FMA – basvankaam.com

All chapters of Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture published online!

Average time to read: 4 minutes

Just over two years ago, around May the 16^thmy 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. Continue reading All chapters of Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture published online!

The ultimate Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet – Version 2.0

Average time to read: 87 minutes

About two and a half years ago I published the ultimate Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet, version 1.0 and it turned out to be a big hit. In the meantime, it has been viewed over 80.000 times already. All the more reason to start working on version 2.0. Since I have been writing about Citrix technologies for the last couple of years I have built up a broad archive, which I can now partly (re) use and re-write to come up with an even more detailed edition, version 2.0 of the Citrix XenDesktop 7.x internals cheat sheet. I would strongly advice you to download a .PDF copy – If you like the blogpost, you’ll love the .PDF, trust me! It includes a full Table of Contents making it easier to navigate.

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For your convenience – 100+ Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA facts listed!

Average time to read: 15 minutes

I like, no wait, I love lists… there, I’ve said it. But no, really, I think (bulleted) lists are one of the best ways to share facts and knowledge. That’s also why I used multiple lists in my book, dozens of them containing hundreds of bulleted (FMA) facts. Throughout the various chapters I highlight multiple so-called ‘FMA facts’, 116 in total to be exact and I conclude each chapter with a list of key takeaways. This post is meant to share with you most of the FMA Facts that I came up while writing The FlexCast Management Architecture, though I did slightly alter quite a few of them.

Continue reading For your convenience – 100+ Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA facts listed!

2016 — A personal look in the rearview mirror

Average time to read: 6 minutes

And what a year it has been! Personally as well as professionally I have managed to improve and surprise myself on multiple levels. On some occasions I wasn’t even capable of spelling ‘comfort-zone’ correctly, I was so far off. The best thing is, I already have some great prospects for 2017 as well, but I’ll (have to) save that for a future post, not to long from now. 2016, like 2015 before that was again packed with community get-togethers’, mostly in the form of conferences, some small (er) some big/huge, but all fun and it truly never gets tiring, presenting included. Ok, let’s reflect for a minute, shall we…

Continue reading 2016 — A personal look in the rearview mirror

The Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA Services complete overview – new 7.12 Services included

Average time to read: 15 minutes

The release of XenApp/XenDesktop version 7.12 introduced couple of new FMA services (primarily used by LHC) — time for an update. As you might be aware, I have written multiple articles on the FlexCast Management Architecture in the past (including my book) talking about its core services, their responsibilities, capabilities, communication channels/interfaces and so on. Throughout the past two years I also came up with a nice graphical overview (at least I like to think so) representing a Delivery Controller including all main FMA services. This article/post is meant to provide you with a continues update on the FMA and its primary core services, graphical overview included. Each time something changes you’ll read about it here – as soon as NDA has been lifted of course.

Continue reading The Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop FMA Services complete overview – new 7.12 Services included

Inside Citrix – The making of & lessons learned!

Average time to read: 20 minutes

Now that my book is out in the open I get a lot of questions about my approach. People are really interested to find out how long it took me to complete, what kind of tools I used, where I found the time, what drove me to write a book in the first place and of course what I’ve learned along the way. And since I like to share… hopefully this post will answer most, if not all of these and other questions you guys might have.

Continue reading Inside Citrix – The making of & lessons learned!

VCNRW… A deep dive into the FMA, the 2016 edition – Presentation video!

Average time to read: < 1 minute

During E2EVC in Lisbon, Portugal, back in November 2015, I was asked by Helge Klein if I might be interested and willing to come and present at their first ever VCNRW full-day event over in Cologne (Köln), Germany. While I was honoured, I told Helge I wanted give it some thought mainly because I didn’t really had a topic ready at that time, but luckily that didn’t take too long. A few weeks later I accepted and the rest is history. While my presentation went ok, unfortunately my timing was a bit off and I finished about ten minutes early. Another lesson learned.

Continue reading VCNRW… A deep dive into the FMA, the 2016 edition – Presentation video!

Citrix licensing (and Microsoft) demystified? I need your help!

Average time to read: 20 minutes

Licensing can be complicated, not only do we need to consider XenApp and/or XenDesktop licenses; we also have to deal with Microsoft licensing, if we like or not. Throughout this chapter I will focus on the different types of Citrix licenses available, how they get applied from a XenApp / XenDesktop perspective and what other types of (Microsoft) licenses we need to take into consideration, like RDS, VDA (and no, this is not the Citrix VDA), CDL etc.

Continue reading Citrix licensing (and Microsoft) demystified? I need your help!

Citrix Machine Creation Services… What to consider!

Average time to read: 11 minutes

Since this will officially be my first blog post as a Citrix CTP, I would like to start by thanking everybody for your support during the last couple of years and of course for all the congratulations and well wishes I have received since the official announcement last week. It has been a truly wonderful experience! Having said that, let’s get back on topic. This is not going to be a MCS vs. PVS kind of blog post; there are plenty of good ones out there already, instead I will assume that you already choose MCS over PVS. However, while the choice has been made you still have some doubts as to weather MCS is up to the task at hand. Throughout this post I will summarize some things to think about and questions to ask when and before implementing Citrix MCS.

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How to configure zones in XenDesktop and XenApp 7.7 plus some extra’s!

Average time to read: 8 minutes

Yes, Zones are back! This seems to be a very popular quote on Twitter and Linked-In ever since Citrix released XenApp/XenDesktop 7.7 last week. And to honest, I’m exited as well. Are these the zones we were, or are used to in XenApp 6.5? No. But they’re close. After I installed XenDesktop 7.7 the morning after its release, I had 3 zones up and running within 5 minutes, and that’s only because I didn’t read the ‘manual’ up front. Let’s have a look and see what we come up with along the way. I took the bullet approach on this one. Scroll down for some screenshots on how to configure XenDesktop / XenApp zones.

Continue reading How to configure zones in XenDesktop and XenApp 7.7 plus some extra’s!