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Support for Heterogeneous Cluster

May 27, 2018

The NetScaler appliance now supports heterogeneous cluster in a cluster deployment. A heterogeneous cluster spans nodes of different NetScaler hardware and you can have a combination of different platforms in the same cluster.

Important

The formation or supportability of a heterogeneous cluster is possible and limited only to MPX hardware platforms.

The supportability and formation of the heterogeneous cluster depend on certain Citrix NetScaler models. The following table lists the platforms that are supported in the formation of a heterogeneous cluster.

Number of Packet Engines MPX Hardware Platforms Supported MPX Hardware Platforms to form Heterogeneous Cluster 
                  5         MPX 11500                            MPX 14020
                  7         MPX 11515                            MPX 14040
                  9         MPX 11530                            MPX 14060

Note: If you run the “join cluster” command from the node that has an unequal number of packet engines, the following error message appears:                                                                “Mismatch in the number of active PPEs between CCO and local node”.

Limitations of Using Heterogeneous Cluster

  1. The number of packet engines present on all of the MPX hardware appliances should be same in the cluster deployment.
  2. The extra management CPU setting should be same on all the cluster nodes.
  3. The newly added node should have the same capacity on the data planes and backplane, as that of existing cluster nodes.
  4. If there are mixed platform devices supporting different ciphers, then the cluster would agree upon a common cipher list.