Almost a year ago one of my colleagues told me about a project he was working on called the “vSphere Resource Kit“. I guess it reminds many of you of the Resource Kits that were released for the Microsoft products. I guess the idea is quite similar.
On twitter several people asked who the authors were and many said they were “unknown” within the virtualization community. I beg to differ as I know at least two of the authors and without knowing it most of you are familiar with them as well!
Chris McCain and Rawlinson Rivera. I can hear all of you think, who the hell are these guys… Well think for a second about the book Scott Lowe wrote. Many don’t appear to know this but Scott’s book was originally written by Chris McCain and Rawlinson Rivera! Chris(lead-author) and Rawlinson wrote the VI3 version of the book which Scott converted into a vSphere book. (Hey there is a reason the cover art is exactly the same.) Don’t get me wrong here, I just want to make it clear that these guys are no newcomers! Besides that, Rawlinson is a VMware employee and a well respected one I must say.
The question of course is what can we expect? Chris McCain, Rawlinson Rivera, Rodney McIntosh, Brian Cleary and “John” are currently writing 8(!) Books and recording over 150 videos. I have listed the titles of the book below and I can’t even imagine the amount of work that will go into this:
- Installing and configuring VMware vSphere 4
- Configuring and managing VMware vSphere 4 Storage and Network resources
- Creating and managing VMware vSphere 4 Virtual Machines
- Managing, Monitoring and optimizing VMware vSphere 4 resources
- Planning and implementing VMware vSphere 4 Availability
- Scripting with VMware vSphere 4
- Planning and implementing VMware vSphere 4 Site Recovery Manager 4
- Planning and implementing desktop virtualization with VMware VIEW 4
To be honest, I can’t wait to get my hands on a draft copy of the resource kit to review it and asked Rawlinson if he could provide a status update as according to their website the original release date was set somewhere Q2 – 2010. This has been postponed with two months to a more “marketable” date: end of August. VMworld!
dan frith says
Chris McCain is a rock star! I had the good fortune of having him for my vi3 install and config class a few years ago. Smart dude who was very helpful, even after the course was done. And the book was great too.