virtualization from the desktop to the enterprise
When I first saw this book I thought it'd touch on some fancy VMWare tricks and call it a day. Then I remembered that I'm an idiot and this website runs on a virtual server so I perked up a bit. Unfortunately Xen (this servers VM technology) was only mentioned in the sidebar, but Xen is still in heavy development so that's understandable. The perks sank back down and I went back to my initial guess of fancy VMWare tricks.
It just so happens that I was right and this book does cover fancy VMWare tricks -- plus a lot more. Just by reading the Table of Contents, I broke out from the narrow-minded barrier of my definition of "Virtual". Yes, "Virtual" also includes File Systems, Storage Areas, and Clustering.. who would have imagined?
The first couple chapters go over running products like VMWare, Virtual PC, and Microsoft Virtual Server. While I've used VMWare and Virtual PC in the past, it's never been for anything more productive than goofing off. At work, we're lucky if we can scrape together a Pentium III for a new server, so running a Virtual Server is completely out of the question. However, Wolf and Halter did a great job explaining everything from installation to networking to backing up Virtual Machines. The backup section was particularly interesting because of the custom shell scripts and batch files they put together to help the VM easily backup its data.
The next chapter dealt with Virtual File Systems. Since I work for a company that has 15 remote locations, I could relate to this chapter the most. Distributed File System and Andrew File System were both covered but the DFS coverage takes the win by answering a nagging question I've had for a while: Yes, you can run DFS on Samba!. That fact has probably been well known to everyone but I've just been to lazy to look it up. Either way, this book has great instructions on setting it up too.
The next three chapters deal with Clusters. Everything from defining, installing, and load balancing both Linux and Microsoft clusters is explained. The third chapter on clustering explains how to set up Virtual Machine clusters for use in testing and training actual cluster configurations. On par with the rest of this book, these chapters did an excellent job at teaching you about clusters from the ground up.
Finally, the book covers storage. Fibre Channel and iSCSI are both described and some basic configuration is given, too. RAID is given a quick once-over and then the SNIA Storage Model is explained. Like any other Model, the SNIA one is just as boring. No offense to the writers, but a section describing a Storage Model is not going to get by me without dozing off.
The last chapter wraps everything up with a quick review. A small topic of adding Stand-By servers in to the mix is tossed in and then that's all.
Overall, this book did a great job explaining the different aspects of Virtualization. While Wolf and Halter could have just stopped half-way through and left the book at covering Virtual Machine software, they didn't. Instead, they added in a wide variety of other Virtual applications and technologies and made this book worth reading. I'd also like to thank Apress for sending me a preview copy of this book -- it's definitely appreciated.
I'd give this book a 9/10.
