Application Delivery Management

Getting started

This document walks you through how to get started with deploying and setting up Citrix Application Delivery Management (ADM) for the first time. This document is intended for network and application administrators who manage Citrix network devices (Citrix SD-WAN WO, Citrix Gateway, and so on) and also third-party devices such as HAProxy. Follow the steps in this document irrespective of the type of device you plan to manage using Citrix ADM.

If you are an existing user of Citrix ADM, you are recommended to review the release notessystem requirements, and licensing details before upgrading your server to the latest release of Citrix ADM.

Step 1 - Review the system requirements

Before you begin deploying Citrix ADM in your data center, review the software requirements, browser requirements, port information, license information, and limitations.

  • License information. You can manage and monitor any number of instances and entities without a license. However, you can only manage 30 discovered apps and view analytics information for only two virtual servers without applying a license. To manage more than 30 apps or to view analytics for more than two virtual servers, you must purchase appropriate licenses. Learn More.

  • Operating system and receiver requirements. Review this information to make sure you have the correct receiver version for the supported operating systems. Learn More.

  • Browser requirements. To access Citrix ADM GUI, you must make sure you have the required browser and the correct version. Learn More.

  • Ports. Make sure that the required ports are open for Citrix ADM to communicate with Citrix ADC or SD-WAN instances or both Citrix ADC and SD-WAN instances. Learn More.

  • Citrix ADC instance requirements. Different Citrix ADM features are supported on different Citrix ADC software versions. Review this information to make sure you have upgraded your Citrix ADC instances to the correct version. Learn More.

  • Citrix SD-WAN instance requirements. Review this information to make sure you have upgraded your Citrix SD-WAN instances to the correct version and you have the correct platform editions. Learn More.

Step 2 - Deploy Citrix ADM

To manage and monitor the applications and network infrastructure, you must first install Citrix ADM on one of the hypervisors. You can deploy Citrix ADM either as a single server or in a high availability mode. If you are using Citrix ADC Insight Center, you can migrate to Citrix ADM and avail of the management, monitoring, orchestration, and application management features in addition to the analytics features.

  • Single-server deployment. In a Citrix ADM single server deployment, the database is integrated with the server and a single server processes all the traffic. You can deploy Citrix ADM with Citrix Hypervisor, VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Linux KVM. See:

  • High availability deployment. A high availability deployment (HA) of two Citrix ADM servers provides uninterrupted operations. In a high availability setup, both the Citrix ADM nodes must be deployed in active-passive mode, on the same subnet using the same software version and build, and must have the same configurations. With HA deployment the ability to configure the floating IP address on the Citrix ADM primary node eliminates the need of a separate Citrix ADC load balancer. To learn more, see Configure in high availability deployment.

Step 3 - Add instances to Citrix ADM

Instances are Citrix appliances or virtual appliances or third-party devices that you want to discover, manage, and monitor from Citrix ADM. You must add instances to the Citrix ADM server if you want to manage and monitor these instances. You can add the following instances to Citrix ADM:

  • Citrix ADC

    • Citrix ADC MPX

    • Citrix ADC VPX

    • Citrix ADC SDX

    • Citrix ADC CPX

    • Citrix Gateway

    • Citrix SD-WAN

  • HAProxy

When you add an instance to the Citrix ADM server, the server implicitly communicates with the instances and collects an inventory of these instances.

Learn More

Step 4 - Enable analytics on virtual servers

To view analytics data for your application traffic flow, you must enable the Analytics feature on the virtual servers that receive traffic for the specific applications.

Learn More

Step 5 - Configure NTP server on Citrix ADM

You have to configure a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server in Citrix ADM to synchronize its clock with the NTP server. Configuring an NTP server ensures that the Citrix ADM clock has the same date and time settings as the other servers on the network.

Learn More

Step 6 - Configure system settings for optimal Citrix ADM performance

Before you start using Citrix ADM to manage and monitor your instances and applications, it is recommended that you configure a few system settings that ensure optimal performance of your Citrix ADM server.

  • Configure system alarms. Configure system alarms to make sure you are aware of any critical or major system issues. For example, you might want to be notified if the CPU usage is high or if there are multiple login failures to the server.  

  • Configure system notifications. You can send notifications to select groups of users for various system-related functions. You can set up a notification server in Citrix ADM, and you can configure email and Short Message Service (SMS) gateway servers to send email and text notifications to users. This ensures that you are notified of any system-level activities such as user login or system restart.

  • Configure system prune settings. To limit the amount of reporting data being stored in your Citrix ADM server’s database, you can specify the interval for which you want Citrix ADM to retain network reporting data, events, audit logs, and task logs. By default, this data is pruned every 24 hours (at 00.00 hours).

  • Configure system backup settings. Citrix ADM automatically backs up the system every day at 00:30 hours. By default, it saves three backup files. You might want to retain more number of backups of the system.

  • Configure instance backup settings. If you back up the current state of a Citrix ADC instance, you can use the backup files to restore stability in case the instance becomes unstable. Doing so is especially important before performing an upgrade. By default, a backup is taken every 12 hours and three backup files are retained in the system.

  • Configure instance event prune settings. To limit the amount of event messages data being stored in your Citrix ADM server’s database, you can specify the interval for which you want Citrix ADM to retain network reporting data, events, audit logs, and task logs. By default, this data is pruned every 24 hours (at 00:00 hours).

  • Configure instance syslog purge settings. To limit the amount of syslog data stored in the database, you can specify the interval at which you want to purge syslog data.  You can specify the number of days after which the following syslog data will be deleted from Citrix ADM:

    • Generic Syslog data
    • AppFirewall data
    • Citrix Gateway data.

      Learn More

What’s next

After you have deployed and set up Citrix ADM, you can start managing and monitoring your instances and applications.

Managing Citrix ADC instances and applications. All Citrix ADM features are supported on Citrix ADC instances. You can start using any of the features.

Managing Citrix ADC SD-WAN instances. Not all Citrix ADM features are supported on SD-WAN WO instances, for example, certificate management or configuration audit are not supported. To learn about what features are supported and how to use them, see Managing Citrix SD-WAN WO Using Citrix ADM.

Managing HAProxy instances and applications. You can monitor the front ends, back ends, and servers configured in an HAProxy deployment. You can also use the Application Management feature to monitor real-time statistics of the front ends monitored by Citrix ADM. To learn about what features are supported for HAProxy and how to use them, see Managing and Monitoring HAProxy Instances Using Citrix ADM.