Citrix ADC in a Private Cloud Managed by Microsoft Windows Azure Pack and Cisco ACI

You can use a Citrix ADC appliance for load balancing in a private cloud that is managed through Microsoft Windows Azure Pack. The network for the private cloud is automated by using Cisco ACI and Citrix ADC.

This solution involves many integration points, such as Windows Azure Pack (WAP) to Cisco APIC, Cisco APIC to System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), and Cisco APIC to Citrix ADC. As a tenant in the private cloud, you can enable NAT, provision network services, and add a load balancer.

WAP supports tenant and administrator portals where an administrator can perform administrative tasks such as ACI registration, VIP range, Citrix ADC device association with virtual machine cloud, tenant user account creation. Tenants can log on to the WAP Tenant Portal and configure the network, bridge domains, and Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRFs), and make use of the Citrix ADC load balancing and RNAT features.

Important

• In this solution, the Citrix ADC appliance provides only basic load balancing.
• Tenants can deploy multiple VIP addresses with different ports for the same network, but must ensure that the IP and port combination is unique.
• The Citrix ADC device package supports only single-context deployment. Each Tenant gets a dedicated Citrix ADC instance.
• WAP supports Citrix ADC MPX appliances and Citrix ADC VPX virtual appliances, including Citrix ADC VPX instances deployed on the Citrix ADC SDX platform.

The following illustration provides an overview of the solution:

Prerequisites

Make sure that:

• You have conceptual knowledge of Cisco ACI components and Citrix ADCs.
  • For more information about Cisco ACI and its components, see the product documentation at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/application-policy-infrastructure-controller-apic/tsd-products-support-series-home.html
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  • For more information about the Citrix ADCs, see the Citrix ADC product documentation at http://docs.citrix.com/
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• All the required components of Cisco ACI, including Cisco APIC in the data center, are set up and configured. For more information about Cisco ACI and its components, see the product documentation at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/application-policy-infrastructure-controller-apic/tsd-products-support-series-home.html
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• You know how to integrate Cisco ACI with Microsoft Windows Azure Pack. See the product documentation at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/2-x/virtualization/b_ACI_Virtualization_Guide_2_2_1.html
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• You have conceptual knowledge of Microsoft Windows Azure Pack. See the product documentation at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/cloud-platform/windows-azure-pack
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• You have installed Citrix ADC software release 11.1 or later.
• You configure Citrix ADCs in Cisco ACI, so that they can be managed by using Cisco APIC.
• From Cisco APIC, make sure that:
  • Management connectivity of Cisco APIC to Citrix ADC is established.
  • You upload the Citrix ADC device package version 11.1–52.3 and register the Citrix ADC device in Cisco ACI by using Cisco APIC.
  • You configure the Citrix ADC appliance in Cisco APIC’s common tenant and make sure that there are no faults in Cisco APIC.
  • You have configured all the APIC specific configurations such as, VLAN pool, L3OutServicesDom, L3ExtOUt, resource pool. For more information, see Cisco documentation.