When monitoring a NetScaler appliance, you may first want to know whether the target NetScaler has been deployed in an HA setup or not. If so, you may then want to time and again evaluate the effectiveness of the HA configuration, by checking the following:

• Is the target NetScaler appliance the primary node or the secondary node of the HA setup?
• What is the current state of the monitored NetScaler appliance? Did failover occur when the primary node went down?
• Are both nodes able to communicate freely with each other via heartbeat packets?
• Is the configuration of both the primary and secondary managers in sync?

The CtxNsHATest test does all the above, and more!

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the CtxNsHATest.

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• To monitor a NetScaler device, the eG agent should be configured with the credentials of a user with read-only privileges to the target NetScaler device. Specify the credentials of such a user in the NETSCALER USERNAME and NETSCALER PASSWORD text boxes.

• Confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box.

• The eG agent collects performance metrics by invoking NITRO (NetScaler Interface Through Restful interfaces and Objects) APIs on the target Netscaler device. Typically, the NITRO APIs can be invoked through the HTTP or the HTTPS mode. By default, the eG agent invokes the NITRO APIs using the HTTPS mode. This is why, the SSL flag is set to Yes by default. If the target Netscaler device is not SSL-enabled, then the NITRO APIs can be accessed through the HTTP mode only. In this case, set the SSL flag to No.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the UPDATE button will register the changes made.

When changing default configurations of tests, the values with “$” indicate variables that will be replaced by the eG system according to the specific server being managed - for instance, $hostName is the host/nickname of the target host, $port is the port number of the server being monitored. E.g., for a server xyz:80, $hostName will be changed automatically by the eG manager to “xyz” and $port will be changed to “80” when configuring a test.