When designing environments, we always think about the high availability of the different components. Two is one, one is none! So when designing a ShareFile environment I want at least two StorageZone Controllers (SZC) for every StorageZone. Because most Citrix environment already contain a NetScaler it’s my preferred method to also use the NetScaler for load balancing the StorageZone Controllers. Nowadays the Citrix NetScaler has some nice wizards build in to assist you deploying the ShareFile configuration.
Two is one, one is none. Load balance the StorageZone Controllers!
The wizard however will use the “tcp-default” monitor to check the service state. This means the NetScaler appliance establishes a 3-way handshake with the monitor destination, and then closes the connection, to check if the destination is up. Although this is configured by the wizard and a best practice, I believe this is a weak spot in my HA setup. I have seen situations where the SZC server was running, but the ShareFile services were not responding correctly. A simple tcp monitor will not notice this!
The NetScaler ShareFile wizard uses the default tcp monitor