Book Reviews

VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive
by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman
If you are a VMware administrator or want to be one, there are a couple of books out there that will definitely help you out, and should be on your desk. Of those books, the one that has most recently stood out to me is VMware vSphere Clustering Technical Deepdive by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman. These guys are some of the heaviest hitters in the VMware blogosphere. Duncan’s blog has been voted the top blog in the annual Top 25 Virtualization Blog awards held over at vSphere-Land. Duncan is Principal Architect in the Technical Marketing group at VMware and is focused on storage, ESXi convergence and vSphere architecture. If you want to do some serious technical deep-diving, head over to Duncan’s blog, you’re sure to find a post there that will suit your needs. Frank Denneman also has a very popular and widely read blog, that was rated #6 on last years Top 25 Virtualization Blog awards. Frank is currently a Consulting Architect working for VMware as part of the Professional Services Organization and working primarily with large Enterprise customers and Service Providers. Right off the bat, there is cause to grab this book and start reading, it’s authored by two of the top virtualization bloggers and both VMware employees.

What’s Covered?
This is obvious, this book covers a deepdive of VMware vSphere Clustering in vSphere 5. vSphere 5, the latest release from VMware of their industry leading Cloud Infrastructure Suite, has many updates to it’s already stellar line up of utilities. One of the best advancements in vSphere 5 is the time it takes to install and configure High Availability (HA)… READ MORE

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Mastering VMware vSphere 5
by Scott Lowe
Anyone who’s ever been interested in VMware vSphere and has searched for resources on the subject has at some point come across one of the best VMware resources you can find, Mastering VMware vSphere 4 by Scott Lowe. If you saw my copy of Mastering vSphere 4 you might thing a dog got his jaws on it, but that’s not the case. I’ve used this book on a daily basis for about a year and a half now and it has been a never ending, save my hide kind of resource when it comes to anything vSphere 4 related. While studying for my VCP4 exam, I read this book cover to cover at least 4 times, not including the countless times I referenced it while at work as a new VMware administrator. If your story is much like mine with this book, then we all owe a big thanks to the author, Scott Lowe, and his vast knowledge and experience with VMware and its many working parts.

What’s Covered
Thankfully for us, Scott has followed up his wildly popular vSphere 4 book with Mastering VMware vSphere 5 available now. READ MORE

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Top 5 VMware Books List

These days there seems to be a ton of books on just about any and every subject matter out there, but there are only a select few that are actually helpful and not redundant. When it comes to VMware there is no shortage of books available that can be very helpful. There are books that are specific to certain aspects of VMware such as HA, DRS, SRM and others; as well as books based on ESX/ESXi and vSphere that can be referenced on a daily basis. It’s hard to just select a top 5, I could really make a top 50 list, but that would be a very long post. Here is a list of the top 5 books based on VMware that I think are must reads, and must haves… READ MORE

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Do You Own These VMware Books? You Should!

Back in January of this year I wrote a post listing my top 5 VMware books, well with the passing 6 months there are a few more incredible books that should be added to this list so I’m expanding it a bit. I’ve come to find out that it’s way to difficult to restrict the list to just five entries, so I’ve decided to review my favorite VMware books every 6 months because it seems as a new book or books come out in that time frame. This does not change my earlier list, those books are phenomenal and I would still list them as my top 5 but there are others that should be in the mix as well… READ MORE