Expected behaviors when issues arise

Last published : Sep 21, 2026
Important:
File based licensing system (also referred to as manually managed entitlements), traditionally used for activating various on-premises components, will be End of Life (EOL) on April 15, 2026. License Activation Service (LAS) is the next generation technology for product activations across the suite of Citrix products. LAS will be the only way to activate and license NetScaler instances after April 15, 2026, supporting NetScaler Flexed licenses (CPL/UHMC), legacy NetScaler Pooled licenses, and NetScaler Fixed term Bandwidth licenses. To remain supported, your NetScaler and NetScaler Console deployments must be on a LAS compatible version.
The minimum required NetScaler® versions that are LAS compatible are:
  • NetScaler ADCs: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x, 13.1-37.246 (FIPS), 14.1-66.68 (FIPS)
  • NetScaler SVM: 14.1-51.x, 13.1-60.x
  • NetScaler Console Service: will support LAS from early September.
All the other forms of legacy NetScaler licenses such as Pooled vCPU, CICO, perpetual will not be supported with LAS. NetScaler instances leveraging perpetual licenses without an active maintenance will become unlicensed upon upgrade to the above mentioned software versions.
LAS based licenses may not be available to customers where prohibited by law or regulations.
If you have questions or concerns, contact Customer Care. Citrix may limit or suspend your Citrix Maintenance for non-compliance with these requirements without liability in addition to any other remedies Citrix may have at law or equity. These requirements don’t apply where prohibited by law or regulation.
Following are the expected behaviors of the license servers and NetScaler instances when they experience the issues described:
Related information

License Server stops responding

Warning
The license Server is not responding. NetScaler continues to operate with the current capacity for 30 days. After 30 days, if the connectivity to the license server is not restored, the NetScaler loses its current capacity and stops processing traffic.
If the license server stops responding, the NetScaler instance enters the Grace Period until connectivity is restored.

NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance stops responding

If the NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance stops responding and the license server is in a healthy state, the license server checks in all the NetScaler instance’s licenses after 10 minutes. When the instance reboots, it sends a request to check out all the licenses from the licensing server.

Both license server and NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance stop responding

If both the license server and the NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance restarts and reestablishes the connection, the license server checks-in all its licenses after 10 minutes, and the NetScaler pooled capacity enabled instances automatically check out the licenses after the reboot is completed.

The NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance shuts down gracefully

During a graceful shutdown, you can choose to check the licenses in or keep the licenses that were allocated before the graceful shutdown. If you choose to check the licenses in, the NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instance is unlicensed after it restarts. If you choose to keep the licenses, they are checked in to the licensing server when the instance shuts down. After the instance restarts, it reestablishes the connection with the licensing server and checks out the licenses as specified in the saved configuration.
If the system reboots and the checkout fails due to no capacity available in the pool, the NetScaler checks the inventory of NetScaler Application Delivery Management (ADM) pool licenses and checks out any available capacity. An SNMP alarm is raised to notify this condition to the user if the NetScaler is not running with full capacity as per configuration. If no capacity is available in the bandwidth pool, the pool capacity enabled instance becomes unlicensed.

Network loses connectivity

Error message (syslog)
License Server is not responding.
If the license server and NetScaler pooled-capacity enabled instances are in healthy states but network connectivity is lost, the instances continue to operate with their current capacity for 30 days. After 30 days, if the connectivity to the license server is not restored, the instances lose their capacity and stop processing traffic, and the license server checks-in all its licenses. After the license server reestablishes connectivity with the NetScaler instances, the instances check the licenses out again.