When managing few Netscaler (SDX, MPX, VPX etc) it can be useful to back them up. An easy way to do it is to use ADM to get one place to have all your Netscaler instances backed up and then upload all the backup files to another place on a remote share, SCP, FTP or SFTP.
Part of the solution is in Citrix documentation here : https://docs.netscaler.com/en-us/citrix-application-delivery-management-software/current-release/networks/instance-management/backup-restore-netscaler-instances.html
But this remains a manual task and if you don't export the backup, they remain on the ADM instance.
This part of ADM ui is not very well done, if the backup fails, no message, back to square 0, if it successes, no message, back to square 0... Not very helpful.
While checking the ogs on the ADM I noticed this entry :
Apr 6 13:25:18 <local0.info> ADM01 mas_config: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx : DEVICECONFIG CMD_EXECUTED : User userroot - InstanceIP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - InstanceUser - Command "sftp /var/mps/tenants/root/device_backup/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/backup_xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx_06Apr2023_01_45_19.tgz nsbackupaccount@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/nsbackup/backup_xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxApr2023_01_45_19.tgz" - Status "Completed" - Message "Upload backup file Successful"
On the ADM instance, there is one folder per backed up Netscaler instance in the folowing directory : /var/mps/tenants/root/device_backup/
I was about to write a custom script to schedule a copy of all these backups to a remote share when I checked in the Settings > System Administration > Configure System and Instance backup and there was this serate hidden menu to do the trick from the gui.
By clicking on Instance, you can chose to Enable External Transfer :
That's a nice feature you need to use :)
