Just over two years ago, around May the 16thmy book became available on Amazon, the paperback version that is. Two months later, the Kindle version was finished as well. Today I’m announcing the (soon to be) online availability of all chapters here on basvankaam dot com.
Here’s what I’m planning on doing
Throughout the coming months, I will start publishing chapters one by one, though, at some point, I might publish two, or perhaps even three chapters at a time. All key takeaways and FMA facts will be included and each chapter will be accompanied by a downloadable PDF version. Once all chapters are online I will publish the complete book as a whole – this will also include a ToC and the Image and Table indexes. In short, here’s what I’ll do:
- As of July the 10th 2018 my book will no longer be available for purchase.
- I’ll (again) read every chapter to correct any errors that might still be in there.
- This is not going to be a fully rewritten 2.0 version of the book, I still have a day job :)
- Chapters will be published ‘as is’. Meaning, some chapters might not be (fully) up to date.
- I’m a big Friends fan (you know the comedy show, right?). New chapters will be announced as follows: New chapter online – The one with… followed by the chapter name and the #InsideCitrix #FMA hashtags, or something to that extent.
- I have created a separate Inside Citrix chapters page.
- Each chapter will be available as a downloadable PDF file.
- Eventually, I’ll publish the whole book in PDF format as well.
As of July the 10th available chapters can be found here
For me this will be a side project (a very fun one), I will continue to write about other (Citrix related) products and technologies along the way. The feedback up till now has been amazing and very positive, 5-star reviews exclusively and tons of tweets, comments, likes, and so on – for that, I’d like to thank you.
Now you will always have a copy of Inside Citrix within reach. It will be right there with you when you need it, be it online, on a PC, laptop, tablet, your phone, or another reader of some sort
Two and a half years ago
When I started working on my book, about two and a half years ago Citrix had just announced the quarterly release cycle of both XenApp and XenDesktop. For me, this meant that it would be hard to keep pace with all the new features and functionalities coming out every three months or so. After giving it some thought, I decided to write about the FMA and closely related technologies from an architectural point of view, and not an installation/configuration guide, so to speak, which made it a little easier to comprehend. Also, most of the cloud stuff going on back then (and today) was/is out of scope as well.
Now that two years have passed and looking back at what has changed with regards to the on-premises/datacenter editions of both XenApp and XenDesktop, I think it’s safe to say that what I have written is still 75% valid, perhaps more. Of course, I’m looking at it from an architectural perspective, not features etc. Again, leaving the cloud portfolio out of it, or for the most part anyway.
The FMA as we know it today
Regardless of the comparison to where we are now, version 7.18, most of you are probably still on a (much) earlier, or older version, perhaps 6.5 even (I’ve seen multiple 6.5 deployments throughout the year). And while I’m positive that the use and adoption of the XA/XD cloud services, Essentials included will pick up eventually, today not many customers are using them, at least not from what I am hearing/seeing.
It’s either classic/traditional (no, not legacy) on-premises, or IaaS based cloud deployments – these are also still limited in numbers. Meaning that the FlexCast Management Architecture (this applies to IaaS as well) is very much alive and will be for years to come.
A big thank you to my sponsor IGEL for supporting me on this!
Cloud first
I’ve come to understand that from a development perspective not much has changed regarding the FMA and its services – making what I’ve written even more relevant. Some services have been added or activated over the past year or so but nothing new is being worked on. This is mainly because of Citrix’s focus on further cloud development, which is understandable.
Anyway, it will be fun to go over all the chapters (again), even though I’ve probably read the whole book 20+ times already. Thanks for now and hopefully some of you will enjoy going over the content I’m about to share going forward.
