Continuing on the post from last week where we discussed the NetScaler UI which provides great ways to troubleshoot and diagnose NetScaler system (/blogs/2012/01/19/how-easy-it-is-to-diagnosetroubleshoot-netscaler/). This week we will focus on the “Utilities” section of the Diagnostic page.

Batch configuration: this utility provides the way to run batch configuration on NetScaler. You can specify the batch file from your client system or from NetScaler appliance. The output generated can be pushed to a different file on the given path. You also get to see the output in same window and can save the output on your desktop.

Ping/Ping6: these are the utilities to run Ping tool in IPv4 and IPv6 mode respectively. When you use this tool from command line you never realize how many useful options are there. The simple “Count” option can restrict how many numbers of time you want ping to run. The “Time-out” option provides input to ping command on when to exit in case of failure. The “Interval” option is wait time in seconds before sending next request. “Interface” would let you choose the interface to use for ping command. “Pattern” is where you fill up the hexadecimal pattern which goes into the data part. “Size” restricts the amount of data to be sent with ping packet. “Source IP address” lets you spoof the source IP for the ping packet to be sent out. You can see the output right there or save it in file as well.

TraceRoute/TraceRoute6: these are the utilities to run the TraceRoute tool in IPv4 and IPv6 mode respectively. Same as ping, with TraceRoute you can see several important options in advance section. “Packet Length” controls the length of packet and default to 44 bytes and can go max to 32768 bytes of data. “Minimum TTL” and “Maximum TTL” are the min and max values used for outgoing probe packets. “Protocol” lets you specify the protocol name as UDP or ICMP. “Port Number” is the base port number used in probes. “Number of Queries” is the number of times it will query per hop. “Source IP address” lets you specify and possible use spoofed address as a source for outgoing queries. “Type of service” option will specify the type of service in outgoing queries. “Waiting time” is the time in seconds to wait for response to a query. Then there are multiple Boolean options you can choose to work with. You can also choose to save the output to a local file.

Command Line Interface: This is pretty interesting one which provides you the CLI interface you can work on like a regular CLI. This is from the UI context and you have all the RBAC policies being applied in this mode of CLI access based on the user who has logged into the GUI. You can take every action and run every command as you would do it on the regular CLI.

Unzip File: this tool will let you unzip a file on NetScaler.

Start HA files Synchronization: This is extremely useful utility which lets you sync the files across Primary and Secondary. It provides you multiple modes of files synchronization:

  • Everything except licenses and rc.conf
    • Will sync everything across leaving out the license directory and rc.conf file
  • Bookmarks
    • Only syncs the bookmarks saved in SSLVPN mode
  • SSL certificate and keys
    • Syncs everything in /nsconfig/ssl/ directory
  • EdgeSight Monitoring Scripts
    • Syncs the ES4NS scripts
  • Imported XML Objects
    • Syncs imported objects like Schema and WSDL
  • Licenses and rc.conf
    • Syncs the license files and rc.conf
  • Everything including licenses and rc.conf
    • Syncs everything across in HA pair

 

These are the tools you would like to use in day to day operation. More to come in next blog…