VMware vSphere For Dummies

by Daniel Mitchell

A plain-English guide to the market-leading virtualization and cloud computing technology With virtualization, a single server can host dozens or hundreds of virtual machines running a variety of operating systems, and even hook them together in a virtual network or cloud infrastructure. This practical guide shows you how to create a virtual system using the VMware VSphere environment.  You'll find all the information you need to understand, design, and deploy one―without getting overwhelmed with technical detail. And once you’re up and running, this book is the perfect reference for maintenance and troubleshooting issues. Get up and running on the cloud with VMware vSphere For Dummies !

Genres: Technology

368 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

Reviews

[Craig a.k.a Meatstack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been an IT professional for 12 years. I've been a manager for 8 of those. I've been using VMware for 2 now, and darn it, it's just embarrassing to read anything ending with "for Dummies."

But let's put that aside, and swallow the pride. This book likely saved me from an overnight of firefighting in the future. Possibly more. Why? Because of 5 little things I learned during reading this that I had never considered previously.

Here's how this plays out. You read something some night sitting in your recliner, and you say to your self:
"Self," you say, "that's an interesting tidbit about what not to do when the hosts are installed. I wonder if these were done that way." The next morning you check, and sure enough they were. You have now identified a bomb in your installation that has not gone off yet. The $30 you put down for this book has just saved you from a world of hurt.

If you have been working with the tools for a couple years, then its true that 95 percent of this book won't be of any use to you, and you'll be looking for the next level of knowledge. But that 5 percent? Priceless.

[Gina]

Currently reading as we gear up for a VMWare deployment. It's very good. Gives good basic information.

[David Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was VMware Vsphere For Dummies by Tom Keegan et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Vsphere is a virtualization operating system used on networks which because you enter what is known as a virtual machine that only has predefined functions any virus or other malware that infects your computer is severely limited in the damage it can cause. Most viruses are written specifically to infect Windows operating systems so any other operating system limits the vulnerabilities. A Vsphere package normally comes with a client version, a server version & EXL version. These run on the workstation and server respectively. There are 3 main versions which are v3.5, v4 & v4.1 with the latter being the newest. Also there are several versions and 2 of them are for small businesses and the rest are for big companies. They use a proprietary file system called VMFS or Virtual Machine File System. It's compatible with Oracle & Microsoft SQL Server. If you use a demo of SQL or the Express version it only works with a database upto 4GB. Also the latest versions only work with 64 bit processors. In terms of your hardware limits you are much more likely to be limited by your network hardware than be limited by what Vsphere supports. The latest version works with upto 8 processors for example and these can each be subdivided to up to 8 virtual processors. Virtual processors though can slow down your overall performance. There is a website at

http://vmware.com which lists the requirements for your network and what is compatible. It's essential to plan your network prior to installing Vsphere.

[Mark Bates · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of an advertisement for vSphere..oh well.