NetScaler virtual CPU licensing

Last published : Sep 26, 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: Supported from early September 2025.
  • NetScaler Console on-prem: 14.1-51.x
    Note: LAS support for Console on-prem is from release 14.1-51.x onwards. However, file-based licensing is deprecated as of April 15 2026 from Console on-prem releases 14.1-51.x onwards and 13.1-60.x onwards. If you upgrade to Console on-prem release 14.1-51.x or release 13.1-60.x or later, you can continue using file-based licensing until 15th April 2026. However you must upgrade to Console on-prem release 14.1-51.x or later, and switch to LAS before 15th April 2026 because Console on-prem 13.1 does not support LAS.
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.
Data center administrators like you are moving to newer technologies that simplify network functions while offering lower costs and greater scalability. Newer data center architecture must include the following features in the least:
  • Software-defined networking (SDN)
  • Network functions virtualization (NFV)
  • Network virtualization (NV)
  • Micro-services
Such a movement also needs that the software requirements to be dynamic, flexible, and agile to meet the ever-changing business needs. Licenses are also expected to be managed by a central management tool with full visibility into the usage.
Related information

Virtual CPU licensing for NetScaler VPX

Earlier, NetScaler VPX licenses were allocated based on the bandwidth consumption by the instances. A NetScaler VPX is restricted to use a specific bandwidth and other performance metrics based on the license edition that it is bound to. To increase the available bandwidth, you must upgrade to a license edition that provides more bandwidth. In certain scenarios, the bandwidth requirement might be less, but the requirement is more for other L7 performance such as SSL TPS, compression throughput, and so on. Upgrading the NetScaler VPX license might not be suitable in such cases. But you might still have to buy a license with large bandwidth to unlock the system resources required for CPU-intense processing. NetScaler Console now supports allocating licenses to the NetScaler instance based on the virtual CPU requirements.
In the virtual CPU-usage-based licensing feature, the license specifies the number of CPUs that a particular NetScaler VPX is entitled to. So, the NetScaler VPX can check out licenses for only the number of virtual CPUs running on it from the license server. NetScaler VPX checks out licenses depending on the number of CPUs running in the system. NetScaler VPX does not consider the idle CPUs while checking out the licenses. Similar to pooled license capacity and CICO licensing functionalities, the NetScaler Console license server manages a separate set of virtual CPU licenses. Here also, the three editions managed for virtual CPU licenses are standard, Advanced, and Premium. These editions unlock the same set of features as those unlocked by the editions for bandwidth licenses.
There might be a change in the number of virtual CPUs or when there is a change in the license edition. In such a case, you must always shut down the instance before you initiate a request for a new set of licenses. Restart the NetScaler VPX after checking out the licenses.

To configure licensing server in NetScaler VPX using GUI

  1. In NetScaler VPX, navigate to System > Licenses and click Manage Licenses.
  2. On the License page, click Add New License.
  3. On the Licenses page, select the Use remote licensing option.
  4. Select CPU licensing from the Remote Licensing Mode list.
  5. Type the IP address of the license server and the port number.
  6. Click Continue.
    Note
    Always register NetScaler VPX instance with NetScaler Console. If not done already, enable Register with NetScaler Console and type NetScaler Console login credentials.
  7. In the Allocate licenses window, select the type of license. The window displays the total and the available virtual CPUs and also the CPUs that can be allocated. Click Get Licenses.
    Note
    For a NetScaler HA pair, allocate virtual CPU licenses to each node separately.
  8. Click Reboot on the next page to apply for the licenses.
    Note
    You can also release the current license and check out from a different edition. For example, you are already running the Standard edition license on your instance. You can release that license and then check out from the Advanced edition.