Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Book

Update: vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide

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Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on the current status. We had a little setback last week. We found out that we had to redo a complete chapter the very last minute. Because of this we missed our deadline for submitting it to VMware, as you can imagine as a VMware employee this needs to be officially approved. We don’t know what the release date will be. My guess is the third week of September. We are currently discussing our options, but it will either be lulu.com or booksurge.com. Both have its pros and cons, but for booksurge one of the biggest pros is definitely their presence on amazon.com.

I also have good news. Vizioncore will have a limited amount of preview copies of the book available during VMworld to give away! If you would like to have one visit their booth!

The proof is in! (vSphere Quick Start Guide)

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As most of you hopefully know by now we are working on a vSphere Quick Start Guide. We’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks getting it finalized. As you can imagine with VMworld coming up we are working against a very tight deadline. Thomas Bryant has been doing most of the formatting for the book and ordered a proof copy which has just arrived:

Source: The proof is in!


The first copy of our new book, vSphere 4.0 Quick Start Guide, has arrived! I’m very excited about the work everyone has done. It’s been a pretty rough ride at times, but it’s worth it in the end to see your name in print. I’m looking forward to getting a few copies for VMworld 2009!

Great work Duncan, Dave, Stu, Alan & Bernie!

New book in town: vSphere Quick Start Guide

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Months ago I shared an idea on Twitter about starting a “super blog”. This “super blog” should have contained the top articles of some of the best VMware or virtualization bloggers around. I asked myself what the added value would be and came to the conclusion that there already were many “super blogs” around. Although the “super blog” idea died a slow death the urge to collaborate with others on a challenging project still lived on. (Although Stephen Foskett picked it up and created Gestalt IT at the time.)

This is when the idea of a book series was born, which I for obvious reasons did not share with the twitter community. This book, and hopefully the rest of the following books, is written by six well known VMware community members. I don’t think they need further introduction so here are there names: Bernie Baker(thanks Chad for the tip), Thomas Bryant III, Stu Radnidge, Dave Mishchenko, Alan Renouf and myself of course.

The original idea was to publish a series of short topics, deep-dives, with each book limited to 150 pages, pocket size, sold at a minimum price and completely “diy”. For those unfamiliar with the term “diy” it means “do it yourself”. In other words we do not have a publisher helping us or funding it. We also don’t have a marketing budget, so we are relying on you guys to spread the word and we will be relying on Lulu.com for distributing/selling it.

When we started outlining our first book Ron Oglesby gave us the opportunity to rewrite the Quick Start Guide he and his team at RapidApp published in March 2007. We all agreed that this would be a good start of the series. Thanks again Ron! Of course this book will exceed the limit we agreed on of 150 pages, but it is worth it. We hope to get it done before VMworld and bring a couple of copies to VMworld but the clock is ticking fast and we are not there yet. We will keep you informed!

I just hope we can get all you guys as excited about new technology and VMware products in general as we are!

Virtualization, A Beginner’s Guide

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A couple of months ago I was asked to tech edit a book. I knew more people were editing the book but for some reason I didn’t know who. I just learned that Chris Wolf and Ruben Spruijt were my partners in crime, and I’m honored cause I think both are industry experts!

“Virtualization, A Beginner’s Guide” deals about every aspect of virtualization and takes the “beginner” from phase to phase. Topics range from: build, convert, use, secure and protect. This book doesn’t only deal about VMware, it discusses the three market leaders, of course including Citrix and Microsoft.

You can find the table of contents here, and there are also two chapters available freely: chapter one, chapter 6. If you’re new to virtualization, pick it up it’s definitely worth it!

VMware VI3 Implementation and Administration by Eric Siebert

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vI just finished reading a brand new book titled “VMware VI3 Implementation and Administration” by Eric Siebert. I was pleasantly surprised by the in depth information that the book contains. The book is based on ESX(i) /vCenter 3.5 U3 and discusses every aspect of implementing and administering your virtual environment including troubleshooting, installation, backup and monitoring.  What ATDG is for 3.0.x this book will be for 3.5 in my opinion!

Eric’s writing style made the book an easy read and the enormous amount of examples, tips and hints make this book a must have for the toolkit of every VI Admin! In other words, pre-order it now!