Book announcement: Inside Citrix – the Flex Management Architecture!

As you might have noticed, lately it has been rather quite on basvankaam.com. But not to worry, I’m still here. While the number of blog posts from my end have been somewhat on the low side, I have kept myself busy *understatement* to say the least. Besides preparing three presentations (still a lot of work to do on those as well), which are all due in the next 2 months (Citrix Synergy included) I have been working on a big private project, a book!

Writing a book, sort of sounds magical doesn’t it? This is something I always wanted to give a shot. I love writing, sharing what I know and the interaction I have afterwards, most of the time anyway. And while I’m not new to the subject(s) I wrote about, it was, and still is one big learning experience from start to finish. I decided a couple of years ago that if I ever was to write a book I would self publish it, or at least to give that a try before anything else.

Self publishing

The self-publish approach probably takes a (lot) more work then working with an established publisher for example, especially if it is your first time. However, learning something new hasn’t gone wrong for me yet and I really love the freedom that comes with it. No hard deadlines or editors breathing down my neck for three to six months.

As you can imagine I have invested a lot of my spare time into getting the words onto paper and doing some of the research that comes with it. But if you think that writing around 65 to 70.000 words (I also reused, and have re-written some of my earlier published blog posts making it 96.000 words in total) is the hard part, you might be wrong. Of course I’m exaggerating here but don’t underestimate the number of things you need to think about, arrange and research when self-publishing your own book, but I won’t bore you with that process at this time.

A big thank you to some of the tech community folks for helping me out on reviewing some of the technical content and fact checking! Thank you Esther Barthel, Geert Braakhekke, Mick Glover, Kees Baggerman, Tobias Kreidl, Marius Sandbu and Erik Bakker!!!

Next to the time invested, I also had to invest money wise. While it doesn’t guarantee an error free book, getting it professionally proofread and copy edited at least once, I felt was an absolute necessity. Not because my English is that bad, I think it’s more than ok most of the time, but because I like to deliver the best result possible, although my resources are somewhat limited.

Read on to get an idea on what the book is about. All I can say is, if you like what I’m doing here over at basvankaam.com you will love my book :) I’ve also included a view of the book index, not final yet, but very close.

Because of the above it won’t be completely free of charge, hopefully you guys will understand. However, it will most definitely not be in the 25+ dollar / Euro range, far below that, I promise! Any free promotion like a re-tweet or share on Linked-In and/or Facebook will be highly appreciated!

Scope

In roughly 480 / 500 pages (5,5 x 8,5 Inch format) I will talk about what the Flex Management Architecture is, its foundation, the (main) components and concepts involved as well as any (closely) related technologies and products that might or might not be optional. I will primarily focus on the main concepts and ‘mechanisms’ that make up the FMA from an architectural point of view. As mentioned in the ‘Why this book’ section (see below) all information shared in this book is based on publically available information, my own experiences, those of others and a little help from Citrix here and there. However, since I’m not employed with Citrix and don’t have any access to company product information this is all I have. But trust me, I will make sure to include something for everybody. From the basics and beyond to deeper dives where applicable.

Other (closely related) topics will include but are not limited to concepts like Citrix printing, the user log on process, the FMA evolution, NetScaler, Sizing and IOPS considerations, resource enumeration & launch (what happens inside the FMA), troubleshooting, some history, fun facts and figures and (a lot) more. Topics that you as a Citrix Administrator / Architect have to deal with on a daily basis. Other sub and/or related components and technologies will vary with regards to the details shared. There is just so much to cover it’s nearly impossible to get to the same level of detail on every subject. I also don’t want to steer to far away from the main topic, the FMA. Of course when new (relevant) information becomes available I won’t hesitate to share this with you on basvankaam.com keeping this project a ‘work in progress’.

All major, minor and/or optional FMA components will be discussed. However, this book is not meant as an install and configure manual, nor will it be a how-to guide. Instead I want to dig deeper into the concepts, and technologies that make up and surround the Citrix Flex Management architecture, the true foundation of XenDesktop and XenApp.

As I progress I will also touch on some of the minor or ‘les significant’ features (although that depends on your point of view of course) along the way. Finally, I will conclude each (technical) section and/or chapter with a list of key takeaways (literally hundreds of them) that might be helpful when designing, implementing, troubleshooting or maintaining a Citrix XenDesktop / XenApp based infrastructures.

I have included two appendixes including all FMA Facts combined as well as all Key takeaways on a per chapter, or section basis. And of course I have also included various images and screenshots to help clarify certain concepts.

As mentioned earlier, some existing content from basvankaam.com will be included as well. However, all content will be closely reviewed and re-written where needed. I just felt it would be a waste not to do anything extra with all that I have produced up till now.

Why this book

During the past three years (I started basvankaam.com at January 1st 2013) I have written a lot of articles on XenApp, XenDesktop, the IMA (Independent Management Architecture) as well as the FMA (Flex Management Architecture) with the introduction of 7.x platform. Some were high level, some deep(er) dives and a few in between. Most of my articles are based on and written around publically available information, my own experiences, those of other community members and with a little help of Citrix every now and again, though I never shared any NDA information nor will I do now. It goes without saying that I am far from the only one, there are tons of excellent resources out there free for you to read and learn from, I’ll make sure to include a list of community resources near the end of this book.

The only issue with this, although that’s probably to big of a word, is that most information is scattered over the Internet and you will probably have to visit multiple sites and resources to find what you are looking for. Even when multiple articles covering the same and/or related subject(s) can be found on the same website you will be in for a search.

And while this isn’t too big of a deal (I mean, most content is written and published during out of work hours, meaning someone has sacrificed his or her spare time for this, so who are we to complain) I just like it when things are organised, so that’s what I am trying to achieve here as well. All things FMA related content bundled into one resource for your convenience, hopefully. And besides that, there aren’t that many books that go beyond installing and configuring Citrix products and even those are rare, the good ones I mean.

Who is it for

During the last two years or so I have made at least one serious attempt to write a book on Citrix related technology. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish it. One of the main reasons for this was the topic I chose, Citrix XenMobile. But seriously, whenever I finished a section or chapter something had already changed or Citrix would have at least announced a new release within the coming weeks. Of course this all helped (and it still does) in getting XenMobile to where it is today, which is great. However, for me it was very frustrating and counter productive at the time. In the end I decided to call it a day and use some of the material I had written up till then for some detailed Blog posts, which worked out very nicely.

Now with the FMA this is another story. Although the FMA itself is constantly being improved (especially now that XenApp has been added) the basics remain. During the last 14 to 16 months I have spend quite some time getting to know certain parts of the FMA. Knowledge I would like to share with you today.

If you are (relatively) new to XenApp / XenDesktop and the Flex Management Architecture this book will definitely be helpful. If you have been working with XenApp and/or XenDesktop for some time now but you would like to know a bit more about the ins and outs, this book will probably answers most of your questions as well. Since I have been writing about the Flex Management Architecture for a while now, I have a pretty good understanding of which topics are of interest to my readers, which really helps. I have also spoken to numerous community folks and readers of my Blog who told me that my writing helps them in getting things a bit more organised with regards to troubleshooting for example. So even if you know all this stuff already and you are a XenApp/XenDesktop/FMA veteran, this book might still come in handy as a reference, or a fun read at the very least. Take your pick.

As always, thank you for reading, and hopefully you will enjoy my book. It will still take me another couple of weeks to get things organized and ready to go but I when I do I will make sure to let you all know!

Regards,

Bas.

Bas van Kaam

Field CTO EMEA by day, author by night @ Nerdio

Father of three, EMEA Field CTO @ Nerdio, Author of the book Van de Basis tot aan Meester in de Cloud, Co-author of the book Project Byte-Sized and Yuthor of the book: Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture, over 500 blog posts and multiple (ultimate) cheat sheets/e-books. Public speaker, sport enthusiast­­­­­­­­: above-average runner, 3 x burpee-mile finisher and a former semiprofessional snooker player. IT community participant and initiator of the AVD User group Community world wide.