Good info. Straight-forward and easy to follow.

covering most of basic troubleshooting steps - get's you started with troubleshooting easy

Great reference and how to. Aggregates alot of info spread across multiple sources.

This book is awesome, all the NetScaler features are covered with deployment examples, flowcharts, Deployment considerations which is very important for admin before starting any project. Highlight of this book is troubleshooting part, all the feature troubleshooting is explained with Wireshark traces and NetScaler counters, which did not find in any book or document in detail as this book.Would like to share chapter wise highlights of this book, which would help buyersChater1:Which covers NetScaler file system, locations of NetScaler system files, configs and Certificates.In this chapter I found “Request switching and connection multiplexing” very interesting and author explained it very nicely, how this feature works and improves the performance of NetScaler.Very well explained about different modes of NetScaler, pros and cons of each mode and when to enable/disable them.Chapter2:Which covers commonly used load balancing methods, when to use which method and what are the factors to consider before deciding the LB type.With respect to troubleshooting he covered how to troubleshoot performance issue( interestingly he did explain how to isolate to specific server/device), uneven load balancing issues, Persistency issues which includes cookie based persistency.SSL certificates and how to troubleshoot SSL related issues .GLSB covered in details, Communication flow from user till backend server, different types of GSLB methods,What is MEP and how to troubleshoot MEP communication related issues.In this chapter I found very useful was, log analysis explained using Wireshark(also how to decrypt the SSL communication) and explanation of NetScaler nsconmsg system counters which I could not find in other books.Chapter3:Integrated caching and compression, how these features helps in improving the user performance.Which are the files/content NetScaler will cache and compress, which is explained very well using flow chart along with sample packet flowWith respect to troubleshooting author explained it very, how to confirm if the severed content is form NetScaler cache or not, what are the HTTP headers to check and NetScaler counters to use while troubleshooting.Chapter4:AAA traffic management which is my favourite topic, in this book commonly used AAA protocols like LDAP, RADIUS,SAML, certificate based auth, Form based and Kerberos.With respect to troubleshooting aaad.debug log which is commonly used AAA troubleshooting is very well explained along with error codes also did point to Citrix article for reference.When comes to cert based auth author explained what is certificate, types of certificate and how they are validated. What to look when authentication failing with NetScaler system counter nsconmsg.Kerberos protocol explanation is awesome which covers deployment options, configuration checklist and authentication flow explained with traces which I did not find in most of the books, this would help admin in implementing an troubleshooting.SAMAL protocol also explained very well with Fiddler traces for better understanding of the flow and what to look when auth failsChapter5:Here comes the mostly commonly used feature of NetScaler, High availability(HA) and Networking.Until I read this book I had lots of confusion about NSVLAN, tagging options, LACP and NIC buffer, all the networking concepts are explained with examples and when to use them.This covers HA in details, ports used by NetScaler in HA, how RPC password plays important role in HA. Different stats of HA and meaning of the same.How to identify the failover event, What logs and counters to check when HA hertbeats are not seen on the devices. Issues caused by ARP, GARP and Split-brain conditions.Last but not least HA syn issues also covered log analysis and NetScaler packet handling with HA is enabled is explained with flow chard for easy understanding.Chapter6:ApplicatioFirwall one of the commonly used App security feature, this book covers Application attacks like cross-site scripting(XSS), SQL injection, Forceful browsing attacks, cookie tampering, Hidden filed tampering. All these are explained with examples and logs, also covers how to prevent them by AppFw policies.Signature based policy configuration is also explained with configuration stepsWith respect to troubleshooting, identifying the firewall blocks using NetScaler output commands and system counters, Also covered performance issues when enabling AppFirewall and how to troubleshoot by creating custom policies.Chapter7:NetScaler gateway is vastly used remote access feature of NetScaler.Difference between basic and smart access modes is covered and when to use them.In this chapter I liked the way VPN session phases are explained using Wireshark captures, phase1:EPA exchanges, Phase2:Authentication exchanges, and Phase3: Authentication exchanges, explanation includes HTTP header/content level details.Troubleshooting includes how to collect client side VPN and EPA logs and how to diagnose the failure.ICA proxy troubleshooting and App launch process is extensively covered in this book• Different phases of App launch process• What are the servers involved in each communication and role of each servers• How to troubleshoot App/Desktop enumeration and launch issues, with sample log analysis and policy hits countersThis chapter also covers the XenMobile(XM) configuration as gateway is used for securing the communication between mobile devices and backend servers.All wizards used in the XM configuration is explained along with inbuilt tools to check the connectivityChapter8:After covering all the network features author did cover system level issues, licensing issues, NTP issues, SNMP issues and how to troubleshoot them.CPU, memory and device hang issues are explained very will using counters and how to read themChapter9:All the inbuilt NetScaler utilities like dashboards, Show techsupport utility are covered, I did find few nsconmsg commands online and was using them while troubleshooting the NetScaler issues but after reading this book I understand the different syntaxes used along with nsconmsg and meaning of the same. Now I don’t need to remember the whole command as I can tweak the command using syntaxes based on the output.

This book shows beginning and advanced administrator all the ins and outs of debugging the citrix Netscaler. From hardware failure detection to networking issues, it's all in there.Dennis van RemortelTech Reviewer of the Troubleshooting Netscaler book