What I’m reading:

VMware Infrastructure 3:  Advanced Technical Design Guide and Advanced Operations Guide by Scott Herold, Ron Oglesby (formerly of GlassHouse, now with Dell, and bench presser of Lord knows how many pounds), and Mike Laverick. ISBN:  978-0971151086.

Ok, the truth is I’ve had the pre-release Author’s Edition of this book since February of 2008 and I had read a few chapters, but I haven’t read the final copy cover to cover like a book of this calibre warrants.  I picked up the final copy in September 2008 just before VMworld 2008.  If the author names sound familiar to you, well, they should.  Oglesby and Herold wrote the earlier version of this book a few years ago and it was dynamite!  Laverick joins the duo as a VMware Infrastructure expert, VMware instructor, proprietor of RTFM Eduction, plus extensive Citrix experience (the man has paid his dues).  Lately, Laverick has been on a VMware Site Recovery Manager kick.  If you’re getting into SRM, definitely check out Mike’s site where you’ll find valuable information plus the first and only book I’m aware of dedicated to SRM.

Expectations:  Advanced concepts.  Tips and tricks I won’t find in VMware documentation.  Real world scenarios from the datacenter and classroom.  At just over 800 pages, I would have been able to devour this in a week or less in my younger days.  With a busy family and work life, I expect I’ll be chipping away at this book for a good month or more.  But it’s not a race.  What’s important is understanding and retention of the concepts.  I’m thinking about the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification soon and hopefully this book will help in those studies.

What I’m watching:

VMware ESX Server training by Trainsignal.  Iman Jalali (Director of Sales and Support, Trainsignal) contacted me via Twitter and asked if I’d like to review a copy of Trainsignal’s latest VMware ESX video training.  Are you kidding me?  Just about anything VMware related I can get my hands on is a good thing.  Jalali did not ask for a blog review or even a mention, however, I appreciate his generosity as well as the generosity of Scott Skinger (Founder/President of Trainsignal) who comped me Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 video training back in 2007.

David Davis (from this and this, among other things) is the instructor of this 18+ hour 2-DVD series.  I’ve known (of) David for a few years from my participation at the Petri IT Knowledgebase.  David has a lot of positive energy and his certifications include CCIE (I’m not worthy sharing the same Oxygen as he) and VCP.  I very much look forward to watching this series.  One thing though guys (and this goes out to all the VMware book authors too):  With the virtualization landscape evolving so quickly, the versions and configuration maximums being rasied by VMware almost quarterly, I wish you the best of luck keeping your material current!  That has to be a big challenge and somewhat of a frustration at the same time.

It is now time for my Pre-New-Years cheesecake.  As if I needed an excuse for cheesecake.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

Jas