NetScaler BLX certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, the importance of reliable application delivery remains steadfast. At Red Hat, we understand the critical nature of seamless application delivery and the pivotal role it plays for businesses of all sizes. Application downtime is unacceptable, and to address this challenge, a resilient application delivery controller is essential. 

Enter NetScaler BLX, formally known as Citrix ADC BLX, one of the most widely-used application delivery controllers on the market. With 90% of Fortune 500 companies relying on NetScaler and delivering a staggering 5 billion transactions daily, it is clear that NetScaler BLX is a leader in the world of application delivery. 

Now, we are excited to announce that NetScaler BLX is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  

NetScaler BLX powered by DPDK

In our increasingly interconnected world, where network connectivity and speed is critical to nearly every area of business and life, performance, throughput and latency are increasingly pivotal for applications.

DPDK enables high-speed packet processing to help facilitate the telecom industry to move performance-sensitive applications to the cloud, and was identified as a key enabling technology for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) in the ETSI NFV White Paper. 

NetScaler BLX  is an enterprise-grade application delivery controller, powered by DPDK technology, that transforms the way applications are delivered across any network or any cloud. DPDK streamlines the handling of network packets within Linux by bypassing Linux drivers, ensuring rapid and efficient packet processing.

Figure 1 - Bypassing Linux drivers using DPDK

NetScaler BLX key features include:

• Load balancing: Evenly distributes network traffic across multiple servers or resources, enhancing application reliability and providing seamless failover in case of server failures.
• Content routing: Allows dynamic routing of traffic based on various HTTP, TCP, or SSL parameters, directing traffic to the most suitable backend based on specific traffic attributes.
• Global server load balancing: Efficiently distributes incoming traffic across geographically dispersed data centers to optimize performance and ensure high availability.
• Web application firewall: Provides robust security by inspecting and filtering web traffic, protecting against cyber threats and ensuring compliance. 
• SSL offloading: Enhances performance by offloading the decryption and encryption tasks from back-end servers to the ADC, reducing server overhead and providing the highest levels of security.

Additionally, NetScaler BLX instances can be more easily managed and orchestrated through a single dashboard via NetScaler Application Delivery Management (ADM), a comprehensive platform enabling automation, orchestration, management, and analytics for application delivery across hybrid multi-cloud environments.

Empowering application delivery with NetScaler BLX on RHEL

NetScaler BLX with DPDK on RHEL enables our customers to meet the extensive demands of modern application workloads, and allows for greater flexibility and freedom to operate on bare metal servers or virtual machines. NetScaler BLX can be deployed on public cloud platforms or private data centers faster and more easily through Ansible or Terraform, increasing efficiency and reducing operational costs.

Red Hat certification: Why it matters

Red Hat’s RHEL software certification verifies that the third-party software deployed on a server that is running RHEL functions appropriately according to best practices and does not break the supportability of the RHEL subscription. The partner is responsible for setting up their own RHEL system to test, leveraging their partner subscriptions, and using the appropriate RHEL version(s) and system architecture(s) they want to certify against.

This certification also enables a joint-support model for customers of RHEL and NetScaler BLX. Red Hat and NetScaler teams can work together in a more streamlined way for our joint customers. Read more about our third-party software support policy in this article.

Certification is an essential element of Red Hat technical partnerships, demonstrating a reliable and high-performing integration that joint customers can trust.

Check it out

NetScaler BLX is certified on RHEL versions 8.3-8.x on x86_64 architecture. You can find more details about this certification and how to leverage this integration in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.

Resources

• Benefits of RHEL software certification blog post
• RHEL Software Certification
• All certified NetScaler integrations
• BLX Documentation
• Deploy BLX using Terraform
• Superior Performance with BLX
• Transform Linux host into a BLX