Cisco ACE, where next

[glenne nelson]

Good Afternoon,

You are all probably aware by now of the discontinuation of the ACE product. Needless to say after defending the ACE from vendors such as F5, it is disappointing.

However, life and load balancing must go on and the question is, where next. We currently have the ACE 20 [20 contexts) deployed and was looking at upgrading to ACE 30, however, as this is not an option, I would be interested to know where current ACE users are going.

The non- Cisco options we will be looking at in the very near future are:

F5

A10 Networks

Barracuda

Can anyone tell me if they have moved to any of these vendors and why?

Regards

Glenne Nelson

[Kanwaljeet Singh]

Hi Glenne,

There is no official statement from CISCO indicating that ACE will be discontinued. Similar queries have been answered before. Please have a look below:

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2172040

At this current point in time, the ACE30 and ACE4710 will continue to be developed through A5(3.X) code as part of the planned lifecycle of those products.  Any of the other future products including vACE, RISE, Nexus based Modules, appliances, etc. currently have no ETA, nor has any lifecycle ever been defined as they are not released products.  There is also no official Cisco response at this point in time to the rumors of cancellation, holds, etc. despite the hinting of certain articles to "confirmed by Cisco resources" based comments. 

Your best avenue for information is to talk with your local Cisco sales representative or account manager.  They may have more specific information pertaining to questions at a per-product/per-scenario level. As well, they will have the ability to help you plan your future deployments and designs queries accordingly

Regards,

Kanwal

[Surya ARBY]

Hi.

Can we have a clear update about Cisco's strategy ?

http://www.citrix.com/products/netscaler-application-delivery-controller/how-it-helps/cisco.html

The partnership couples Cisco’s leadership in datacenter networking  with the application delivery strength of Citrix. Together, the two  companies are helping enterprises and service providers deliver a true  cloud network – leveraging deep network and application-level  intelligence to speed service deployment and simplify networking  services.
Cisco is recommending Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery  Controller (ADC) solutions to its customers building next-generation  datacenter networks, and will integrate NetScaler into the Cisco Cloud  Network Services architecture.

http://www.citrix.com/news/announcements/oct-2012/cisco-and-citrix-expand-partnership.html?ntref=hp_promo_cisco

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=226023

[Marvin Rhoads]

The documents you posted pretty much say it. The strategy going forward for hardware-based load balancing in Cisco's reference architectures will be to use Citrix Netscaler.

The announcement was October 17. Prior to that date, no public Cisco communications would endorse Netscaler.

[alanc3141592654]

I feel the Cisco ACE will go the same direction as the Cisco CSS, I was disappointed to see them pull back on this box as well, But in the end cisco were not making money in this area.

So, they will now be pushing Citrix Netscalar as per the announcement.

[glenne nelson]

Good Morning,

I am now aware of Cisco's endorsement of Citrix Netscalar product presumably because of some sort of parnership.

The edorsement, as far as I can see, does not give any technical reason why, e.g. ease of migration, simialar architecture/user interface etc.

I am still interested to know where users of the ACE 20 will now migrate to.

Regards,

Glenne Nelson

[Marvin Rhoads]

It's not (primarily) a technical decision, it's a business one.

Re which of the Netscaler platforms to migrate to, Citrix has several documents describing their products technical performance specifications. Choose the one that best meets your requirements. Both Citrix and Citrix partners can assist.

http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products/ACE_Product_Migration_Guide_final.pdf

http://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products/netscalerdatasheetaugust2012.pdf

[ashish]

Hi Frnds,

Can you folks let me know the current status of Cisco Ace, Cisco CSS: discontinued-Yes/No

Whats Cisco new plan for load balancing solution?

Thanks,