First Impressions: VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive

I was super excited to get this book in the mail today. Pretty much as soon as I opened the book I knew I had to do this post. I wanted to be one of the first to give a review of the book, albeit a partial review. I know that there will be plenty of full reviews out there soon, and even reviews from far better writers than I, but something in me needed to do this post. Also I am moving to a new place this weekend and I need to pack(haven’t started yet), among other things that apparently need to happen in order to move 🙂 . So I am not sure when I will have the pleasure of finishing the book.

This book is, if I am not mistaken, the first published book for vSphere 5. That fact alone makes it kind of an exciting book to own. Follow that up with the fact that it is written by Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman, and it almost makes it a necessary purchase.

CONTENT

If you have read their HA and DRS book, you should pretty much know what to expect here. If for some reason you haven’t….

This book is very content dense, and info-rich. That is probably the most concise way I can say it. Every page you are given both useful and helpful information. A fact made even more-so for the reason that a lot of this isn’t already common knowledge to the community. A majority of us have not been able to play around with vSphere 5 at all yet, and this book gives us an insight which we might not have had otherwise.

One thing I love about this book so far, is their brevity on the way things were previously. To often in these types of books, I feel as if the author spends to much time explain how things worked in the past and how they used to be configured. When buying a book like this, I for the most part don’t care how things used to be, I want to know how they are now. The only history lessons should be the ones that make the current way-of-things more understandable. I thought Frank and Duncan have done a great job of giving just enough history to put the current “Clustering” in perspective, but not too much that I become bored. A perfect example of this would be this quick pic I took….

They give you just a quick lesson, and tell you where you can get more info…..  🙂
I should also say the quality of that picture is both from my skill as a photographer and the quality of my camera(which isn’t great), and not indicative of how the book looks.

LOOK AND FEEL

Having their previous book, I would say this book feels like it is made of high quality paper.  It just feel nice, and the pages look great. I personally splurged and purchased the full-color edition, and it honestly looks awesome.

The color in the book,  although I am sure isn’t necessary to learn the material, certainly doesn’t hurt either. The changes in color to me help illustrate and emphasize whatever topic is currently being discussed, even if the colors might not be required.

I am also a big fan of the table of contents. For a small book(348 pages), the table of contents spans across five pages, with entries for almost every other page,  letting you know you will be able to find what it is you are looking for quickly.

Another surprise I found on this book is an outline on the back of this book.  As someone certainly realized, this book going forward will be a great reference guide for clustering in a vSphere environment. This outline on the back cover, will make it that much quicker to get to the section you want. The outline includes chapter titles and page numbers.

Also included in this pic is my sandal, which is apparently from Old Navy….Anyway, it is there to also illustrate that this is not a behemoth of a book, as some of the reference books can be. As a reference, it is a size 12-13 sandal, which I bought on sale….

I am super happy I bought this book. Granted the full color version is more expensive than the other two, coming in at 50 dollars. I would say that makes this not a cheap book. Which would be my only negative thing to say about it. However, on the other hand, I believe the content in this book is easily worth that much, and full-colored illustrations are just icing on the cake.

I HIGHLY recommend anyone who doesn’t have this book to purchase it now.

Full Color version
Black and White version
Kindle version