VMware vSphere Design

This is the most comprehensive VMware book I have ever read, the amount of information contained in the tome of knowledge is incredible.I would suggest grabbing a notebook and taking notes as you go along. This book does assume a fair amount of familiarity with VMware technical concepts, it also assumes a fair amount of knowledge of storage concepts. While you don’t need to be a expert in these areas you will have to at least have touched a FC array and installed ESXi.I thank all of the authors Forbes Guthrie, Scott Lowe and Kendrick Coleman.Chapter 1 - IntroThis Chapter gives a good what, who and how of what this book is about, it does a good job of setting the stage and explaining what the book is aiming to do, what you should be aiming to do with the knowledge in the book.Chapter 2 - The ESXi HypervisorThis is were you start to get an idea of the knowledge of the authors, explaining certain things like offsetting power up (I’m trying to be vague, read the book). Again you better have a good understanding of the ESXi Hypervisor before beginning this.Chapter 3 - The Management LayerTalk about what can be used to manage your vSphere environment, goes over the vCenter chicken and egg issues. Also addresses some other tools in VMware’s toolbox to help with managing your vSphere environment.Chapter 4 - Server HardwareWhile not endorsing a particular platform it does detail a few vendors offerings. This chapter mainly deals with what type of hardware you should be looking into and gives you arguments for both sides of the Rack Mount vs Blade.Chapter 5 - Designing your networkFairly good overview of Network Design, not as technical detailed as the other chapters. But if you are installing a vSphere Environment in a “Greenfield's” environment you best read this network design.Chapter 6 - StorageMake sure you own a comfy chair, as they state in the book vSphere 5.1 was the storage release, this chapter covers the new features of storage in incredible detail. I suggest you have some storage experience, while the authors tend to steer away from naming particular vendor technologies they will speak in industry standard storage terms.Chapter 7 - Virtual MachinesWhile this book is aimed at Architects and a like I suggest that ops staff and admins read this chapter, gives a very good view on how to configure VMs and some operating procedures with VMs.Chapter 8 - Data Centre DesignAgain if you are looking a “greenfield’s” deployment, this chapter is must. You gain the knowledge and experience of the authors and how they have done and seen it done before.Chapter - 9 Design with Security in mindThis is a number of security scenarios and what you can do about them in your design. This chapter is not aimed at security professionals it is aimed a architects to make sure they perform some hardening and segregation into their design.Chapter - 10 Monitoring and Capacity PlanningMonitoring and Capacity planning is a great chapter and I wish I had read it before I wasted a lot time in a businesses case to my employer to buy more Capacity for my hosted infrastructure. This chapter has clear capacity planning techniques, they also show you the dirty way of doing it by free hand (excel). While this is not as complex and accurate as lets say vCenter Operations Manager, if you need to explain this to your business you can easily explain how and why you came to the conclusion “I need 5 more hosts” if your approvers require to be slow walked to the answer.Chapter - 11 Bringing a vSphere Design togetherThe Bringing a vSphere Design together is a “talk” through of everything you have learned. This is a not a full design that you can copy and paste, but more of a few pages on each section and what you should include.Chapter - 12 vCloud DesignThis is a good Chapter, but if you have never used vCloud before it takes a while to wrap your head around the concepts. This details private clouds and their usage within business. It also goes into great detail on the Storage and Network Design of vCloud. This Chapter could have been split up into two or three. Very detailed.I loved reading this book, while I am little bit late to the party for this book as I read it in 2015 and technologies such as NSX and vSAN are now out these would have changed certain chapter such as Storage, Servers and Networking. The concepts and knowledge in the book are still relevant today and I learned a lot. I hope these authors do get together and make a 3rd edition for the upcoming vSphere 6, or another group of equally talented architects pick this up.Small bit about the reviewer - I worked in VMware Technology since 2008, I have worked in small service providers as a consultant on their hosted IaaS services, most recently I have built a “private cloud” offering for another provider using a lot of the technologies in this book.Great book thanks to all those who wrote it and inspired them.- @iiToby

Covers the fundamental infrastructure of vsphere here very well. Some reference tables of thresholds would be nice along with more examples and situations of use. It also covers most of the high end technologies such as vcloud in a good general manner to help you get a good rough idea on design strategies. It is a good overall book for someone creating or reassessing their vsphere architecture

Good

Preordered the paper version of this book on Amazon last week and was pleasantly surprised to receive it today.So far I have enjoyed reading it, specifically chapter 11 which includes a sample design. This is a nicely written book with lots of useful content and divided into 12 distinct chapters.I am sure I will be referencing this book regularly.

Very good book, it goes deeper in multiple subjects. The various options and solutions are well explained and the book give you some technical detail on each part. Be aware that it's not a configuration guide, but realy a design guide. It will help you to choose the cluster size, but also the physical server, network protocol and so on.

Well thought out, organized. Excellent resource of the information one managing or researching VMware needs to make appropriate decisions. Written by those that know the product and have day to day experience with the product. I purchased as a reference and have ordered for the rest of my team.

The book is well written but is of very limited value if you own the previous edition. Some of the critical aspects from Vsphere 5.1 like SSO are barely mentioned, and the additional chapter on Vcloud is very generic.A bit of a letdown...

In 2015, still a great design book

This is a very good book, very detail and with massive amount of info, and very valuable as a reference. However, the text feels a bit disconnected as the infrastructure is broken down into components (host hardware, network, storage etc) and it goes into detail discussion on each component, but I just did not feel it was all glued together at any point or made a clear cross-reference where it was necessary. E.g. at one point it says that HA can restart VMs without vCenter, but then a bit later, it says that HA may depend on DRS. And on moments it feels a bit diluted (felt like an intro to everything), but these parts can be skipped I guess. Overall, the content is very good, but I did not like the structure.

A brilliant book for those starting to learn all about VMware design and even those who have been designing for a while but want to have a refresher on portions they may not do anymore.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A mixture of theory and real world practise that covers the design of vsphere 5.0 and where necessary 5.1.I used this book as part of my study for vcap5-dcd and it helped enormously.

I bought this book as recommended for the DCD prep and its really good, I have learnt plenty from just skim reading it at the minute!

Good book. Bit theoretical though.