,L] 
RewriteRule ^/?([-a-zA-Z0-9_+]+)$  index.php?marker&id=$1 [L]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add responder action act_redirect redirect 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.BEFORE_STR("index.php")+HTTP.REQ.URL.QUERY.VALUE("id")' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol_redirect '!HTTP.REQ.URL.QUERY.CONTAINS("marker")&& HTTP.REQ.URL.QUERY.VALUE("id").REGEX_MATCH(re/[-a-zA-Z0-9_+]+/) && HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.CONTAINS("index.php")' act_redirect
Bind responder  global pol_redirect 100 END
Add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'/\',0)' '"index.phpmarker&id="+HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'/\',0)' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add rewrite policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.URL.QUERY.CONTAINS("marker")'  act1
Bind rewrite global pol1 100 END

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Creating Extensionless links

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Sometimes you may want to support extension less links, either to hide extensions from end users or to make URLs easy to remember.

Example 1: add .php extension to all requests

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule ^/?([a-z]+)$ $1.php [L]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add rewrite action act1 insert_after 'HTTP.REQ.URL' '".php"'
Add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.REGEX_MATCH(re#^/([a-z]+)$#)' act1
Bind rewrite global pol1 100

Example 2: if we have a mixture of both .html and .php files, the following can be used

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f 
RewriteRule ^/?([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ $1.php [L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^/?([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ $1.html [L]

AppExpert rewrite:
Here HTTPCallout would be used, script file_check.cgi hosted on 10.102.59.101 is used to check wether provided argument is avalid file name or not.

add HTTPCallout Call_html
add HTTPCallout Call_php
set policy httpCallout Call_html -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"'   -parameters query=http.req.url+".html"
set policy httpCallout Call_php -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"' -parameters query=http.req.url+".php"
Add patset pat1 
Bind patset pat1 .html
Bind patset pat1 .php
Bind patset pat1 .asp
Bind patset pat1 .cgi
Add rewrite  action act1 insert_after 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH'  '".html"'
Add rewrite  action act2 insert_after "HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH"  '".php"'
Add rewrite policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.URL.CONTAINS_ANY("pat1") && SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(Call_html)' act1
Add rewrite policy pol2 '!HTTP.REQ.URL.CONTAINS_ANY("pat1") && SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(Call_php)' act2
Bind rewrite global pol1 100 END
Bind rewrite global pol2 101 END

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Blocking Inline Images

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume you have under http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/ some pages with in lined GIF graphics. These graphics are nice, so others directly incorporate them via hyperlinks to their pages. you don't like this practice because it adds useless traffic to your server.

Example : You can restrict the cases where the browser sends a HTTP Referer header.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$                                  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/.*$ 
RewriteRule .*\.gif$        -                 [F]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add patset pat1
Bind patset pat1 .gif
Bind patset pat1 .jpeg
add responder action act1 respondwith '"HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden\r\n\r\n"'
add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Referer").EQ("") && !HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Referer").STARTSWITH("http://www.quux-corp.de/~quux/")&&HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH_ANY("pat1")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100

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Blocking Robots

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

You can block a really annoying robot from retrieving pages of a specific webarea. This way you can ease up the traffic at some directories.

Example : This could be done by using a rule set which forbids the URLs of the web area /~quux/foo/arc/. This could also be accomplished by matching the User-Agent HTTP header information. In this example, the ip address to be blocked is 123.45.67.8 & 123.45.67.9.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}   ^NameOfBadRobot.*      
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR}       ^123\.45\.67\.[8-9]$
RewriteRule ^/~quux/foo/arc/.+   -   [F]

AppExpert rewrite:

add responder action act1 respondwith '"HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden\r\n\r\n"'
add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User_Agent").STARTSWITH("NameOfBadRobot")&&CLIENT.IP.SRC.EQ(123.45.67.8)&&CLIENT.IP.SRC.EQ(123.45.67.9) && HTTP.REQ.URL.STARTSWITH("/~quux/foo/arc")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100

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Browser Dependent Content

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

At least for important top-level pages it is sometimes necessary to provide the optimum of browser dependent content, i.e. one has to provide a maximum version for the latest Netscape variants, a minimum version for the Lynx browsers and an average feature version for all others.

Example : We will act on the HTTP header "User-Agent". The following config does the following: If the HTTP header "User-Agent" begins with "Mozilla/3", the page foo.html is rewritten to foo.NS.html and the rewriting stops. If the browser is "Lynx" or "Mozilla" of version 1 or 2 the URL becomes foo.20.html. All other browsers receive page foo.32.html. This is done by the following rule set:

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Mozilla/3.*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.NS.html          [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Lynx/.*         [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  ^Mozilla/[12].*
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.20.html          [L]
RewriteRule ^foo\.html$         foo.32.html          [L]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add patset pat1
Bind patset pat1 Mozilla/1
Bind Patset pat1 Mozilla/2
Bind patset pat1 Lynx
Bind Patset pat1 Mozilla/3

add rewrite action act1 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"NS."'

add rewrite action act2 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"20."'

add rewrite action act3 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.SUFFIX' '"32."'


add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_INDEX("pat1").EQ(4)' act1

add rewrite policy pol2 'HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_INDEX("pat1").BETWEEN(1,3)' act2

add rewrite policy pol3 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("User-Agent").STARTSWITH_ANY("pat1")' act3

bind rewrite global pol1 101 END
bind rewrite global pol2 102 END
bind rewrite global pol3 103 END

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Old to New External URL Rewrite

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume that you have recently renamed the page foo.html to bar.html and now want to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. But this time you want the users of the old URL to see new one, i.e. their browsers Location field should change too.

Example : The following rules can force an HTTP redirect to the new URL which leads to a change of the URL in the users browser:

Apache rewrite:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo\.html$  bar.html  [R]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add responder action act1 redirect 'HTTP.REQ.URL.BEFORE_STR("foo.html")+"bar.html"' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH("/~quux/foo.html")' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

add responder action act1 redirect 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.BEFORE_STR("foo.html")+"bar.html"+HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("foo.html")' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.CONTAINS("foo.html")' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

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Old to New Internal URL Rewrite

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Assume you have recently renamed the page foo.html to bar.html and now want to provide the old URL for backward compatibility. Actually you want users of the old URL to not recognize that the pages were renamed.

Example : Rewrite the old URL to the new one internally via the following rule, let the base directory be /~quux/.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteEngine  on
RewriteBase    /~quux/
RewriteRule    ^foo\.html$  bar.html

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("/~quux").SUBSTR("foo.html")' '"bar.html"'

add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.ENDSWITH("/~quux/foo.html")' act1

bind rewrite global pol1 100

Add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'/\',0)' '"bar.html"'

Add rewrite policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.CONTAINS("foo.html")' act1

Bind rewrite global pol1 100

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Time Dependent Rewriting

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

We can rewrite a URL based on time.

Example : Changing the request foo.html to foo.day.html or foo.night.html according to time.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} >0700
RewriteCond   %{TIME_HOUR}%{TIME_MIN} <1900
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.day.html [L]
RewriteRule   ^foo\.html$             foo.night.html

AppExpert rewrite:

Add rewrite action act1 insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'.\',0)' '"day."'

Add rewrite action act2  insert_before 'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.SUFFIX(\'.\',0)' '"night."'

add rewrite  policy pol1 'SYS.TIME.WITHIN(LOCAL 07h 00m,LOCAL 18h 59m)' act1

add rewrite policy pol2 'true'  act2

bind rewrite global pol1 101

bind rewrite global pol2 102

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Failed URL Redirect

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

In case the current url is not valid & the request needs to be redirected to another web server, the following steps could be taken.

Example : We will check weather the request filename exists on the server or not, in case it fails then redirection is done to another webserver (for example, webServerB.com). In the case of AppExpert, HTTPCallout is used to check the presence of the file on the server by running a script file_check.cgi on the server. The returned value from HTTPCallout is used to validate the policy.

The Script file_check.cgi takes the url as the argument, checks for its presence on the server & returns True or False accordingly.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond   /your/docroot/%{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule   ^(.+)      http://webserverB.com/$1 [R]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

add HTTPCallout Call

set policy httpCallout Call -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"'   -parameters query=http.req.url.path -headers Name("ddd")

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://webserverB.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Name").EXISTS  &&  !SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(call)' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

add HTTPCallout Call

set policy httpCallout Call -IPAddress 10.102.59.101 -port 80 -hostExpr '"10.102.59.101"' -returnType BOOL -ResultExpr 'HTTP.RES.BODY(100).CONTAINS("True")'  -urlStemExpr '"/cgi-bin/file_check.cgi"'   -parameters query=http.req.url.path -headers Name("ddd")

add responder  action act1 respondwith  '"HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily\r\nLocation: http://webserverB.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL+"\r\n\r\nHTTPCallout Used"' -bypassSafetyCheck yes

add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HEADER("Name").EXISTS  &&  !SYS.HTTP_CALLOUT(call)' act1

bind responder global pol1 100

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Structured Homedirs

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

Some sites with thousands of users usually use a structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a subdirectory which begins for instance with the first character of the username. So, /~foo/anypath is /home/f/foo/.www/anypath while /~bar/anypath is /home/b/bar/.www/anypath.Following rules could be used to implement this.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/~(([a-z])[a-z0-9]+)(.*)  /home/$2/$1/.www$3

AppExpert rewrite:

Add rewrite action act1 replace 'HTTP.REQ.URL'  '"/home/"+ HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("~").PREFIX(1)+"/"+ HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("~").BEFORE_STR("/")+"/.www"+HTTP.REQ.URL.SKIP(\'/\',1)'  -bypassSafetyCheck yes

Add rewrite policy pol1  'HTTP.REQ.URL.PATH.STARTSWITH("/~")' act1

Bind rewrite global pol1 100

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Move Homedirs to Different Web Server

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

There are cases when you want to redirect requests for homedirs on one web server to another web server. The typical use case for this arises when establishing a newer web server which will replace the old one over time. i.e. you need to redirect all the requests for a particular homedir to another web server.

Example : Let the hostname for new webserver be newserver.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/(.+)  http://newserver/$1     [R,L]

AppExpert rewrite: (There are two ways to do this)

Add responder  action act1 redirect '"http://newserver"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.REGEX_MATCH(re#^/(.+)#)'   act1
Bind responder global pol1 100 END

Add responder  action act1 redirect '"http://newserver"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.LENGTH.GT(1)'   act1
Bind responder global pol1 100 END

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SharePoint Template

AppExpert Templates are nothing new for NetScaler. However, with a new release of NetScaler comes an updated, new and improved NetScaler AppExpert Template for use with Microsoft SharePoint applications.

AppExpert Templates are a simple approach to configuration management for complex enterprise applications. In one simple view, you can view what is most important to you in terms of application delivery. No more confusing and complex rules to define, reducing the time to deploy, easing management and improving the bottom line.

Improvements to the template include additional optimizations for Image Management, Scripts, SOAP and FrontPage. Caching and Compression policies have been optimized, along with the addition of a section for rewrite. There is a redirect policy for converting HTTP to HTTPS on the fly, to enable secure traffic to/from the Microsoft SharePoint applications.

All of these improvements can be found in the new Microsoft SharePoint template, and a description of the template can be found in the updated SharePoint Deployment Guide.

Download the updated Microsoft SharePoint AppExpert Template here (NS v9.0 b66 required).

Download the updated Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Guide here.

Its Powerful - AppExpert!