Automating Citrix Netscaler and PowerShell

This is something I have been wanting to do for some time now, and now that I am doing a lot of research for my upcoming book, this subject poped up in my head…. How can we automate setup on a Citrix Netscaler ?

Citrix Netscaler has a NITRO protocol which is in essence a REST interface, which means that we have an API to communicate with on the Netscaler. We can also make custom applications using C# and JAVA since within the NITRO SDK comes with common libraries for both.

You can download the Netscaler SDK for each build in mycitrix.com
Link to the latest SDK –> http://www.citrix.com/downloads/netscaler-adc/sdks/netscaler-sdk-release-101.html

Extract the Csharp tar file and browse into the lib folder. Here we have to import the two library files.

$path1 = Resolve-Path Newtonsoft.Json.dll
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($path1)
$path = Resolve-Path nitro.dll
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($path)

After we have imported the library files we can start a connection to Netscaler. First of we can either code the variables here NSIP, Username and password before or we can use read-host command. In this example the NSIP of the Netscaler is set to 192.168.88.3 and the username and password is default nsroot As you can see security is my top priority

$nsip = “192.168.88.3”
$user = “nsroot”
$pass = “nsroot”

$nitrosession = new-object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.service.nitro_service($nsip,”http”)
$session = $nitrosession.login($user,$pass)

This COM object is the one that contains the common services against the Netscaler for instance

• Login / Logout
• Save Config
• Restart
• Enable / Disable features

If we wanted to for instance do a restart we would need to use the same object. For instance some examples to save config and restart.

$session = $nitrosession.save_config()

$session = $nitrosession.reboot($true)

Since the Com object is already loaded we can just run the commands directly. Just to name a few (refer to the SDK documentation for info about all the classes)
So what are some of the basic configurations that we need to do on a Netscaler? First of we need to change the default hostname for instance.

$hostname = New-Object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.ns.nshostname
$hostname.hostname = “NSpowershell”;
$ret_value=[com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.ns.nshostname]::update($nitrosession,$hostname) 

Next we should also add an DNS server to the Netscaler so It can do hostname lookups.

$dns = New-object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.dns.dnsnameserver
$dns.ip = “192.168.88.10”;
$ret_value=[ com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.dns.dnsnameserver]::add($nitrosession,$dns)

And then if we want it to do load-balancing we first need to add a server or two which we want it to load-balace.

$server1 = New-Object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.basic.server
$server1.name = “Powershell”;
$server1.ipaddress = “192.168.88.100”;  
$ret_value=[com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.basic.server]::add($nitrosession,$server1)

Next we need to bind that server to a service.

$service1 = New-Object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.basic.service
$service1.name = “IIS”;
$service1.servicetype = “HTTP”;
$service1.monitor_name_svc =”http”;
$service1.port=”80″;
$service1.servername=”MSSQL”;
$ret_value=[com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.basic.service]::add($nitrosession,$service1)

And lastly create a load balanced vServer and do a service to vServer binding.

$lbvserver1 = New-Object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.lb.lbvserver
$lbvserver1.name=”lbvip_sample”;
$lbvserver1.servicetype=”http”;
$lbvserver1.port=”8080″;
$lbvserver1.ipv46=”192.168.88.25″;
$lbvserver1.lbmethod=”ROUNDROBIN”;
$lbvserver1.servicename=”IIS”      
$ret_value=[com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.lb.lbvserver]::add($nitrosession,$lbvserver1)

$lb_to_service = New-object com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.lb.lbvserver_service_binding
$lb_to_service.name = “lbvip_sample”;
$lb_to_service.servicename = “IIS”;
$ret_value=[com.citrix.netscaler.nitro.resource.config.lb.lbvserver_service_binding]::add($nitrosession,$lb_to_service)

And of course lastly remember to save the config of the Netscaler

So there you have it, some example Netscaler/PowerShell commands! I just getting started here myself so I will return when I have some more usefull commands and im going to make a custom setup script as well