Citrix Access Gateway: Standard vs Enterprise

During the last month I have several “chances” to explain people that Citrix Access Gateway Standard and Citrix Access Gateway Enterprise are absolutely different products, and the same is true about their virtual editions (aka VPX). I feel  that it is the time to write it down once and share the link from now on…

There are two Citrix products named Access Gateway – Citrix Access Gateway Standard/Advanced Edition (aka CAG) and Access Gateway Enterprise Edition (aka AGEE). Both share similar feature set, hence the common name, but those are different products. CAG is original Citrix product, with latest versions 4.6 and 5.0 (at the moment of writing). After Citrix acquired NetScaler in 2005, they implemented CAG functionality on the NetScaler appliance and named it “Enterprise Edition”. That’s why AGEE versions go after NetScaler version numbers – it is the same appliance, with latest version 9.3 (again, at the moment of writing).

And what is VPX? Access Gateway VPX is a virtual edition of CAG. NetScaler VPX is a virtual edition of NetScaler (that is – AGEE).

UPD (Sep 1): You can read more about the history of this separation here.

Upgrading NetScaler VPX

Last week I had to upgrade the NetScaler VPX box in our lab from version 9.2.something (one it was initially installed with) to the latest available (9.3.something at this moment). Quick search revealed a topic from Citrix Forums (which was not really helpful at that moment) and a KB article aiming to solve specific upgrade problem – which convinced me that it is at least doable. The lack of the information about the process usually means one of two things – either nobody needs that (hard to believe in this case) or it is too obvious to post about it. Actually, the upgrade process is really simple. Yet, this post may save you several minutes… Continue reading “Upgrading NetScaler VPX”