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Must have book: Host Resources Deep Dive

Duncan Epping · Jun 20, 2017 ·

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of a new book by Frank Denneman and Niels Hagoort. This new book is titled Host Resources Deep Dive and is available as of today in the US through Amazon. As most of you know I wrote the Clustering Deepdive series together with Frank, which means I kinda knew what to expect in terms of level of depth. Kinda, as this is a whole new level of depth. I don’t think I have ever seen (for example) topics like NUMA or NIC drivers explained at this level of depth. If you ask me, it is fair to say that Frank and Niels redefined the term “deep dive”.

Some fun facts before I write a bit more about the book:

  • Started writing in March 2016
  • 122.543 words
  • 5217 paragraphs
  • 23 chapters
  • 569 pages
  • 311 screenshots and diagrams
  • ISBN-10: 1540873064
  • ISBN-13: 978-1540873064

569 pages and 120k+ words… that is a lot. Especially considering this is “only” covering “host resources” and not things like HA and DRS. It is thick, this is a proper book, I took a quick pic, just to give you an idea.

As mentioned, the topic is Host Resources, but what does that mean? The book is carved up in 4 sections: CPU, Memory, Storage and Networking. The book starts with a great foreword by VMware’s CTO Kit Colbert. And then each section starts with a prologue. Frank and Niels managed to ask 4 industry titans if you ask me to write these prologues. VMware’s CEO Pat Gelsinger wrote the CPU prologue. Carl Waldspurger, the inventor of TPS and DRS, wrote the Memory prologue. The CTO for Storage & Availability, Christos Karamanolis, wrote the Storage prologue. Last but definitely not least, Andrew Lambeth (VMware Fellow), who was responsible for the ESX network stack and was part of the team who developed NSX (in the Nicira days!), wrote the Network prologue. A great addition if you ask me to excellent content.

Now that you know the book discusses CPU, Memory, Storage and Networking, what kind of topics can you expect? Well this is what Amazon states, which is spot on: This book explains the concepts and mechanisms behind the physical resource components and the VMkernel resource schedulers, which enables you to:

  • Optimize your workload for current and future Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) systems.
  • Discover how vSphere Balanced Power Management takes advantage of the CPU Turbo Boost functionality, and why High Performance does not.
  • How the 3-DIMMs per Channel configuration results in a 10-20% performance drop.
  • How TLB works and why it is bad to disable large pages in virtualized environments.
  • Why 3D XPoint is perfect for the vSAN caching tier.
  • What queues are and where they live inside the end-to-end storage data paths.
  • Tune VMkernel components to optimize performance for VXLAN network traffic and NFV environments.
  • Why Intel’s Data Plane Development Kit significantly boosts packet processing performance.

What is unique about this book, in my opinion, is that it contains details on various topics which I have not been abled to find anywhere else. I guess the fact that Frank had various conversations with the lead architect for the Intel Xeon CPU Microarchitecture helped (Chris Gianos). Some of the diagrams on NUMA for instance, I could easily see Intel wanting to use them for their documentation.

One more quote from Frank and Niels on the book, which I think describes the essence:

The idea is to debunk long-lived myths and reinvigorate the extraordinary world of virtualization. We hope to wake them up, and get them to shy away from the statement that the hypervisor is commodity. While the customers and partners where focusing on creating platforms that run on top the hypervisor, they have lost sight of the improvements of hardware and software made the last 5 years. Revealing these features allow them to create better performing systems that are easier to manage. The book is all about the focus on host level building blocks that helps you to create and operate a consistent infrastructure layer that runs modern and future compute, network and storage platforms.

What more can I say? Just go out and pick it up! Now it is time for me to relax in my chair and get educated! (Don’t tell my daughter though I am relaxing in her chair :))

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Comments

  1. Yu Mi says

    20 June, 2017 at 15:21

    Do you have any plans to release e-format (pdf, epub or kindle)?

    • Christoph Hochsticher says

      20 June, 2017 at 18:36

      Please release it as epub too!

      • Duncan Epping says

        20 June, 2017 at 23:48

        After VMworld Frank and Niels have said…

    • kurt says

      20 June, 2017 at 23:10

      Please release as e-format as well

      • Duncan Epping says

        20 June, 2017 at 23:47

        After VMworld Frank and Niels have said…

    • Duncan Epping says

      20 June, 2017 at 23:48

      After VMworld Frank and Niels have said…

    • Appus says

      27 June, 2017 at 12:24

      Will be great to see it in e-format, I agree with the others.

  2. Jason Boche (@jasonboche) says

    20 June, 2017 at 16:36

    Duncan,
    Great and deserving intro to what looks to be a fantastic book. Ordering my copy today.

    • Duncan Epping says

      20 June, 2017 at 23:48

      It is deep… very deep

  3. Rick Enright says

    20 June, 2017 at 17:49

    Just ordered my copy. If it any where close to being as good as your Cluster Deep Dive books then I can’t wait.

  4. Patrick says

    20 June, 2017 at 18:43

    Frank and Niels showed it at their session at DEVMUG a few days ago 🙂 I am also going to order it…

  5. peteflecha says

    20 June, 2017 at 18:52

    Just ordered my copy. Can’t wait!

  6. Dan Lineberry says

    20 June, 2017 at 19:07

    I went to Amazon to buy this, and it is paperback only – a rare thing nowadays, and a showstopper for me (I have my virtual library on my tablet b/c I travel a lot). Hope to see this as an eBook soon!

    • Duncan Epping says

      20 June, 2017 at 23:47

      After VMworld Frank and Niels have said…

    • Duncan Epping says

      24 July, 2017 at 15:26

      today: http://amzn.to/2v0iSH3

  7. kpratola says

    20 June, 2017 at 22:53

    How much CPU resources are reserved for the ESXi hosts? I have a cluster that shows total CPU resources is 616 GHz in the Summary tab, but when I go to the Resource Allocation tab, the total capacity is only 572 GHz. I am basically losing 2 whole cores per ESXi host in the cluster.

  8. Tan Wee Kiong says

    21 June, 2017 at 09:07

    Just ordered mine. Waiting for its to be delivered while I am in US. Just in time for me to read on my 2-+ hours flight back.

  9. Wu says

    26 June, 2017 at 18:04

    May I know when it will be available for kindle?

    • Vaseem Mohammed says

      29 June, 2017 at 13:32

      After VMworld Frank and Niels have said…

    • Duncan Epping says

      24 July, 2017 at 15:25

      today: http://amzn.to/2v0iSH3

      • Vaseem says

        24 July, 2017 at 15:32

        Wow! Bought the eBook just now!

  10. Luis M. says

    9 July, 2017 at 18:42

    Does anyone know if those who purchase the physical copy will get a discount on the digital book?

    • Duncan Epping says

      10 July, 2017 at 09:00

      typically for a self-published book the answer to that would be no. Simple reason: Amazon doesn’t offer you the option to provide a discount at all. Not for new buyers or for people who have already bought a version.

  11. Ryan Hulce says

    18 July, 2017 at 22:08

    Woohoo, won the book at Indy VMUG UserCon today!

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About the author

Duncan Epping is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Platform BU at VMware. He is a VCDX (# 007) and the author of the "vSAN Deep Dive" and the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series.

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