3 weeks ago I announced the availability of the ebook of “Essential Virtual SAN”. Today I have the pleasure to inform you that the paper copy has also hit the streets and is being shipped by Amazon as of today. So for those who were waiting with ordering until the paper version was available… Go here, and order it today, and have it in house by tomorrow! The book covers the architecture of Virtual SAN, operational and architectural gotchas and sizing guidance, design examples and much more. Just pick it up,
Book
Essential Virtual SAN book available as of today! (ebook first)
Yes, the day has finally come… Our pet project, the Essential Virtual SAN book is finally out! Cormac and I decided to take the “e-book first” route which enables us to have it out weeks before the printed copy. Before doing the thank you’s and provide you with some details on what the book is about, I want to thank my co-author Cormac! It was a great pleasure working with you on this project Cormac, thanks for asking me to be part of this exciting book!
We want to thank our technical editors Paudie O’Riordan and Christos Karamanolis, whom spent countless of hours reading and editing our raw materials. We would like to thank the VMware Virtual SAN engineering team for the countless of hours discussing the ins and outs of Virtual SAN. Especially Christian Dickmann and (again) Christos Karamanolis, it would not have been possible without your help! We also want to acknowledge William Lam, Wade Holmes, Rawlinson Rivera, Simon Todd, Alan Renouf, and Jad El-Zein for their help and contributions to the book. Last but not least we want to thank the Pearson team for their flexibility and agility and getting things done, and our management (Phil Weiss, Adam Zimman, and Mornay van der Walt) for supporting us on this journey.!
Cormac and I are also very pleased to say that we have two awesome forewords by no one less than VMware CTO Ben Fathi and SVP of Storage and Availability at VMware Charles Fan! Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule, we very much appreciate it.
What does the book cover?
Understand and implement VMware Virtual SAN: the heart of tomorrow’s Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC)
VMware’s breakthrough Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) initiative can help you virtualize your entire datacenter: compute, storage, networks, and associated services. Central to SDDC is VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN): a fully distributed storage architecture seamlessly integrated into the hypervisor and capable of scaling to meet any enterprise storage requirement.
Now, the leaders of VMware’s wildly popular Virtual SAN previews have written the first authoritative guide to this pivotal technology. You’ll learn what Virtual SAN is, exactly what it offers, how to implement it, and how to maximize its value.
Writing for administrators, consultants, and architects, Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping show how Virtual SAN implements both object-based storage and a policy platform that simplifies VM storage placement. You’ll learn how Virtual SAN and vSphere work together to dramatically improve resiliency, scale-out storage functionality, and control over QoS.
Both an up-to-the-minute reference and hands-on tutorial, Essential Virtual SAN uses realistic examples to demonstrate Virtual SAN’s most powerful capabilities. You’ll learn how to plan, architect, and deploy Virtual SAN successfully, avoid gotchas, and troubleshoot problems once you’re up and running.
Coverage includes
- Understanding the key goals and concepts of Software-Defined Storage and Virtual SAN technology
- Meeting physical and virtual requirements for safe Virtual SAN implementation
- Installing and configuring Virtual SAN for your unique environment
- Using Storage Policy Based Management to control availability, performance, and reliability
- Simplifying deployment with VM Storage Policies
- Discovering key Virtual SAN architectural details: caching I/O, VASA, witnesses, pass-through RAID, and more
- Ensuring efficient day-to-day Virtual SAN management and maintenance
- Interoperating with other VMware features and products
- Designing and sizing Virtual SAN clusters
- Troubleshooting, monitoring, and performance optimization
ASIN: B00LODTZSA
ISBN-10: 013385499X
ISBN-13: 978-0133854992
You can buy it via Amazon.com for Kindle, and it will also be available shortly via Pearson.com for any other ebook format!
Book: Networking for VMware Administrators
Fellow blogger Chris Wahl just announced the availability of an awesome book titled Networking for VMware Administrators he authored with Steve Pantol. The book is published via VMware Press and is a must read if you ask me. I am going to order it for sure as it is an area that I can definitely brush up on. The book is 368 pages and covers everything from the networking models to switching, but of course heavily focuses on the virtual side and dives in to the standard vSwitch, distributed switch and the Cisco Nexus 1000v!
Knowing Chris this book is going to be worth it, his blog material has always been excellent and I expect nothing less. Congrats Chris and Steve, awesome work and looking forward to reading it.
Essential Virtual SAN book, rough cut online now!
A couple of weeks back Eric Sloof broke the news about the book Cormac Hogan and I are working on: Essential Virtual SAN. As of this weekend the rough cut edition is (back) online again, and you can see some of the progress Cormac and I have been making over the last couple of months. As we speak we are working on the final chapters… so hopefully before the end of the month the rough cut should be complete!
Note that this is a rough cut and that means the book will go through tech review (by VSAN Architect Christos Karamanolis, and VMware Integration Engineer Paudie O’Riordan), than editing and a final review by Cormac and I before it will be published. So expect some changes throughout that whole cycle. Never the less, I think it is worth reading for those who have a Safari Online account:
Want a free digital copy of the vSphere Design Pocketbook?
I just noticed that PernixData is offering free copies of the vSphere Design Pocketbook. Only thing you will need to do is register here. I believe at VMworld they handed out roughly 1500 copies of these, and they have been very well received. For those who don’t know, this book was “authored by the community” with people like Frank Denneman, Cormac Hogan, Jason Nash, Eric Sloof, Vaughn Stewart and I deciding which consideration was in and which was one out. (Somehow we needed to ensure message weren’t conflicting or potentially “damaging” to an environment.)
Hopefully PernixData will have some more physical copies in Barcelona, but just in case they don’t… sign up for the free e-copy!