Citrix ADC is an application delivery controller that provides powerful web and application delivery features like load balancing, secure remote access, application acceleration, and consistent performance. It is a purpose-built networking appliance used to improve the performance, security, and resiliency of applications delivered over the web. Citrix ADC added many functionalities to optimize and secure applications to become one of the most feature-rich application delivery controllers available. The purpose and function of the ADC are to provide the following services:
- Improve the delivery speed, quality, and availability of applications to end-users.
- Act as an SSL proxy and offload computationally intensive encryption from back-end servers while simplifying labor-intensive certificate management.
- Employ an array of mechanisms to improve application performance, especially over mobile and high-latency networks.
- Act as a SAML agent, authorizing users via any data stores where their identity can be confirmed.
- Analyze traffic to determine usage patterns that signify normal behavior and automatically flag and block malicious inbound requests.
- Provide a comprehensive hybrid security model for applications and users.
Citrix ADC comes in different forms, including Citrix ADC VPX, Citrix ADC MPX, and Citrix ADC SDX. Citrix ADC VPX is a virtual appliance that provides powerful web and application delivery features. Citrix ADC MPX is a physical appliance that provides powerful hardware-based application delivery and load balancing with options for high-performance web application security and SSL offload support. Citrix ADC SDX introduces microservices analytics dashboard.
